Hammerstones
Keywords:
percutores de piedra, prehistoria, pedernal, obsidianaAbstract
In the history of the emergence of humankind, hammerstones were some of the first tools used by humans and the most frequent. In archaeology, hammerstones have the ironic distinction of being the oldest and most ubiquitous human tools on earth as well as some of the most infrequently studied. Because they are common and found everywhere, they are easy to ignore. We argue that important information can be inferred from hammerstones. They merit more archaeological attention than they have received thus far. To promote better studies, we describe different kinds of hammerstones and their properties, as reported in ethnographic accounts and for modern replication experiments. A major distinction is between hammerstones used to chip other stones into cutting tools and those used to sculpt coarser-grained stones by pecking to make things such as metates and shaped building stones. After this literature review, we summarize four case studies of hammerstones from Mesoamerican sites to show the range of hammerstone types and the utility of detailed studies of hammerstones.
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References
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