Collected Item: “Acheulean Hand Axe”
Title
Acheulean Hand Ax
Type of object
Archaeological artifact
Material(s)
Red ironstone
Category
Historical Item
Maker
Unknown
Era
Lower Paleolithic
Date
ca. one million years BP
Date of any modification
ca. 999,000 years BP
Region and/or country (additional to map location)
Kimberley, South Africa
Brief description/ overview
Million-year-old stone handax that was reknapped, or "mended," during its original use period
Website
https://research.wonderwerkcave.com/index.php/thecavew
More detail about the item
Archaeologists excavated this stone tool at the Wonderwerk Cave site in South Africa. Close study reveals two distinct series of “cuts,” or flake removals. It was initially shaped by a series of large, shallow removals around its tapered end and later reworked through a series of deeper removals that were added to create a more dramatic point. This is an example of conservation from the distant past: the later removals were presumably made when the edge had become blunt, possibly by a different individual from the one who first shaped it, in order to preserve its function as a tool. (Label copy from Conserving Active Matter, Bard Graduate Center Gallery, My - July 2022). From Wonderwerk Cave, the oldest known cave occupation in the world that preserves an intact sequence of sediments that accumulated very gradually over a period stretching back almost two million years.
Source or owner
McGregor Museum, Kimberley, South Africa
Any collection to which this belongs
https://exhibitions.bgc.bard.edu/cam/acheulean-hand-ax/