Kuhn 2020 - The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies

THE EVOLUTION OF PALEOLITHIC
TECHNOLOGIES
The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies provides a novel perspective on long-term

trajectories of evolutionary change in Paleolithic tools and tool-makers.
Members of the human lineage have been producing stone tools for more than
3 million years. These artefacts provide key evidence for important evolutionary
developments in hominin behaviour and cognition. Avoiding conventional
approaches based on progressive stages of development, this book instead examines
global trends in six separate dimensions of technological behaviour between
2.6 million and 10,000 years ago. Combining these independent trends results
in both a broader and a more finely punctuated perspective on key intervals of
change in hominin behaviour.To draw this picture together, the concluding section
explores behavioural, cognitive, and demographic implications of developments in
material culture and technological procedures at seven key intervals during the
Pleistocene.
Researchers interested in Paleolithic archaeology will find this book invaluable.
It will also be of interest to archaeologists researching stone tool technology and to
students of human evolution and behavioural change in prehistory.
Steven L. Kuhn is Riecker Distinguished Professor in the School of Anthropology,

University of Arizona. He has conducted research on Paleolithic sites and stone
artefacts in Turkey, Mediterranean Europe, the Levant, Morocco, and China. With
his wife and frequent collaborator, Dr. Mary Stiner, Dr. Kuhn has also published on
the evolution of human societies and symbolic behaviour during the Pleistocene.
THE EVOLUTION
OF PALEOLITHIC
TECHNOLOGIES
Steven L. Kuhn
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Steven L. Kuhn
The right of Steven L. Kuhn to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kuhn, Steven L., 1956– author.
Title: The evolution of Paleolithic technologies / Steven L. Kuhn.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020003124 (print) | LCCN 2020003125 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138188877 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367140540 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781315642024 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Paleolithic period. | Tools, Prehistoric. |
Stone implements. | Technology and civilization. | Human evolution. |
Prehistoric peoples–Historiography.
Classification: LCC GN772 .K85 2020 (print) |
LCC GN772 (ebook) | DDC 930.1/2–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003124
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003125
ISBN: 9781138188877 (hbk)
ISBN: 9780367140540 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781315642024 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
CONTENTS
List of figures vi
List of tables x
Acknowledgements xi
1 Introduction 1
2 Thinking about technological evolution 13
3 Parts and wholes 38
4 Raw material economies 68
5 Artefacts as information 111
6 Identifying design 145
7 Diversity 202
8 Artefact complexity 252
9 Synthesis –trends, tendencies and entrenchments 286
Bibliography 323
Index 408
FIGURES
3.1 Schematic diagram showing the role of a Magdalenian backed

bladelet in a larger hunting system. 39
3.2 Some of the diverse applications for microlithic inserts based on
ethnographic and archaeological evidence. 41
3.3 Flake with lump of birch-bark pitch on the proximal end, from
Campitello Quarry, Italy. 44
3.4 Examples of hafting Mode A. Ethnographic Leilira blades from
Australia. 45
3.5 Examples of hafting Mode B; experimental versions of tanged
Aterian artefacts with different kinds of socket haft. 46
3.6 Examples of hafting Mode C. Mesolithic arrow with five
microlithic inserts in place. 47
3.7 The world’s earliest hafted spear points (for now), from Kathu Pan,
South Africa. 49
3.8 Possible wooden haft from Schöningen site, Germany. 51
3.9 Bifacial “leaf ” points from various contexts dating to MIS 4 or
early MIS 3. 53
3.10 Sample of tanged artefacts from Aterian deposits at Bizmoune Cave,
Morocco. 54
3.11 Hypothetical hafting positions for backed segments from Howiesons
Poort layers at Umhlatuzana Rockshelter, South Africa. 56
3.12 Middle Paleolithic artefacts with traces of bitumen adhesive on
proximal ends, Hummal, Syria. 57
3.13 Impact scars on pointed artefacts from early Middle Paleolithic
layers at Misliya Cave, Israel. 58
3.14 Bladelets from proto-Aurignacian layers at Grotta Fumane, layers A1
and A2. 61
List of figures vii
3.15 Pressure micro-blades and cores, late Pleistocene Dyuktai complex,

northeast Asia. 62
3.16 Retouched and backed bladelets and cores, early Epipaleolithic
(Kebaran) from Meged Rockshelter, Israel. 63
3.17 Schematic illustration of microburin “notch and snap” technique for
sectioning small blades and bladelets. 64
3.18 Summary of developments in hafting and composite tools. 66
4.1 Schematic version of “concentric-ring” model of raw material
exploitation, Grotte Vaufrey, France. 76
4.2 Example of a “spider diagram” showing direct distances between a
site and sources of lithic raw materials, Gargas, France. 77
4.3 Potential raw material exploitation zones expressed as travel time
around the Côa Valley, Portugal. 78
4.4 Kaletepe obsidian deposits and workshop, central Turkey. 81
4.5 Diagram of raw material movement at Olduvai Gorge between 1.9
and 1.65 ma. 88
4.6 Acheulo-Yabrudian artefacts had diverse life histories. 93
4.7 Graph illustrating typical negative correlation between proportion
of flakes transformed by retouch and density of lithic artefacts in
archaeological deposits, Mousterian levels, Riparo Mochi, Italy. 96
4.8 Example of early long-distance movement of obsidian in Middle
Stone Age assemblages at the Sibilo School Road Site (SSRS) in
Kenya. 98
4.9 Extensively modified and reduced transverse scraper and limace
from the Middle Paleolithic site of Champ Grand, France. 100
4.10 Map showing lithic raw material displacements in early Upper
Paleolithic (Aurignacian) sites in Central Europe. 104
4.11 Ju/’hoansi “zem” or tortoise-shell compact case, decorated
with ostrich eggshell beads. 106
4.12 Early ground-edge tools from Madjedbebe Rockshelter, Australia. 109
4.13 Summary of trends in raw material economics. 110
5.1 Serrated bifacial Dalton points from the late Paleoindian Sloan site,
Arkansas, USA. 114
5.2 Very symmetrical, partially shaped handaxe on flint slab from
Tabun Cave, Israel. 124
5.3 Large, very symmetric Acheulean handaxe, with close-up of tip,
Isimila, Tanzania. 126
5.4 Handaxes of different sizes but very similar forms, Tabun Cave. 128
5.5 Large retouched Levallois point from the early Mousterian at
Tabun Cave. 131
5.6 Red ochre pieces from the MSA site of Porc Epic, Ethiopia. 132
5.7 Nassarius shell beads from Taforalt Grotte des Pigeons, Morocco. 133
5.8 Ostrich eggshell fragments decorated with incised lines from late
MSA layers at Diepkloof Rockshelter, South Africa. 134
viii List of figures
5.9 Solutrean shouldered point; cast of largest known Solutrean laurel

