Palaeolithic/Neolithic Hand Axe

Length:
133mm
Width:
60mm
Depth:
30mm
Weight:
297g

Description

Condition Report

An very attractive Palaeolithic hand tool, predominantly a fine caramel flinty chalcedony with darker mauve and green mottling and some indistinct veining to upper portion.

The tool finely honed to exacting limits, this is a very good flint hand tool. The fine surface now showing a typical desert patina, sometimes referred to as desert varnish.

This giving the whole the attractive archaic appearance of a ancient well used Palaeolithic hand tool, something which cannot be artificially achieved. Time has been kind to this artefact in perfect condition as found.

some minor flakes around the edges of the tool discernable under a strong lens.

A Fabulously bulbous tool, a collector gem.

Feels comfortable and solid in the hand, as many do, as often these tools appear to have grooves which fit glove like to thumb and fingers, each tool shape and size unique to the individual maker or user. The Swiss army knife of the day!

Historical Provenance

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

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.