Digging Stick

A digging stick, sometimes called a yam stick, is a wooden implement used mainly by subsistence-based cultures to dig out underground food such as roots and tubers, to till soil, or to open burrowing-animal holes and anthills. Archaeologists and anthropologists use the term for a range of similar implements, usually little more than a sturdy stick that has been shaped or sharpened and sometimes hardened by brief exposure to fire. Fitted with a handle for pulling or pushing, a digging stick forms a kind of prehistoric plough, and is also described as a type of hoe. Digging sticks more than 170,000 years old, made of boxwood by Neanderthals, have been found in Italy.