leaf; and cast of large Clovis point. 136
5.10 Map showing general distributions of earliest European Upper
Paleolithic “cultures:” LRJ, Szeletian, Chatelperronian, Uluzzian, and
Bohunician or Initial Upper Paleolithic. 138
5.11 Likely points from earliest European Upper Paleolithic complexes. 138
5.12 Distributions of different forms of Solutrean point within
three parts of the Iberian peninsula. 140
5.13 Summary of developments in signalling and symbolic content
of artefacts. 143
6.1 Metal cast of the underground chamber and passage system
constructed by the Florida harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex badius. 146
6.2 Typological Mousterian points and retouched Levallois points from
early Mousterian layers at Tabun Cave. 151
6.3 Alternative trajectories for reduction of Mousterian scrapers
proposed by H. Dibble (1987, 1995). 153
6.4 Schematic illustration of progressive reduction in Dalton points
from the southern United States. 155
6.5 Schematic illustration of reduction of “Tongatis” from Sibbudu
Cave, South Africa. 156
6.6 Ficron handaxe, East Sussex, England. 157
6.7 Schematic illustration of the geometry of a Levallois core. 162
6.8 Heavily battered quartz semi-spheroid, Isimila, Tanzania. 173
6.9 Early bifaces and protobifaces, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. 175
6.10 Trihedral Acheulean pick, Isimila, Tanzania. 176
6.11 Two handaxes produced by different methods. 178
6.12 Alternative views of handaxe design. 180
6.13 Pointed handaxe from bed 73, Tabun Cave. 181
6.14 Backed handaxe from bed 75, Tabun Cave. 182
6.15 Symmetrical and asymmetrical cleavers on flakes. 183
6.16 Schematic diagram of Tabelbala-Tachengit technique for
manufacturing cleaver flakes. 185
6.17 Handaxe on large obsidian flake, Level 6’AM, Kaletepe
Deresi 3, Turkey. 187
6.18 Large scrapers and blade tools from Yabrudian and Amudian
assemblages, Tabun Cave. 189
6.19 Schematic illustration of uni- and bidirectional laminar Levallois
production. 192
6.20 Range of geometric segments from Howiesons Poort levels
at Klasies River Mouth, South Africa. 194
6.21 Unilaterally barbed Magdalenian antler points or harpoons from the
site of La Vache, France. 199
6.22 Summary of developments in design of artefacts and production
methods. 200
List of figures ix
7 .1 Schematic illustration of alpha diversity. 205

7.2 Schematic illustration of beta diversity. 206
7.3 Schematic illustration of gamma diversity. 208
7.4 Trends in diversity in sub-Saharan and North Africa. 248
7.5 Trends in diversity in Europe and southwest Asia. 249
7.6 Trends in diversity in Asia. 250
8.1 Aranda throwing sticks, Hopi throwing sticks, and Inuit
toggle-headed harpoon. 254
8.2 E. Callahan’s schematic illustration of the production of early
Paleoindian bifaces in eastern North America. 257
8.3 Non-hierarchical Oldowan knapping. 262
8.4 Example of simple hierarchical Kombewa technology from
Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel. 267
8.5 Victoria West cores from the Canteen Kopje Acheulean site,
South Africa. 268
8.6 Schematic illustration of preparation and exploitation of Levallois
cores, illustrating several hierarchically organized stages. 269
8.7 Diagram of blade/bladelet core production, Upper Paleolithic site
of Nahal Nizzana XIII, Israel. 274
8.8 Schematic diagram of production of blades from flat flint slabs,
Qesem Cave, Israel. 276
8.9 Reconstruction of the latter phases of microblade core shaping and
production, Kakuniyama site, Japan. 282
8.10 Magdalenian harpoons from Laugerie Haute and Laugerie Bas,
France. 283
8.11 Summary of developments in artefact complexity. 284
9.1 Global temperature trends from 3.0 ma to the present. 287
9.2 Summary of trends in composite tools, raw material economy
information content, design, and complexity. 288
9.3 Summary of trends in diversity in different regions. 289
TABLES
5.1 Summary of “basal” Upper Paleolithic assemblage types

from Europe. 139
6.1 The nature of external and internal constraints on design
choices. 168
6.2 Expected effects of external and internal constraints on
design choices. 170
newgenprepdf
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is a product of the evolution of my own thinking about Paleolithic

technologies over the 30+ years that I have been involved with the field. Every
individual is, to one degree or another, “crowd sourced.” No matter how original
and self-contained we might consider ourselves to be, the ways we understand the
world are influenced in myriad ways by the thinking of others. I have been lucky
enough to count as colleagues a number of people who have taught me a lot about
stone tools and evolutionary thinking: they include (in alphabetical order) Claes
Andersson, Javier Baena Preysler, Nur Balkan-Atlı, Ofer Bar-Yosef, Anna Belfer-
Cohen, Amilcare Bietti, Lew Binford, Michael Bisson, Abdeljalil Bouzouggar,
Briggs Buchannan, Michael Chazan, Geoff Cark, Nick Conard, Anne Delagnes,
Yuri Demidenko, Robin Dennell, Robert Elston, Clive Gamble, Nigel Goring-
Morris, Thomas Hauck, Kristen Hawkes, Peter Hiscock, Erella Hovers, Na’ama
Goren-Inbar, Arthur Jelinek, Janusz Kozłowski, Cristina Lemorini, Anthony Marks,
Shannon McPherron, Liliane Meignen, Paul Mellars, Duśan Mihailovic, Marie-
Hélène Moncel, Mike O’Brien, James O’Connell, George H. Odell, Marcel Otte,
Catherine Perlès, Veerle Rots, Guillaume Porraz, Roni Shimelmitz, Michael Shott,
Valeri Sitlivy, Ludovic Slimak, John Speth, Dietrick Stout, Lawrence G. Straus,
Ignacio de la Torre, Robin Torrence, Christian Tryon, Sarah Wurz, and Nicolas
Zwyns. Students can be as formational for teachers as teachers are to them: coming
up with coherent explanations for your own ideas, and for the ideas of others, tends
to cast the flaws as well as the useful parts in high relief. I have been very fortunate
to have the opportunity to work in one capacity or another with extraordinarily
gifted students, many of whom are now valued colleagues, including Dan Adler,
Jesse Ballenger, Ismail Baykara, P. Jeffery Brantingham, Amy Clark, Berkay Dinçer, Li
Feng, Gao Xing,W. Randy Haas, Eric Heffter, Amy Margaris, D. Shane Miller, Luke
Premo, Ismael Sanchez-Morales, Todd Surovell, Gilbert Tostevin, and Liye Xie. Of
course, all the really nutty stuff herein is my doing. Finally, as always, Mary Stiner is
a shining example of relentless curiosity, creativity, professionalism, and good sense.
1
INTRODUCTION
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things,

O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey?
(Murellus to the cobbler,Wm. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 1)
1.1 Stone tools and our understanding of human evolution

