Archaeological Anthropology / Pebble, Chopper & Chopping Tool / Cleaver | Tool Making Technique

Archaeological Anthropology
Archaeologists define a chopper as a pebble tool with an irregular cutting edge formed through the removal of flakes from one side of a stone.
Choppers are crude forms of stone tool and are found in industries as early as the Lower Palaeolithic from around 2.5 million years ago. These earliest known specimens were found in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania by Louis Leakey in the 1930s. The name Oldowan was given to the tools after the site in which they were excavated. These types of tools were used an estimated time range of 2.5 to 1.2 million years ago.
Block-On-Block:
In this technique the pebble or block of stone to be worked is struck against the projecting point of a large fixed stone or anvil. The bulbs produced in this kind of flaking can be really pronounced as the force with which the stone hits the anvil is supplemented by the natural weight of the rock.
The above methods have a risk of having no control over the fracture and hence can often defeat the purpose. The following controlled methods of stone fabrication were evolved to overcome this risk.
Cylinder Hammer or Hollow Hammer Technique:
Tools with unusually shallow and elongated flake scars were discovered in prehistoric debris. Dr Leakey after experimenting with many kinds of hammers declared that such flakings could only be affected by using a hollow bone or antler or a wooden hammer. On the face of it this method might appear to be improbable, but only experimentation can demonstrate how good flakes can be removed by this technique.
The greatest advantage of using these organic hammers is their property of absorbing the reaction of force - thus totally eliminating the shattering effect of impact. The bulb produced in this kind of scars is diffused and the flake scars have a more or less parallel running boundary ridge.
Besides the above two, there are two other controlled flaking techniques which are usually employed for finer tools.
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