Stone, often a river or beach pebble, which has been used as a pounding tool. Identified by patches of damage on one or both ends
Small roundish stones used as hammers to strike platforms so as to remove flakes. Hard quartzite works nicely. I like to use egg-shaped ones of various sizes. Sometimes banks and other places have landscaping that incorporates round, smooth, quartite hammerstones. I tell you this because that way...you will know what hammerstones look like.
a stone used to break another rock into pieces
A stone, usually a rounded hard river pebble that shows battering scars resulting from repeated use as a hammer or platform in the flaking process.
In archaeology, a hammerstone is a hard cobble used to strike lithic flakes off a lump of tool stone during the process of lithic reduction. Often, a hammerstone is made of a material such as limestone or quartzite, is ovoid in shape (to better fit the human hand) and develops telltale battering on the ends. This technology was of major importance to prehistoric cultures who had yet to learn to work metal; today, however, the use of hammerstones is mostly limited to flintknappers and others who wish to develop a better understanding of how stone tools were made.