This book is about stones, mostly. Shakespeare, like most people, assigned little
agency or importance to rocks. In this character’s speech he used stones as the
epitome of senselessness, meaning without awareness or feeling. Outside of the
small community of archaeological lithic analysts, the great majority of humans
alive today would agree with Shakespeare –nothing knows or feels less than a rock,
and few objects have less to tell us about human beings.
Some of us know better. Rocks have a great deal to tell us, if not about Pompey
himself then about the community of humans of which Pompey was a member.
I am not proposing that stones tools are active agents, or that they actually speak
to me (even if I believed that I would certainly not admit to it here). However,
these “senseless” stones do carry signals of a great many important and interesting
dimensions of behaviour, from the kinds of activities people conducted, to
people’s uses of different parts of the landscape, to the complexity of technological
procedures and the cognitive processes behind them. To use a well-worn metaphor
(Bateson 2000: 318; Malafouris 2013; Merleau-Ponty 2005: 165–167), archaeo-
logical lithics are like the blind man’s cane. They are an extension of our limited
sensory and cognitive apparatus, something that allows us to perceive things that
would otherwise be inaccessible. The blind man might learn about the presence of
an obstacle directly, by touching it with his cane. The information archaeologists
generate from stone artefacts can be similarly direct, as for example when lithics are
2 Introduction
treated as trace fossils indicating the presence of hominins at a particular place and
time. But the metaphorical blind man might also use his stick more indirectly, to
feel out the shape of the world by tapping it loudly on the ground and listening to
the echoes from hard surfaces nearby. The signals carried by stone tools can also be
quite indirect and complicated to analyze, as when we look to stone artefacts for
insights into the social relations among past humans.
Stone tools, and specifically chipped or flaked stone tools that are the main sub-
ject of this book, are not the only instrument in the archaeologist’s kit of indirect
sensory extensions. Nor are they necessarily the most sensitive. However, they are
indisputably the most ubiquitous. Stone tools of one form or another have accom-
panied humans on a very large part of their evolutionary journey. The earliest non-
skeletal material evidence we have for hominin behaviour comes from flaked stone
artefacts. As of this writing our “stick” reaches all the way back to 3.3 my (Harmand
et al., 2015; Lewis & Harmand, 2016). And in many parts of the world people have
continued to use stone tools of one kind or another until the present. Because
stones are comparatively resistant to the many physical, biological, and chemical
agents that ravage archaeological remains, they are also the most abundant form
of indirect contact that we have with the past, especially the deep Paleolithic past.
Other domains of technology, such as fire, cooking and food processing, fibre and
cordage, hide processing and clothing, and so on, may have been just as central to
hominin existence. But due to the vagaries of preservation, the material records for
these other aspects of culture are much less complete than the records for stone
tools. In fact, a good deal of what we know about phenomena such as the use of
fibres and hides during the Paleolithic comes from wear traces on stone tools (e.g.
Soffer, 2004).
Stone tools tell us more than just where people were and what they did during
the Paleolithic. They are also markers of the passage of time. From the beginning of
scholarly study, the story of human evolution has been calibrated in terms of changes
in the ways people made and used stone artefacts. Concepts such as Lower, Middle,
and Upper Paleolithic or Early, Middle and Late Stone Age, or Clark’s Mode 1–5
system (Clark, 1969), were originally defined a half-century or more ago based on
lithic artefacts. These broadly defined analytical units began as nothing more than
chronological intervals marked by a few supposedly universal characteristics in lithic
assemblages. Over time they have taken on much greater significance and weight
as observations about other forms of archaeological evidence and hominin skel-
etal biology are added to them. Today, a term such as Upper Paleolithic stands for
much more than a period of time when people tended to make a particular array of
artefacts. It carries implications about many other forms of behaviour, about envir-
onmental conditions, and even about the biology and cognition of hominins.
The parallel functions of stone tools as time markers and stone tools as indicators
of evolutionary change are fundamentally problematic. In studying evolution, we
want information about evolutionary change to be independent from evidence for
the passage of time. And the two often are independent. The explosive develop-
ment of radiometric and accumulated-dose methods for chronometric dating have
Introduction 3
provided more-or-less reliable independent timelines for human behavioural evo-

lution going back millions of years. Nonetheless the field as whole has trouble sep-
arating its thinking about chronology from long-established and ubiquitous units
such as Early Stone Age (ESA) or Mode 1. Even when we have absolute dates, we
typically open the discussion of any particular set of observations with a term like
“Lower Paleolithic” or “Middle Stone Age” (MSA). Such terms can be useful.They
carry a good deal of information. But they have also become increasingly prob-
lematic as knowledge of the past has expanded and as the goals of the field have
changed. Certainly, these terms do not mean the same thing today that they meant
when they were originally devised. More fundamentally, their meanings may be so
adulterated that they are no longer very useful.
I do not claim that we should abandon the use of named cultural or chrono-
stratigraphic units. Types, categories, phases, and stages help us think. We need
names and categories to help us reduce the relentless individuality of things to a
manageable number of kinds of thing. But, as we all know well, no term is neu-
tral. Inherited concepts such as Lower, Middle or Upper Paleolithic (UP), guide
our thinking along paths much like those followed by the previous generations
of scholars who developed them. And the broad chrono-stratigraphic units which
served the Abbé H. Breuil or Jia Lanpo or Dorothy Garrod so well simply don’t fit
the Paleolithic world we know now. The empirical basis for our understanding of
the past grows exponentially by the decade. One consequence is that the chrono-
logical and spatial boundaries, and even the definitions, of major units such as
Middle Paleolithic (MP) have become fuzzier. More important, the practice of
punctuating evolutionary sequences in terms of long periods of presumed stasis
tends to channel our thinking in ways that are at best redundant, and at worst mis-
guided. In the best-case scenario, forcing new knowledge into fossilized categories,
and the narrative they give rise to, makes the stories we tell increasingly baroque,
full of circular references and ornamental special cases. In the worst-case scenario, it
makes the stories indefensible. As discussed in the next chapter, the practice tends to
highlight “transitions” between named periods as loci of all evolutionary change. As
a consequence, discussions of long-term evolutionary change have tended to gravi-
tate toward the progressive and the punctuated. The putative transitions between
Lower and Middle Stone Age or Middle and Upper Paleolithic become the only
legitimate destinations for discussing evolutionary change: the rest of prehistory is
reduced to essentially featureless “flyover country.”
The genesis of this book comes from the recognition that 19th century schema
of evolutionary phases or stages for punctuating hominin evolutionary history are
no longer serving the field well. I am far from alone in realizing that conventional
ways of breaking the Paleolithic record into stages or phases has tended to direct our
thinking about hominin behavioural evolution down some dark, narrow, and some-
times unsavoury alleys. There have been individual attempts to steer the field out
of the rut by offering new ways to partition time and space. Clive Gamble (Foley
& Gamble, 2009; Gamble, 1993, 2001) has actively generated alternative concep-
tual and narrative structures for discussing human evolution, choosing to break
4 Introduction
up the vast sweep of archaeologically-documented behaviour based on changes

