Chopper (archaeology)

Oldowan to 1.7 million years before our era - Hadar

Archaeologists define a chopper as a pebble tool with an irregular cutting edge formed through the removal of flakes from one side of a stone.

Choppers are crude forms of stone tool and are found in industries as early as the Lower Palaeolithic from around 2 million years ago. Later societies used a more advanced implement sometimes called a chopping tool, which in some cases was refined into the more efficient handaxe.

Initial theories proposed by G. Isaac (1970s) that choppers were used for hunting and butchering. However, the size of the choppers did not suggest that it could be powerful enough to actually kill animals like the hippopotamus. L. Binford then proposed that animals were killed by carnivores and Homo was just a scavenger. This theory was tested by P. Shipman andR. Potts. Since the cutmarked bones were tooth marked and there were no carcasses or disarticulation of any leftovers, the evidence pointed at the idea of Homo being a scavenger. Later use-wear analysis also suggests that stone tools in the age were used for cutting meat (scavenging, see P. Shipman and R. Potts paper), bone cracking, or cutting wood and grass.