Roe Line

The Roe Line is a suggested distinction between two forms of prehistoric stone tool named in honour of the archaeologist Derek Roe by Clive Gamble and Gilbert Marshall.

The line runs across North Africa to Israel and then to India and separates two different techniques used by Acheulean toolmakers from the Lower Palaeolithic. North and east of the Roe Line, Acheulean hand-axes were made directly from large stone nodules and cores whilst to the south and west they were made from flakes stuck from these nodules.

This distinction between flake ("débitage") and nodule/core ("façonage") distribution is suggested as a replacement for the Movius Line which has looked doubtful since discoveries made in East Asia since the 1980s. The débitage industries made bifaces including cleavers from flake blanks. Further north, the façonage industries produced more pointed bifaces and exercised a greater degree of control over their tools. Débitage tools are found as islands in façonage regions and the line can only differentiate between continuous distributions over wider areas.

Its developers have suggested it as a replacement for the Movius Line.

References

Gamble, C and Marshall, G, The shape of handaxes, the structure of the Acheulian world, in Milliken, S, and J Cook (eds) (2001). A Very Remote Period Indeed. Papers on the Palaeolithic presented to Derek Roe, Oxford: Oxbow. ISBN 1-84217-056-2.