Neolithic Hand Tool

Length:
133mm
Width:
40mm
Depth:
15mm
Weight:
123g

Description

Condition Report

A very good slight formed hand tool, the beige flinty chalcedony shot through with a mottled pink chalcedony.

The tool honed and polished in prehistoric manufacture to exacting limits. The fine surface now showing a typical desert patina, sometimes referred to as desert varnish. Finished with a fine and symmetrical chamfer cutting edge. Overall a delightful hand tool.

having five flake nicks to the outer edges, post collection.

Historical Provenance

Saharan Neolithic artefacts traded through Africa towards more affluent North Africa.

since the first quarter of the twentieth century when a great interest was resurrected in the ancient world, predominantly by the new finds of Tutankhamen by Howard Carter in the valley of the kings, Egypt, collectors have been sourcing these fine New stone age objects. Many of these tools collected in the twentieth century ended up in collections in Europe. this object is of this lineage and formed part of the collection of a European gentleman.

In the last twenty five years or so a new wave of enthusiasm has seen prices of artefacts steadily rise, this trend will continue as supply diminishes, through trading restrictions and particularly as many borders which once freely allowed nomadic movements are more and more heavily policed, restricting historically naturalistic nomadic trading further, coupled with less open site finds.

Many of these items were collected in open sites. This means found strewn across the open Saharan regions. As nomads traversed the Saharan routes, these objects revealed themselves through erosion and through storms and shifting sands.

Many items have been traded from as far south as Niger, Mali, Senegal and Mauritania, also from the more eastern North African states, Algeria, ,Tunisia and of course Egypt.

Geoffrey Moorhouse traversed the Sahara desert in 1972/3 from the coast of Mauritania to Egypt on foot [3,600 miles], on camel with one guide, an immense feat. On route his book the fearful Void tells of sightings of great Neolithic stone implements scattering the surface of the inner dessert, where the trading routes had been neglected for hundreds of years.