Abbevillian
Sign in to savethumb|Abbevillian biface flake from the Douro river region near [[Valladolid, Spain. It is unretouched and is not distinguishable from Olduwan. The one small spot of smaller flaking on one edge may indicate that it is borderline between Olduwan and Acheulean. Both are found in Europe.]] Abbevillian (formerly also Chellean) is a term for the oldest lithic industry found in Europe, dated to between roughly 600,000 and 400,000 years ago.
Article
9 sectionsContents
- History
- Provenience of the type
- Abbevillian sites in Europe
- Notes
- Footnotes
- References
- See also
- Further reading
- External links
thumb|Abbevillian biface flake from the Douro river region near [[Valladolid, Spain. It is unretouched and is not distinguishable from Olduwan. The one small spot of smaller flaking on one edge may indicate that it is borderline between Olduwan and Acheulean. Both are found in Europe.]] Abbevillian (formerly also Chellean) is a term for the oldest lithic industry found in Europe, dated to between roughly 600,000 and 400,000 years ago.
The original artifacts were collected from road construction sites on the Somme river near Abbeville by a French customs officer, Boucher de Perthes. He published his findings in 1836. Subsequently, Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet (1821–1898), professor of prehistoric anthropology at the School of Anthropology in Paris, published (1882) "''Le Prehistorique, antiquité de l'homme", in which he was the first to characterize periods by the name of a site.