My First Handaxe, Southeastern Turkey

Photographs taken in August 2004

As a break from excavation at the Neolithic site of Mezra'a Teleilat, our excavation team visited a variety of archaeological sites in Southeastern Turkey: Bronze Age, Roman, Neolithic, and Paleolithic. At one point we stopped suddenly by the side of a road. I stumbled out of the field van into thick, baked air, silently annoyed to be leaving the air-conditioned vehicle. Looking up, I witnessed a rocky, seemingly barren, field (above right). Some of the crew knowingly started to look around. Following their lead, I did the same, my curiosity suspending my discomfort and distracting me from the relentless sun.

To my delight, I started coming across a variety of lithic implements: unmodified blanks, retouched flakes, amorphous cores, and even Levallois cores (left).



But best of all was having the chance to find in the field one of the most emblematic Paleolithic stone tool types: the handaxe. While I've handled many types of stone axe before and after that experience, I will never forget the joy of simply finding them on site. And thanks to digital photography, I will never forget what they looked like either.

"The maker of the implement [handaxe or cleaver] seems often to have taken great care over its shape, and the latter survives, hundreds of millenia later, even when damaged, challenging us to understand its significance" (Roe 2006: 330).

Roe, D.A. 2006. "Some Thoughts About Acheulian Cleavers," in Axe Age: Acheulean Toolmaking from Quarry to Discard. Edited by N. Goren-Inbar and G. Sharon, pp. 313-333. Equinox Publishing Ltd.