in hominin geography or social relations. More recently, John Shea has advocated
abandoning the progressivist Mode 1–5 system for classifying Paleolithic stone tool
industries, replacing it with a series of basic technological components that, in
principle at least, can exist at any time period and place (Shea, 2013a, 2016). In
theory this exercise places archaeological materials from different times and places
on a level playing field, one which is not always tilted toward the present and away
from the past. But the siren’s song of familiar terms and comfortable categories is
difficult to resist: I count myself among those who have continued to drive their
ships onto the rocks trying to reach the elusive essence of chimeric entities such
as the “Middle Paleolithic.” For these reasons I took on the writing of this book
as a personal challenge. My goal was to try and describe the evolution of hominin
technologies over 2.6 my or so in such a way as to avoid (as much as I could) the
easy categories and familiar stages that have structured most past works on the topic.
I took this on mainly as a learning exercise, but also in the hope that it would be
useful to others wrestling with the same issues.
In an attempt to escape some of the constraints of traditional ways of dividing up
the Paleolithic record, I have done my best to avoid characterizing the way things
were with hominins and their lithics at particular intervals of time, contrasting Lower
Paleolithic (LP) with Middle Paleolithic or Acheulean with Oldowan. Instead, the
book examines evolutionary trends in six dimensions of hominin technologies.The
choice to follow each line individually was made in part to limit reliance on con-
ventional terminology. One can easily discuss the appearance of composite tools
or variation in the complexity of reduction systems in terms of chronology and
geography —in terms of when and where things happened. Dealing with more
complicated, multidimensional associations of different phenomena demands
some kind of shorthand reference, leading to a dilemma of either inventing a new
set of terms that nobody else understands, or falling back on established conceptual
units with all of their inherent limitations.
1.2 The six dimensions

The six dimensions that form the warp of this book are as follows:
1. the number of parts that comprise finished implements;

2. the economics of raw material use;
3. artefacts as vectors for information;
4. evidence for design in implements and procedures;
5. diversity within and among assemblages;
6. complexity of implements and procedures.
In focusing on six general dimensions in lithic technology I have made the

explicit decision not to try and cover the full breadth of contemporary lithic studies.
I have oriented the book around these particular dimensions for several reasons.
Introduction 5
First, they are empirically accessible and relatively well studied, so that a reasonable
amount of high-quality information is available from several parts of the world.
Second, they have all been linked in one way or another to the ecology and the
social, behavioural, and cognitive evolution of hominins. I chose not to examine
other important dimensions of lithic technology, such as artefact function, simply
because the geographic and/or temporal coverage is too uneven.
The discussion below expands on the kinds of information archaeologists typic-
ally hope to derive from each of the six dimensions.
1.2.1 Parts and wholes: Composite tools

Archaeologists normally recover and study stone artefacts as individual objects
and we tend to think about them in this way too. For most lithic analysts, for
example, a “complete” stone artefact is one which preserves both the proximal
and distal ends, or at least all of the modified parts. Yet many of the things we
study were not stand-alone implements. Depending on the period, a certain pro-
portion of stone artefacts were components of composite tools. Sometimes the
stone bits were quite minor parts of very elaborate wholes. The development of
hafted artefacts fundamentally changed the mechanical advantages provided by
stone tools, enabling people to apply force at levels and distances that previously
were impossible. It also created the potential for orders-of-magnitude increases
in the complexity of artefacts and manufacturing processes (reviewed in detail
by Barham 2013). Hafting also placed significant limitations on the form and
sizes of stone artefacts, and thus influenced the procedures used to produce them.
Widespread microlithization after 25,000 years ago has been widely discussed as
evidence for expanding use of composite tools, but there are subtler transitions
in composite tools and accommodations for prehension that extend back nearly
one-half million years.
If there is any lesson we should learn from scientific studies of biological devel-
opment, it is that modularity solves many problems. Modularity permits greater
flexibility, adaptability and resilience in an organism or a system: it allows for the
growth of a wide range of phenotypes out of a single genotype. It is not difficult
to imagine how artefacts composed of multiple elements could provide similar
advantages in recombining various parts to meet different exigencies. Modular
design both lessens the risk of artefact failure and makes for more efficient main-
tenance (Bleed, 1986; Elston & Brantingham, 2002; Keeley, 1982). But if modularity
is so wonderful, why is it not everywhere in human technology, and why did it take
so long to develop?
There are two constraints on the production of composite tools. One stems from
cognition and the ability to accumulate and transmit knowledge. The success of a
modular design depends on the success of each its components. To produce a knife
out of a single piece of stone, all one needs to know is how to knap the stone to
obtain flakes with desirable properties. Making a knife with a stone blade mounted
in a handle requires the same understanding of stone knapping. But hafting the
6 Introduction
stone blade also necessitates knowing which kinds of materials make good handles
and how to shape them. Additionally, the maker needs to know how to bind the
blade to the handle such that the joint is sufficiently rigid to apply force through
the edge, yet sufficiently flexible that it will not snap the first time pressure is
placed upon it. In other words, the act(s) of creating and joining together parts
made from different materials requires coordinating and integrating knowledge at
a scale unmatched by any other kind of Paleolithic technology, implying a range
of high-level cognitive processes (Barham, 2013: 196). Multi-part artefacts have
been compared to grammatically organized sentences, demanding similar cognitive
structures (Ambrose, 2001, 2010). So hominins would have made wide use of com-
plex composite tools only after they had evolved the cognitive ability to execute the
necessary procedures and pass on their know-how.
The other constraints on the use of modular composite artefacts are economic.
It takes time and energy to prepare and assemble all the various elements. Even the
most elaborate of utilitarian stone artefacts takes no more than an hour to make,
and many can be turned out in a few minutes. However, once the stone artefact
is combined with a wooden handle, mastics and other binders, the time invest-
ment becomes substantial.The most complex sorts of multi-part artefacts known or
thought to have been used by later Paleolithic peoples probably required tens if not
hundreds of hours of labour investment. As a consequence, elaborate modularity in
technology would have forced toolmakers and tool users to make decisions about
scheduling of labour and allocation of effort that would never have come up with
simple stand-alone stone tools. Time and labor investment in elaborate modular
artefacts are thus constrained by both the returns that the artefacts provide and the
amount of time individual artisans can free up from other tasks.
1.2.2 Raw material economy

In order to make effective stone tools people need to have access to particular
kinds of rocks. Stones suitable for flaking –such as flint, obsidian, quartzite, or
basalt –are not necessarily rare in the geosphere but they are not ubiquitous in
most environments. Where raw materials are scarce or unevenly distributed it can
be a challenge to keep oneself supplied with the tools essential for daily life. Three
decades of research on Paleolithic raw material selection and transport provide a
rich background for discussing the evolution of raw material management systems
during the Paleolithic. Even the earliest toolmakers dealt with the uneven distribu-
tion of knappable materials by moving artefacts or unmodified stones around the
landscape. Over time strategies for managing raw materials became more diverse
and more complex. This is reflected in the scales of raw material movement as well
as in the techniques used to create more portable artefacts and to extend the lives
of tools and cores.
The economics of raw material exploitation reflect both the exigencies of daily
life and the limits of hominin cognition. The costs of obtaining raw materials and
keeping a supply on hand depend on where people spend their time and how
Introduction 7
widely and often they move. If people happen to forage or sleep near a particular
source of stone, it will be energetically trivial for them to obtain a sufficient amount
of it. If the source of a particular raw material is far off the beaten path it will be
more costly to obtain. Likewise, if people move often and over long distances, the
transport costs of artefacts or raw materials could be substantial. If people tend to
stay in one place for a long time, little effort is needed to maintain a bulky, heavy
toolkit. Researchers have also long recognized that strategies for managing scarce
resources such as usable stone implicate hominin cognition, in particular the ability
to plan ahead and to defer actions.The challenge in this chapter is disentangling the
effects of changing uses of the landscape from those linked to expanding cognitive
abilities.
Eventually a third factor, social valuation, is added to the mix. Not every deci-
sion about raw material selection is based in vulgar economics. People sometimes
valued certain raw materials for more than their potential to create sharp edges.
The assignment of social or symbolic value to particular rocks adds another layer of
interesting complexity to the story of changing raw material economics.
1.2.3 Artefacts as information

