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2016-07-02 10:53:08   •   ID: 1448

Adhesives for composite Tools during the Acheulian?

Figure 1
This are late Acheulian Handaxes (ca 7 cm long) made from Quartzite from the  Tassili n’Ajjer (Arabic: طاسيلي ناجر‎) , a mountain range in the Algerian section of the Sahara Desert. It is a vast plateau in south-east Algeria at the borders of Libya and Niger, covering an area of 72,000 km2.

The range is composed largely of sandstone. Erosion in the area has resulted in nearly 300 natural rock arches being formed, along with many other spectacular landforms. One of these artifacts has traces from a black substance, maybe some adhesive for a hafting device.

Intensive research was conducted in the area during the 1950ies by several French "equipes", who assembled huge material from the Early Paleolithic, the local MSA and the Holocene lithic industries. Around  1960 a multidisciplinary French team, among them Archeologists and Geologists, screened the Algerian Sahara for prehistoric artifacts by Trucks and Helicopters and brought more than 2000 kg of artifacts back to Algiers four weeks later (“recherché pure”). 

This enormous collections were never published and may are stored in Algiers and Paris. Most of these ensemblenow are stored untuched for more than 60 years What is of interest are is a black substance occurring on surface of one of these handaxes, The shape of this black substance suggests that the organic traces are remnants of a hafting material used by early Homo sp. during the late ESA.

In a sample of ca 400 Handaxes and Cleavers from the same region, I found a second artifact (a large Cleaver) with similar traits. In Africa and the Near East there are several examples of hafting materials found on MSA artifacts. A scraper and a Levallois flake, were discovered in the Mousterian levels (dated around 40k.a. BP) of the Umm el Tlel site in Syria in 1992. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) analyses of both C15+ alkanes and C15+ aromatics confirmed that the black substance is highly weathered bitumen, the source of which remains unknown.

The scraper and the Levallois flake  were the first reported examples of Middle Palaeolithic artefacts hutted with bitumen to handles. In 1992 Boëda et al. published new findings from the same site, from the Mousterian complex VI 3, dated to 71-72k.a. BP, which has yielded fragments of black cobbles and eleven Levallois artefacts with traces of black material demonstrated to be bituminous. Thus, rather than being a material used occasionally, bitumen is shown to be of key importance in the technological system of these populations, hypothesized to have been used as an adhesive to attach hafts made of organic matter to tools.

To date it is suggested that Hafting during the early Paleolithic, a technology that dates back at least 300,000 years in Africa and Europe  was not made by the use of adhesives. Examples include the probable wooden clamp shafts from Schöningen, Germany and the hafting of Sangoan core axes from Saï Island, Sudan. In this evolutionary model, Adhesives should  represent a later phase of innovation. Starting in the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age, three geographic areas of adhesive use can be identified:

1) in Europe the earliest evidence for use of birch pitch comes from Campobello, Italy (ca. 200 k.a.), Inden-Altdorf, Germany (ca. 120 k.a.), Königsaue, Germany (ca. 40-80 k.a.) and Les Vachons, France (ca. 30 k.a.);

2) in the Levant the use of bitumen is reported at Umm el Tlel and Hummal in Syria (ca. 40-80 k.a.),

and 3) in Africa the use of multicomponent glue made of gum, ochre and fat is documented from Sibudu, South Africa (ca. 70 k.a). While bitumen can be found naturally, birch pitch and gum ochre glue has to be produced in multistage processes that require complex knowledge, experience and control of several factors.

Figure 2
Indirect signs of hafting are numerous since the Acheulean as exemplified by a Large Quartzite Handaxe with zones of different patination in Fig.2 It would be worthwile to screen for possible Adhesives on the surface of Early and Middle stone tools in the large "forgotten" collections stored in Museum magazines in France and the Maghreb. 

For me it would be no surprise, that hafting with the help of adhesives was rather common at such an early time point. Usually we imagine that handaxes were used as hand hold devices. But this remains to be proven . Rots in her seminal work showed, that for example Keilmesser, which are usually suggested to be used non-hafted show subtle microwear traces of hafting under the microscope-see here: Microtraceology / Rots ).



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