History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c10.s1.t1: A. Techniques used for shaping Tools
History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c10.s1.t1
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A. Techniques used for shaping Tools
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Tool making in human history was initiated at about 1.8 to 2 million years ago. The Pleistocene sequence and the absolute dates, which are obtained from the Olduvai Gorge and other sites of East Africa, provide evidence for this incident (Leakey L.S.B., 1965; Clark, 1982, ‘pp. 30-34). The earliest form which man made was, one edged crude chopping or cutting implement (Leakey L.S.B., 1951). The only effort made in this case was to acquire an edge on small to medium sized pebble or cobble. Flaking of one surface (unifacial) at an end of the select piece of rock, or from both the surfaces (bifacial) of the same edge (Fig.1), could provide the desired form of working implement.
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On account of the nature of flaking this group of tools are broadly divided into Chopper (the one with unifacially flaked edge), and Chopping tool (the bifacially flaked specimen).
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These terminologies received wide acceptance after being introduced by Movius (Movius, 1948, pp. 329-420). As their techno-typological categories are made mostly on pebbles, the other frequently used nomenclature for this group is Pebble tools (Bordes, 1968; Jayaswal, 1982).
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Fig.1. Chopper, Chopping tool & By-product flake
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Besides East Africa where Pebble tools or ‘Oldowan culture (a term used after the type site Olduvai Gorge) remains’ occur in the earliest context (Leakey, L.S.B., 1951), the spread of this tool tradition in a little later context is also reported from North and South Africa, western Europe, Central, South and South- east Asia (Bordes, 1968, pp. 83-97). Pebble tools in India have concentration in the north and north-west, which appears to form part of the south-east Asian spread of this tradition (Jayaswal, 1982, p.2). Besides, there are also a few small pockets in peninsular India where chopper and chopping tool tradition existed in culture isolation (Jayaswal, 1982, pp. 57-83).
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Chopper and chopping tools of the earliest facies were made by direct percussion stone hammer technique. In the later period the same morphology of these tools were attained also by the use of the direct percussion cylinder hammer or soft hammer technique.