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