Artefacts do many things for people. They provide a mechanical advantage in
extracting food, in modifying other resistant materials, and so on. Today, as in
the past, artefacts also function in the conceptual and symbolic realms: they
carry information. It is reasonable to think that many artefacts convey messages
to informed viewers. The difficult part is deciding which characteristics of the
artefacts carry information. Distinguishing explicit signals from features of
morphology that are limited by material or functional constraints is even harder
with artefacts that, like stone tools, may have functioned in multiple realms from
the practical to the symbolic. Anyone conversant with a written language will
have a fairly easy time identifying a text or an inscription, even if she does not
actually read the language in question. Deciding which features of an article of
clothing or a house are symbolic and which function in a purely practical realm
is a more formidable proposition.
With some forms of material culture we are on fairly firm ground in
distinguishing added symbolic content from functionally salient characteristics. Our
experience with ceramics in the recent world tells us that a particular pattern of
black and white cross-hatching on the outside of a pot does not make it a better
container or more efficient at conducting heat. There are no written texts and
very few decorated pots in the Paleolithic, but other forms of material culture, such
as pigments, personal ornaments, and carved ivory statuettes, probably functioned
almost exclusively as media for transmitting information. However, these things
appeared relatively late in prehistory, and they are not found everywhere. Stone tool
technology is a tougher knot to untangle because it does not easily lend itself to
additive symbolic elements the way ceramics and other materials do. Nonetheless,
certain features of early stone tools, in particular phenomena such as “over design,”
8 Introduction
symmetry, and use of visually striking raw materials, have been claimed as pos-
sible evidence for added symbolic elements of stone tools as far back as the early
Pleistocene.
The role of artefacts as media for transmitting information depends on the
cognitive abilities of hominins to manipulate and deploy symbols. However, the
exploitation of artefacts as carriers of information varies even among contem-
porary humans who all have equal potential to manipulate symbols. In one con-
text a particular set of artefacts may be richly endowed with meaning, while in
other times and places the same objects are just tools for doing work. Much of the
information that artefacts carry is social —it refers to identity, group membership,
boundaries, etc. As such, the deployment of artefacts as information is as much
an indicator of the complexity and scale of social relationships as it is of hominin
cognitive capacity.
1.2.4 Design
The notion that artefacts were designed, that ancient stone tools were shaped
according to particular models or criteria, would appear to offer a particularly direct
view on the thinking of ancient artisans. The existence of imposed form in stone
tools has been nominated as an important derived feature of comparatively evolved
hominins, especially modern Homo sapiens (Mellars, 1973, 1996). Other aspects of
alleged design, such as symmetry, have been identified as potential indicators of
specific cognitive functions. More generally, the forms of artefacts present in an
assemblage ought to tell us a great deal about the ranges of activities conducted by
the hominins who made and used them, as well as the way the artefact assemblage
formed.
The most obvious place to look for design—formal categories of artefacts—is
not necessarily the best place to look. Typologies of artefact form have been the
mainstays of Paleolithic stone-tool studies for more than a century. The scholars
who designed these typologies decades ago created them to summarize and describe
morphological variation in artefact form as they saw it. And being knowledgeable
and good observers, they often did a good job of it. The problem is that there
is no way to know whether the artefact classes they defined corresponded with
the designs of Paleolithic hominins. Even if Paleolithic artisans actually made their
artefacts to fit certain standard forms, we cannot assume that the classes of artefact
defined in common typologies capture those standards.
Typically, approaches to classifying artefacts are based on plan-view size and
shape. This perspective may be appropriate for contemporary industrial design, but
it may not be so relevant to artefacts made and used in other contexts. Following
the lead of the French techno-functional approach (Eric Boëda, 2001; Bonilauri,
2010; Soriano, 2000) and Gowlett (2006), it makes more sense to begin from the
premise that Paleolithic toolmakers may have been most concerned with certain
elements of artefacts. For example, all they may have cared about was achieving a
robust cutting edge and a place reserved for holding the tool or inserting it into a
Introduction 9
handle. So long as these minimal elements were in place the rest of the artefact’s
shape was free to vary.
Artefact design may also encompass more than shape. Few archaeological typ-
ologies of stone tools take account of raw materials.Yet choices about raw material
are integral to design in the modern world –think about the revolutionary effects
that lightweight composite materials have had on the designs of a great many things
in recent times. There is every reason to suspect that this was true in the remote
past as well. Selection of particular stones may play a central role in determining the
functional characteristics of artefacts, especially in very simple lithic technologies.
Finally, conventional approaches to design are overly static. A number of
researchers, most notably H. Dibble, have argued persuasively that the forms of
stone tools were dynamic, that the shapes of artefacts changed significantly over
their life histories (Dibble, 1987, 1995; Dibble et al., 2016). On one hand, this
proposition implies that the realized shapes of artefacts from archaeological sites,
and their typological descriptions, may have little if anything to do with their ori-
ginal shapes. On the other hand, our limited thinking about design as plan-view
shape misses the possibility that parts of the designs of Paleolithic tools involved the
potential to be renewed or reshaped while still maintaining their functionality. The
proposition that some artefacts were created in anticipation of long histories of use
and refurbishment offers a different perspective on design in Paleolithic artefacts.
It also has implications for both the logistics of artefact manufacture and use and
the cognitive sophistication of hominins, especially the ability or propensity to plan
ahead and defer action.
1.2.5 Diversity
Diversity should be fundamental to any understanding of evolutionary processes. In
a Darwinian world evolutionary change cannot occur without variation. The level
of diversity in genes or behaviour is simultaneously the product of internal factors
that generate novelty and external forces that affect the movement of variants, while
promoting some varieties and eliminating others. In a broad sense, the same is true
of ancient artefacts. Fluctuating diversity in artefact forms and procedures since the
late Pliocene tells us something about the abilities of hominins to invent new ways
of doing things and to expand their behavioural repertoires. Patterns of diversity in
artefacts and procedures are also strongly contingent on factors that promoted the
spread and adoption of novel ideas and forms of behaviour, be these demographic,
social or environmental.
Diversity cannot be assessed without considering scale. Ecologists often think
about diversity at three scales, referred to as α, β, and γ diversity. Diversity at different
scales typically varies as the result of distinct kinds of dynamics. The factors that
affect diversity of artefact forms or techniques within assemblages may be very
different from the factors which promote or constrain diversity at a regional level.
Considering diversity at multiple scales, where possible, provides a richer and more
complete picture of the forces that shaped variation in hominin behaviour.
10 Introduction
Its importance notwithstanding, it is no easy thing to extract information about

