Crude adzes. Focus on special and unknown artefact type

Document à paraître.This paper aims to make known a curious type of artefact made of a long broken bone whose epiphysis is used as a handle, and the break as a cutting edge. Because no further shaping generally occurs, its aspect does not differ from a faunal remain. For this reason, it has rarely been seen as an artefact. The first items were identified in Syrian (at the end of PPNa), Jordanian, Anatolian and Iranian (PPNb) collections. Some were found in the south-eastern Early European Neolithic and many in the Early Chalcolithic from Bulgaria. Others have been also discovered in the western European Neolithic (Linear Pottery Culture). Because of their extraordinary spread and their long-lasting existence, which follow the Neolithic diffusion, these artifacts deserve to be described in detail so as to help researchers to identify them and further document their chronological and geographical distribution. They also address the question of their manufacture, whose simplicity contrasts strongly with the very elaborated other artefacts within the assemblages they lie in. Their function, for which several hypothesis have been suggested, are also investigated. All these questions will be treated here based on an illustrated description of this artifact type