From side to side: Symmetry in handaxes in the British Lower and Middle Palaeolithic

Our paper has two aims. The first, and in the absence of a large comparative data set of earlier Acheulean handaxes, is to assess the degree to which symmetry is consistently applied to the making of handaxes in the later Acheulean (≤ 0.5 Mya), a time when bilateral planform symmetry should already be an integral component in handaxe making. The dataset we select is the British Acheulean from MIS 13 - MIS 3/4. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time handaxe symmetry has been assessed on a large body of British Acheulean handaxes. Our second aim is to present a relatively simple and low tech methodology for the analysis of handaxes and their symmetry that is widely available and does not require expensive equipment or specialist software/technical knowledge. It works from orthogonal handaxe photographs which many researchers will already have. From such data it may be possible to begin to construct the larger datasets necessary to answer symmetry related questions regarding cognitive evolution. This offers us the opportunity to raise a number of key methodological questions which we believe ought to be debated by researchers before the generation of appropriate datasets begins.