hammerstone
Sign in to savethumb|250px|various hammerstones thumb|right|An example of a cobble used as a hammerstone
~28 min read
Encyclopedic overview
16 sectionsContents
- Materials
- Usage
- Types of hammerstone
- Direct percussion
- Sleeping (passive) hammer
- Active hard hammer
- Soft hammer
- Precision and indirect percussion
- Hammer with intermediate piece (pointer)
- Compressor
- Modern metallic hammerstones
- England
- Spain
- India
- See also
- References
thumb|250px|various hammerstones thumb|right|An example of a cobble used as a hammerstone
In archaeology, a hammerstone is a hard cobble used to strike off lithic flakes from a lump of tool stone during the process of lithic reduction. The hammerstone is a rather universal stone tool which appeared early in most regions of the world including Europe, India and North America. This technology was of major importance to prehistoric cultures before the development of metalworking.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “hammerstone” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.