Download or read book A Formal Modeling Approach to Understanding Stone Tool Raw Material Selection in the African Middle Stone Age written by Simen Oestmo and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 900 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two alternative lithic raw material procurement models were considered. The first, a computational model termed the Opportunistic Acquisition Model, posits that archaeological lithic raw material frequencies are due to opportunistic encounters during random walk. The second, an analytical model termed the Active-Choice Model drawn from the principles of Optimal Foraging Theory, posits that given a choice, individuals will choose the most cost effective means of producing durable cutting tools in their environment and will strategically select those raw materials. An evaluation of the competing models found that lithic raw material selection was a strategic behavior in the PP record. In MIS6 and MIS5, the selection of quartzite was driven by travel and search cost, while during the MIS4, the joint selection of quartzite and silcrete was facilitated by a mobility strategy that focused on longer or more frequent stays at PP coupled with place provisioning. Further, the result suggests that specific raw materials and technology were relied on to obtain food resources and perform processing tasks suggesting knowledge about raw material properties and suitability for tasks.
Download or read book Culture History and Convergent Evolution written by Huw S. Groucutt and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-07-23 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together diverse contributions from leading archaeologists and paleoanthropologists, covering various spatial and temporal periods to distinguish convergent evolution from cultural transmission in order to see if we can discover ancient human populations. With a focus on lithic technology, the book analyzes ancient materials and cultures to systematically explore the theoretical and physical aspects of culture, convergence, and populations in human evolution and prehistory. The book will be of interest to academics, students and researchers in archaeology, paleoanthropology, genetics, and paleontology. The book begins by addressing early prehistory, discussing the convergent evolution of behaviors and the diverse ecological conditions driving the success of different evolutionary paths. Chapters discuss these topics and technology in the context of the Lower Paleolithic/Earlier Stone age and Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age. The book then moves towards a focus on the prehistory of our species over the last 40,000 years. Topics covered include the human evolutionary and dispersal consequences of the Middle-Upper Paleolithic Transition in Western Eurasia. Readers will also learn about the cultural convergences, and divergences, that occurred during the Terminal Pleistocene and Holocene, such as the budding of human societies in the Americas. The book concludes by integrating these various perspectives and theories, and explores different methods of analysis to link technological developments and cultural convergence.
Download or read book Understanding Stone Tools and Archaeological Sites written by Brian Patrick Kooyman and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covers manufacturing techniques, lithic types and materials, reduction strategies and techniques, worldwide lithic technology, production variables, meaning of form, and usewear and residue analysis.
Download or read book Raw Material Selection and Flake Production in the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa written by Kyle S. Brown and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lithic technology written by Earl Herbert Swanson and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-06-03 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Time Energy and Stone Tools written by Robin Torrence and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989-08-25 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection aims to refocus archaeological and anthropological interest in technology.
Download or read book Tools versus Cores written by Shannon P. McPherron and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-05-27 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers in this volume address an incredibly basic question in stone tool studies, namely whether a particular lithic artifact should be classified as a tool, thus implying that at some time in the past it was used directly to perform activities, or whether it should instead be classified as a core, meaning that its purpose was to produce flakes some of which were then made into tools. This question is so basic that it would seem archaeologists should have solved it by now, and in most instances this is the case. This volume, however, looks at some of the remaining problem cases in part to find out if they can be solved, but mainly because the really difficult cases raise the more challenging and interesting methodological issues, which can in turn lead us to question and overhaul long-held assumptions and long-used approaches to the study of stone tools. This is, in fact, what happens in this volume with papers that discuss assemblages from Lower/Middle Paleolithic sites in Europe and southwest Asia to more recent Holocene sites in the New World and Australia. In some instances the very idea of classifying these artifacts as one or the other is entirely discarded; in other instances, it is assumed they fit in both categories, and the behavioral implications are assessed. The end result in each case is a richer understanding of the past less encumbered by categories archaeologists bring to the study.
Download or read book Tools of the Old and New Stone Age written by Jacques Bordaz and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Near East written by John J. Shea and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-28 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book surveys the archaeological record for stone tools from the earliest times to 6,500 years ago in the Near East.
Download or read book Prehistoric Stone Tools of Eastern Africa written by John J. Shea and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-16 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed overview of the Eastern African stone tools that make up the world's longest archaeological record.
Download or read book Seeing Lithics written by Gilbert B. Tostevin and published by Oxbow Books Limited. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is substantial debate over the extent to which the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition and the dispersal of anatomically modern humans from Africa into Eurasia at the end of the Pleistocene were the result of the same process, related processes, or unrelated but coincident processes. The current debate shows a gap in archaeological method and theory for understanding how different cultural transmission processes create patterning in the material culture of foragers at the resolution of Paleolithic palimpsests. This research project attempts to bridge this gap with a middle-range theory connecting cultural transmission and dual inheritance theory with the archaeological study of flintknappers' flake-by-flake choices in the production of lithic assemblages. The project thus combines a new middle-range theory as well as a new approach to characterizing Paleolithic assemblages for systematic comparison of units of analysis appropriate to distinguishing forces of change in cultural evolution.