diversity at any scale larger than the assemblage from publications on Paleolithic
archaeology. Variation within and among stone artefact assemblages is under-
stood in different ways across the world: conventions for partitioning and assessing
differences among artefacts vary widely according to intellectual traditions and the
history of the field. We can be fairly confident that scholars around the world are
talking about the same thing when they describe bifacial reduction, Levallois, or
traces of hafting. We cannot be so certain that these same scholars always made
similar choices about how to assess differences or similarities among assemblages
or regions. Consequently, unlike the other thematic chapters in this book that
consider the Paleolithic world as a whole, the chapter on diversity is geographic-
ally subdivided. It examines continental-scale macro-regions such as sub-Saharan
Africa, western Eurasia, and East Asia, one at a time.
1.2.6 Complexity
The story of technological evolution during the Paleolithic is typically told as a tale
of gradually increasing complexity of artefacts and production processes: Grahame
Clark’s 5-mode system is an obvious case in point. This trend is often assumed to
be a direct function of the cognitive sophistication of human ancestors. Hominins
got smarter over time, which enabled them to make more complex, and presum-
ably more effective, artefacts. However, neither long-term trends nor variation
across Africa and Eurasia actually support such a model. Sometimes complicated
procedures appear surprisingly early, and sometimes cognitively “advanced”
hominins made surprisingly simple artefacts.
The chapter begins by examining assumptions about technological progress and
the measurement of complexity. While it is easy to equate complicated procedures
with complicated minds, many other factors are at play. Variation in technological
complexity, whether in procedures or in implements, is also influenced by the nature
of applications for the artefacts, constraints on investment of time and energy, and
the place of lithic artefacts in larger technological systems. All of these factors may
have come into play at different points in the evolution of Paleolithic technologies.
Archaeologists seldom recover complete implements, especially if the implements
consisted of more than one part. Given the scarcity of “whole” implements and the
ambiguity of what that might mean in the first place, it makes sense to also consider the
complexity of procedures. Chaîne opératoires have been the focus of intense study over
the past four decades. Although in principle the chaîne opératoire includes everything
from the collection of the raw material to the discard of a no-longer-useful imple-
ment, the production (i.e. manufacture) of blanks for stone tools has received most
of the attention. Other processes and procedures, including raw material collection
and preparation, as well as the maintenance of artefacts, can also vary in their degree
of elaboration. In fact, different stages of an artefact’s life history do not always show
similar levels of complexity. Complexity at one stage, such as in the production of
blanks, may compensate for simplicity at another such as in the shaping of blanks.
Introduction 11
Once composite tools (Chapter 3) came into wide use, stone tools themselves
began telling a smaller and smaller part of the story with respect to the com-
plexity of the whole artefact. By the end of the Pleistocene, the stone elements
were actually the smallest and least elaborate parts of some very impressive and
intricately constructed implements.We know a good deal less about the complexity
of production in other materials, but what we are learning about technologies for
working bone and antler, and for preparing mastics, provides an important window
on the broader technical repertoires of ancient humans.
1.3 Organization of the book

The next chapter examines the approach taken in this book in greater detail,
focusing on divergent understandings of evolution and the ways they influence
our thinking about change during the Paleolithic. The six chapters which follow it
(3–8) address evidence for evolutionary developments in each of the six dimensions
just described. Each chapter begins with a discussion of the potential significance of
the dimension under consideration as well as a brief examination of key epistemo-
logical issues. A survey of major trends and events over the course of the Pleistocene
follows. Each chapter ends with a chart summarizing major developments in that
dimension of stone tool technology. In the final chapter (9), I attempt to weave
these six strands together into a broader narrative of technological evolution from
the late Pliocene to the end of the Pleistocene, focusing on intervals of rapid change
as well as periods of gradual change or stasis.
1.4 Sampling and representation

The title of this book does not include any geographic qualifiers because I intended
the perspective to be as global as I could make it. That being said, it is impractical
for a single volume to provide complete global coverage of Paleolithic technology.
It might have been possible once, but thanks to the accelerating pace of discovery
and increasing globalization of research it no longer is. Added to the sheer volume
of information are the limitations of the writer: I, for example, am unable to read
German, Russian, Arabic, or any East Asian language. Given these limitations I pro-
vide the broadest coverage I can.
No matter how hard we might try, or how widely we might read, any account
of variability in Paleolithic technological behaviour across the globe will have some
major gaps and discontinuities. Some areas are simply much better studied than
others. Scholars have been conducting more-or-less systematic research on the
Paleolithic of Europe and southwest Asia for a century or more. Research histories
in much of Africa and East and Central Asia are significantly shorter. National
regulations fostering cultural resource preservation and management, and large
budgets, have produced a windfall in information about the Paleolithic in places
such as the United Kingdom, France, and Japan, but not as much in less wealthy
countries or in nations with less progressive cultural preservation laws. And of
12 Introduction
course geology plays a major role in determining how much we know about the
Paleolithic in particular areas.The structure of the East African Rift Valley has led to
burial and subsequent re-exposure of a treasure-trove of evidence pertaining to the
early stages of human evolution in countries such as Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Kenya.
West and Central Africa also must have supported equally large and more diverse
populations of hominins during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. Unfortunately, geo-
logical conditions across large swaths of those regions do not lend themselves to
preservation and exposure of ephemeral early sites and fragile fossils.
The most important implication of this variation in the quantity of archaeo-
logical knowledge is that we cannot speak with equal certainty about every aspect
of Paleolithic technology in every part of the world. A great deal of evidence
pertaining to each of the six dimensions of technology to be discussed is available
from places such as western Europe and South Africa, while much less is known
about parts of West Africa or South Asia.Within each of these macro-regions there
are hot spots as well as areas about which almost nothing is known. Logically,
discussion must focus on the areas we know the most about. Nonetheless, it is
important to keep in mind that the absence of evidence from particular areas and
intervals of time does not necessarily mean that nothing interesting happened there.
1.5 What about the hominins?

