Choppers and the Clactonian: A Reinvestigation

Abstract

Choppers and chopping tools have long been associated with the Clactonian industries of Britain. They have either been dismissed as cores, or often described as woodworking tools, but have rarely been studied from a functional perspective. The purpose of this paper is to publish the results of a series of experiments which has been carried out to investigate the functional efficiency of choppers or chopping tools as compared to other alternative tools. These results are then reviewed in the light of the archaeological information from Clactonian and other Lower and Middle Pleistocene sites.Due to the problems of definition, for the purposes of the experiments both chopping tools and choppers have been taken to be small nodules of pebbles which have had several flakes removed bifacially along at least one edge. The morphology of the working edge is identical to that found on the edges of many of the Clactonian cores. For this reason, chopping tools, choppers and cores are regarded as artefacts with potentially an identical function. In the experiments they are termed simply as chopping tools.