Download or read book Flintknapping written by John C. Whittaker and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flintknapping is an ancient craft enjoying a resurgence of interest among both amateur and professional students of prehistoric cultures. In this new guide, John C. Whittaker offers the most detailed handbook on flintknapping currently available and the only one written from the archaeological perspective of interpreting stone tools as well as making them. Flintknapping contains detailed, practical information on making stone tools. Whittaker starts at the beginner level and progresses to discussion of a wide range of techniques. He includes information on necessary tools and materials, as well as step-by-step instructions for making several basic stone tool types. Numerous diagrams allow the reader to visualize the flintknapping process, and drawings of many stone tools illustrate the discussions and serve as models for beginning knappers. Written for a wide amateur and professional audience, Flintknapping will be essential for practicing knappers as well as for teachers of the history of technology, experimental archaeology, and stone tool analysis.
Download or read book Landscape Variability in Tool use and Edge Damage Formation in South African Middle Stone Age Lithic Sssemblages written by Benjamin J. Schoville and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores how early modern humans used stone tool technology to adapt to changing climates and coastlines in the Middle Stone Age of South Africa. The MSA is associated with the earliest fossil evidence for modern humans and complex cultural behaviors during a time period of dramatic climate change. Human culture allows for the creation, use, and transmission of technological knowledge that can evolve with changing environmental conditions. Understanding the interactions between technology and the environment is essential to illuminating the role of culture during the origin of our species. This study is focused on understanding ancient tool use from the study of lithic edge damage patterns at archaeological assemblages in southern Africa by using image-based quantitative methods for analyzing stone tools. An extensive experimental program using replicated stone tools provides the comparative linkages between the archaeological artifacts and the tasks for which they were used. MSA foragers structured their tool use and discard behaviors on the landscape in several ways by using and discarding hunting tools more frequently in the field rather than in caves/rockshelters, but similarly in coastal and interior contexts. This study provides evidence that during a significant microlithic technological shift seen in southern Africa at ~75,000 years ago, new technologies were developed alongside rather than replacing existing technologies. These results are compared with aspects of the European archaeological record at this time to identify features of early human technological behavior that may be unique to the evolutionary history of our species.
Download or read book Understanding Chipped Stone Tools written by Brian Hayden and published by Eliot Werner Publications. This book was released on 2022-06-15 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a unique and engaging book on prehistoric stone tools. It advocates an experiential approach in which analysts try to understand stone tool designs from the users' perspectives, and employs a universal logic of designing tools to solve practical problems and evaluating various possible solutions. However, to do so it is also necessary to understand how stone can be mechanically modified to serve specific functions. The author enlists a rich array of ethnographic observations and considerable background as a flintknapper to show the basic ways in which stones can be flaked and modified and what these characteristics can reveal about prehistoric problem-solving strategies and design constraints. This is an invaluable primer for anyone contemplating the study of prehistoric stone tools."
Download or read book Stone Tools and Fossil Bones written by Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-26 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International archaeologists examine early Stone Age tools and bones to present the most holistic view to date of the archaeology of human origins.
Download or read book Models for Deriving Cultural Information from Stone Tools written by Robson Bonnichsen and published by University of Ottawa Press. This book was released on 1977-01-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A model relating human cognition to the decisions made in tool manufacture is advanced as a substitute for those approaches to artifact classification which rely only on morphology. The model is related to experiments designed to link specific input conditions (in stone fracture) with particular output features (flake and core attributes) and is used to resolve processual questions concerning projectile points from four Palaeo-Indian localities.
Download or read book Experimental Determination of Stone Tool Uses written by Lawrence H. Keeley and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1980-03-15 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major problem confronting archeologists is how to determine the function of ancient stone tools. In this important work, Lawrence H. Keeley reports on his own highly successful course of research into the uses of British Paleolithic flint implements. His principal method of investigation, known as "microwear analysis," was the microscopic examination of traces of use left on flint implements in the form of polishes, striations, and breakage patterns. The most important discovery arising from Keeley's research was that, at magnifications of 100x to 400x, there was a high correlation between the detailed appearance of microwear polishes formed on tool edges and the general category of material worked by that edge. For example, different and distinctive types of microwear polish were formed during use on wood, bone, hide, meat, and soft plant material. These correlations between microwear polish and worked material were independent of the method of use (cutting, sawing, scraping, and so on). In combining evidence of polish type with other traces of use, Keeley was able to make precise reconstructions of tool functions. This book includes the results of a "blind test" of Keeley's functional interpretations which revealed remarkable agreement between the actual and inferred use of the tools tested. Keeley applied his method of microwear analysis to artifacts from three excavation sites in Britain—Clacton-on-the-sea, Swanscombe, and Hoxne. His research suggests new hypotheses concerning such Paleolithic problems as inter-assemblage variability, the function of Acheulean hand axes, sidescrapers, and chopper-cores and points the way to future research in Stone Age studies.
