Stone Age Large French White Flint Adze

Formed on a large flake with one edge trimmed; with inked collection number: '1342 / I.TWYDALL'. 154 grams, 93 mm



Found Twydall, Kent, UK. Richard Jones collection, Welling, Kent, UK, 1912-1915. Ex Rochester Museum, Kent collections. Specialist collection of J Edwin Jarvis. Ex Martin Schoyen collection, London, UK. Accompanied by a copy of an article on the site at Twydall.

Comprising twenty transverse style arrowheads. 149 grams total, 30-47 mm



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.

Bifacially knapped with slightly asymmetric point and rounded butt; with inked 'Villiers sl Tholon / (Yonne) / Les Tuileries / Mr Thomas' find spot note. 233 grams, 95 mm



Found Villiers sl Tholon, Les Tuileries, France French private collection. Accompanied by a copy of the French cultural passport no.226712.