Flake Cleavers (hachereaux sur éclats) in the Acheulean of the South Caucasus

Abstract

The site of Garaja, discovered in 2012 on the southern shore of the Mingachevir reservoir (Azerbaijan), is attributed to the Acheulean stage of the Lower Palaeolithic and is dated, according to a set of biostratigraphic data, to the Baku regional tier of the Middle Pleistocene (~ 800,000—400,000 years). Artifacts are distributed across three stratigraphic levels. The paper deals with a group of stone tools the morphology of which fully corresponds to the category of cleavers (hachereaux sur éclats). These tools were identified in the collection from the lowermost level. They have direct analogies among the artifacts from the Lower Palaeolithic sites of Africa, the Middle East, and India. This is for the first fime that a distinct series of cleavers have been discovered in the Caucasus.