These names are given to simple forms of stone tool made on a nodule or cobble with a roughly flaked sharp edge. By convention, tools with the cutting edge flaked from one direction are called choppers and those flaked from two directions are called chopping tools. Their use is generally unknown, though a few examples from the Clactonian in England are believed, on the basis of wear traces, to have been used for chopping wood. The term chopper/chopping tool tradition is frequently applied to the Pleistocene pebble and flake industries of eastern Asia, to differentiate them from the hand axe industries of western Eurasia and Africa (see Anyathian, Paci-tanian, Zhoukoudian) although their distribution is by no means restricted to eastern Asia.
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied