Period: Peiligang culture (7,000-5,000 B.C)
Measurements: L. 12.5 cm
Provenance: Unearthed at the site of Peiligang, Xinzheng, 1977

Made of limestone, smooth in overall surface, with a curved back and a sawtooth blade, and a slightly upward end, the stone sickle has a triangular notch at the lower end, which was supposed to be tying a rope or fixing a handle. Overall, it was basically crescent-shaped, and finely made.

Stone sickle is normally viewed as an agricultural harvesting tool. Represented by the Peiligang culture, the early Neolithic culture in the Central Plains,  where a large number of stone sickles have been unearthed, suggests that the stone sickle, as one of the major farm tools, had been widely used at that time. With the development of the agricultural productivity, sawtooth-blade stone sickles, the more advanced farm tool emerged, they were smoothly ground, with  distinctive shapes, but were small in number.

The present example is one of the typical objects from the Peiligang culture, it can serve as a reliable reference for the study on the making of stone stools, the development of processing and farming techniques during the Neolithic Age.