Abbevillian industry

Abbevillian industry, prehistoric stone tool tradition generally considered to represent the oldest occurrence in Europe of a bifacial (hand ax) technology. The Abbevillian industry dates from an imprecisely determined part of the Pleistocene Epoch, somewhat less than 700,000 years ago. It was recovered from high terrace sediments of the lower Somme valley, in a suburb of Abbeville, France. The distinctive stone tools include massive core tools (hand axes), bifacially flaked, with deep flake scars and sinuous or jagged edges, along with thick, usually unretouched, flakes. The assemblage is usually considered closely related to the Acheulean industry and may in fact represent merely a variant or temporal expression of it.