LOT 1226

Stone Age Aterian Tanged Arrowhead Group

CIRCA 85,000-40,000 B.C.

1 1/8 - 1 7/8 in. (149 grams total, 30-47 mm).

Comprising twenty transverse style arrowheads. [20, No Reserve]

From Grotte des Pigeons in Taforalt, Morocco.
From the Arthur Halcrow Versage collection, Reigate, Surrey, UK.

The tang would have been inserted into a split handle or shaft material, like wood or bone, and then bound in position with cord, or with a binding agent which would have harden to form a permanent bond. The Aterian is the name given to a distinctive stone tool industry made by anatomically modern humans between about 80,000 and 40,000 years ago. The tools are found on sites in northern Africa between the Atlantic coast to the Kharga Oasis and the western edge of the Nile River Basin. The manufacturing process for these tools is derived from the earlier Mousterian methods for working stone, using prepared and shaped cores from which were struck off large flakes which were then often unifacially trimmed into the desired tool shapes. They continued with the same basic stone working processes, but with a major conceptual difference. The Aterian style tools are the first to have clearly been designed and manufactured to be mounted on handles, with the projectile points and the scrapers having distinctive prepared tangs at the base of the tool or projectile point.