This book contains few references to hominin taxa. This is not because I think
biology is unimportant. The cultural and behavioural dimensions of human evolu-
tion were strongly influenced by, and in turn influenced, the biological dimensions.
However, I made a conscious decision not to emphasize the types of hominin
associated with the technological phenomena discussed in this book. First, I am far
from an expert in hominin taxonomy: I chose to write about what I know best.
Second, hominin fossils are comparatively rare. We usually have a much better idea
about the general age of an assemblage than we do about who made it.This is espe-
cially true in times and places where there were multiple tool-making hominins in
existence. Finally, I wanted to free the discussion of evolutionary trends in techno-
logical behaviour as much as possible from any prior system of stages or phases,
whether these were defined in terms of technological “modes” or fossil species.
I hope that I have provided enough information, and clearly enough described, so
that experts in hominin anatomy and phylogeny can draw their own conclusions
about the associations between the technological developments discussed in this
book and specific fossil species or lineages.
2
THINKING ABOUT TECHNOLOGICAL
EVOLUTION
This chapter begins with a consideration of two very different ways of thinking
about the evolutionary process, the Darwinian and the progressive or Spencerian,
both of which have had a substantial impact on thinking about archaeology and the
Paleolithic. It discusses some of the pitfalls of attempting to study the outcomes of
Darwinian processes using intellectual tools derived from more progressivist views
of evolution. These include a fixation on arbitrarily defined transitions, the ten-
dency to punctuate evolutionary change in terms of technological milestones, and
the practice of imagining earlier hominins as unfinished or incomplete versions of
contemporary modern humans. The chapter then turns to some methodological
implications of studying long- term evolutionary processes, including finding
appropriate scales of analysis and explanation, and the potential pitfalls of using
assemblages as units of analysis. It concludes with a discussion of how we can sep-
arate the notion of long-term trends from the notion of progress.
2.1 Different flavours of evolution

Evolutionary perspectives would seem to be a natural fit with archaeological studies
of technology and technological change during the Paleolithic. Evolutionary
thought seeks to explain change and the development of new forms, two things that
are also of vital concern to paleoanthropologists.Yet the fit is not always as natural
as one might expect. Applications of evolutionary thinking in paleoanthropology,
and elsewhere in archaeology, are constrained by a particular history that is deeply
bound up with the development of anthropological thought in the Western world.
In biology there is one principal evolutionary paradigm, Darwinism. There are
many approaches to Darwinian evolution within the biological sciences, emphasizing
different aspects of the evolutionary process. Classic Darwinian theory concentrates
on natural and sexual selection, but other established or emerging bodies of thought
14 Thinking about technological evolution
focus on phenomena such as neutral processes (Alonso, Etienne, & McKane, 2006;
Gravel et al., 2006; Hu, He, & Hubbell, 2006; Hubbell, 2005; Kimura, 1983), niche-
construction (Laland, Odling- Smee, & Feldman 2000; Odling- Smee, Laland, &
Feldman 2003), and epigenetics (Bird, 2007; Goldberg, Allis, & Bernstein, 2007;
Russo, Martienssen, & Riggs, 1996; Waddington, 1957), to name just three. Still,
deep down, even the ideas branded “post-Darwinian” or “non-Darwinian” rest on a
deep foundation originally laid down by Darwin and his contemporaries.
In contrast, two very different modes of evolutionary thought have contributed
to archaeological thinking. One is Darwinian. The other is, for want of a better
term, Spencerian, after H. Spencer the 19th-century founder of what we now call
sociology. Though both fly the banner of evolution these two perspectives are fun-
damentally different and often incompatible. This is not the place, and I am not the
scholar, for a full comparative analysis of Darwinian and Spencerian perspectives
on the phenomenon of evolution (see Dunnell 1980 and Degler 1991, for more
complete reviews). For the purposes of this discussion, the difference can be boiled
down to a single element. Darwin’s construction of the evolutionary process was
intended to explain how new forms arose and persisted or were lost; in short, the
origin of species. In contrast, Spencer’s view of evolutionary change, which itself
drew on a long-established vein of social thought, highlighted improvement or pro-
gress, whether of an individual, a society, or a population. In a Darwinian framework
evolution occurs whenever something new appears, becomes more common or
rare, or disappears. That something can be a species (macroevolution) or a gen-
etic or phenotypic variant (microevolution). In a Spencerian framework, evolution
happens when an individual, society, or species moves in a particular direction, becomes
more efficient, larger or better adapted. The Spencerian perspective may be traced
to early meanings of the term evolution, which once referred to what we would
today call development, that is, the inevitable transformation of an insect larva into
a pupa and eventually an adult.
In keeping with this fundamental difference, the two paradigms view the evolu-
tionary process as unfolding in very different ways. Classically, Darwinian evolution
leads to the appearance and proliferation (or loss) of novel forms and develop-
mental trajectories. At many different levels Darwinian’s brand of evolutionary
thought is about diversity –where it comes from, how it increases, and how it
is pruned back, leading to the common visual metaphor of an evolutionary tree.
Spencerian evolution is essentially orthogenetic. From a progressivist perspective,
evolutionary trajectories are not dendritic, but instead are linear pathways along
which unevolved forms are progressively transformed into more and more evolved
ones. The common visual metaphor for this second perspective on evolution is the
line-up of skulls or hominin silhouettes arranged from small to large or crouched
to upright.
There is little doubt that Darwin’s historical importance is by far the greater of
the two scholars. However, the influence of Spencerian progressive evolution in
archaeology and the social sciences is very strong, even today. Many of the founding
figures of Anthropology and Archaeology in the Anglophone world, from Lewis
Thinking about technological evolution 15
Henry Morgan through Leslie White, Elman Service and Marshal Sahlins, worked
directly in this tradition.While mid-20th-century scholars such as White and Sahlins
endeavoured to strip the elements of racism and biological determinism from the
theories of cultural evolution proposed earlier by Morgan and his contemporaries,
they retained the view that really interesting change was essentially directional and
progressive. For White, evolution occurred “as the amount of energy harnessed per
capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of put-
ting the energy to work is increased” (White 1970: 56) a principle sometimes called
White’s Law. For Sahlins and Service, general evolutionary change could be evaluated
as a series of social transitions, from bands to tribes to chiefdoms to states (Sahlins &
Service, 1960; Spencer, 1997). And mid-20th-century thinkers White and Sahlins in
turn had a profound influence on the development of the “New” scientific approach
to archaeology at the Universities of Chicago and Michigan. Meanwhile, influen-
tial European scholars such as Andre Leroi-Gourhan (Leroi-Gourhan, 1971, 1973)
promoted similarly progressivist views of cultural evolution, crystalized in his notion
of “la tendance technique” or “a long-term evolutionary process that accounts for the
unending improvement of tools and techniques for better solution tasks, a better
response to physical constraints, and higher efficiency” (Audouze 2002: 283).
Beginning in the 1980s archaeologists in the Americas and the United Kingdom
began to reassess the way the field thought about and researched evolution.
Trenchant critiques of the Neo-Evolutionism of White, Sahlins, and Service, most
notably by Robert Dunnell (Dunnell, 1980), were paralleled by the development
of several different approaches to making archaeology more Darwinian (Bird &
O’Connell, 2006; Shennan, 2008), particularly in the Anglophone world (Perlès,
2016). The increasingly broad adoption of concepts and approaches from behav-
ioural ecology (Bettinger, Winterhalder, & Mcelreath, 2006; Bird & O’Connell,
2006; Codding & Bird, 2015; Surovell, 2009; Winterhalder & Smith, 2000), dual-
inheritance theory (Cochrane 2009; Lycett 2010; Lycett, von Cramon-Taubadel,
& Eren 2016; Mesoudi & Aoki 2015; Richerson & Boyd 1978; Richerson, Boyd,
& Bettinger 2009; Tehrani & Riede 2008; Tennie et al. 2017), and the popularity
of ideas such as niche-construction (Collard et al., 2012; Mohlenhoff, Coltrain,
& Codding, 2015; O’Brien & Laland, 2012; Piperno et al., 2017; Stiner & Kuhn,
2016), testify to the growing appeal of Darwinian thinking in the broadest sense to
archaeologists.
Despite the burgeoning interest in Darwinian evolutionary thought, the leg-
acies of progressive evolutionary thinking pervade the discipline. I doubt that
many archaeologists interested in the Paleolithic today would actively advocate
Morgan’s Evolutionist approach to understanding culture change. Yet some of the
basic concepts and terms that we bring to our work channel our thinking along
the same old paths. Systematics, intellectual structures for subdividing cultural time
and space, for defining and naming stages, phases, and cultures in the past, play a
major role in canalizing thinking. In some areas of archeology, the conflict between
Darwinian and Spencerian perspectives is mainly a matter of historical and aca-
demic interest. Within Paleoanthropology, the conflict is more critical. The study of
human evolution entails the active collaboration between biological anthropologists,

