The Acheulean handaxes from Casal do Azemel (Leiria, Portugal): a new perspective

Abstract

Among the material remains of the Acheulean techno-complex, handaxes are considered to be as its most iconic products. Being undeniable their importance in the behavioural repertoire of the groups responsible for their elaboration, over the last decades they have been subject to multiple approaches, often prompting different perspectives. In Western Europe, one of the largest collections of these tools comes from the Casal do Azemel site. Among other traits, the collection is characterised by the predominance of specimens that display a morphological (plano-convex volumetry) and technological (sequential shaping) hierarchy. Alternatively to the proposal that affiliated the conceptualisation of most of these tools to the logic of “pièces bifaciales supports” (Cunha-Ribeiro 1999), it is argued that the features on which this hypothesis was based are an expected outcome, given the type of blank preferentially chosen and the mental template underlying their production, and therefore it is proposed that they represent “pièces bifaciales outils”, as is the norm in the Iberian Acheulean.