Chel·li·an

or Chel·le·an (shĕl′ē-ən)

adj.

Abbevillian.

[After Chelles, a city of north-central France.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Chellean

(ˈʃɛlɪən)

n, adj

(Archaeology) (no longer in technical usage) another word for Abbevillian

[C19: from French chelléen, from Chelles, France, where various items were found]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Abbe•vill•i•an

or Abbe•vill•e•an

(æbˌvɪl i ən, -ˈvɪl yən, ˌæb əˈvɪl-)

adj.

of or designating an early Lower Paleolithic industry of the middle Pleistocene Epoch in Europe, characterized by manufacture of large flakes and hand axes.

[< French abbevillien (1932); see Abbeville]

References in periodicals archive

Chellean, Mousterian, Solutrian and the like [...] Most of us stare through the glass at them, wonder vaguely for a moment at that half-savage, half-animal past of our race, and pass on.

Primitive modernity: H. G. Wells and the prehistoric man of the 1890s

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