geologists, and paleontologists, whose thinking is mainly in the Darwinian tradition,
and archaeologists. Archaeologists bring tools and concepts that are well established
in their field but are derived from an essentially progressivist perspective. The end
result is that researchers are trying to answer Darwinian evolutionary questions
using modes of thought that originate from different conceptualizations of the
evolutionary process (Bisson, 2000). Recognizing where these internal conflicts lie
and how they affect our thinking is fundamental to producing a truly integrative
understanding of behavioural evolution over the past 3+ my. Below I discuss three
areas where the conflict of ideas is particularly problematic, but where solutions are
reachable.
2.1.1 Why do we care so much about transitions?

Beginning more than 50 years ago, proponents of the New Archaeology made
understanding culture change into the central concern of the field (e.g. Renfrew,
1970; Binford, 1962; Flannery, 1967). Despite the many theoretical upheavals that
have occurred since then, culture change remains a dominant focus in research
among archaeologists. In theory, this emphasis on change ought to be consistent
with an evolutionary approach: indeed, this was one of the main justifications
for it among the New Archaeologists. However, different ideas about the evolu-
tionary process carry with them different assumptions about what change ought
to be like and how it should be studied. In many respects, the ways that Paleolithic
archeologists structure their inquiries about change are inconsistent with the con-
ceptual tools they use to investigate and understand it.
Paleolithic archaeologists may be interested in change, but they are obsessed with
transitions. Innumerable books and articles are devoted to the transition from Early
to Middle Stone Age or from Middle to Upper Paleolithic. We treat transitions
almost like phase changes in physical substances, periods of instability and rapid
reorganization between two stable states. Fascinating though they may be, the very
concept of transitions can handcuff us into particular ways of defining questions.
The problem stems from the way we identify transitions.The most widely discussed
transitions are the perceived gaps or boundaries between major cultural or chrono-
logical stages, Oldowan to Acheulean, Middle to Upper Paleolithic, Neolithic to
Chalcolithic, Archaic to Formative, and so on. But why should we look only in
these particular intervals for changes? We know these named units are often quite
arbitrary. They were defined by previous generations of researchers on the basis
of specific features of material culture. They were intended to serve very specific
intellectual purposes, mainly to summarize and order evidence of presumed pro-
gressive culture change. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, researchers pre-
supposed that people must pass through a series of stages between primitivism and
modernity. The job of the researcher was to define these stages. We may approach
the transitions using the most recently-minted ideas about how behaviour and cul-
ture evolve, but we are applying 21st-century ideas to constructs (cultures, periods)
created to serve the ends of scholars working in the 19th or early 20th centuries.
And in doing so we end up re-enforcing, however unintentionally, their ways of
thinking.
For the Paleolithic, the continuing focus on transitions has two negative effects.
First, by forcing change into a single sequence of stages, this way of thinking tends
to reify the view that global evolution in human culture followed a single path
culminating in the production of “behavioural modernity,” whatever that may be.
Second, it can blind researchers to changes that occurred outside of gaps between
established, named entities or periods. We end up shoehorning every important
development in human evolution into a few brief periods of time.The long intervals
in between transitional intervals are treated, often uncritically, as evolutionary plat-
eaus, periods of comparative stability. Important developments occurring during
periods of assumed stability are either downplayed or are re-assigned to acceptable
intervals of transition.
There have been attempts to jar the field out of this myopia, mostly by under-
mining the empirical patterns presumed to be associated with specific transitions
(Clark 1997, 1999; McBrearty & Brooks 2000; Monnier, 2006; Straus, 1996,
2009a). Nonetheless Paleolithic researchers continue to zero in on presumed
transitions between major culture-stratigraphic historic units. For example, a
monumental edited book published several years ago, Sourcebook of Palaeolithic
Transitions (Camps & Chauhan, 2009) is full of papers reporting the application of
cutting-edge methods in service of examining how the Lower, Middle and Upper
Paleolithic, cultural stratigraphic units defined more than a century before, might
have transformed into each other. The Sourcebook is an ambitious and extremely
useful publication and I single it out only as an illustration –there are many other
examples.
In fact, this is old news to many researchers working outside Africa and Western
Eurasia. Prehistorians in East Asia and Australia have no easy option of slotting their
findings into the standard Afro-European cultural sequences. In some cases, this has
led to false impressions, such as that there was no behavioural evolution in places
such as China or Australia during the Pleistocene. In other cases, it has encouraged
prehistorians to adopt very different approaches to measuring and understanding
culture change. But for those of us who work in areas that do fit conventional
schemes, the struggle to break out of the categorizations and concepts implicit in
them continues.
This uneasiness with inherited systems for subdividing and classifying Paleolithic
cultural expressions is hardly unique or new. At various times archaeologists have
called for the field to abandon traditional systems for defining and naming cul-
tural stages, phases and facies, arguing that they were created to serve outdated
research goals and that continuing to use them canalizes our thinking in undesir-
able ways (e.g. Clark, 1997; Straus, 2009a). Some have called for abandoning named
prehistoric “cultures” entirely (Shea, 2013a, 2014). While exhortations towards
radical terminological revision are admirable, they have seldom been successful.
Even if we agree that terms such as Lower Paleolithic, Charentian Mousterian, or
Ibero-Maurusian are overly normative as descriptors, the fact is that they remain
useful ways of referring to a particular group of archaeological assemblages from a
particular area and interval of time. Most researchers share a certain understanding
about the kinds of empirical phenomena they represent. Replacing the term Ibero-
Maurusian with “… flake, blade and backed bladelet assemblages from the Maghreb
and neighbouring parts of North Africa and dating to between 26 ka and 8 ka”
might help avoid the unjustified assumptions that all such assemblages were the
same or that they necessarily represented a single culture with ties to Iberia. It is also
prohibitively unwieldy. In this book I make every effort to refer to archaeological
phenomena in terms of geography and chronology, but I cannot always avoid using
established terminology as shorthand.
Critiques of traditional stage systems for organizing the Paleolithic are common,
but serious attempts to break away from them are comparatively few. One of the
most noteworthy is Gamble’s (Gamble, 1993) reframing of the discussion in terms
of stages in colonization of the Old World by hominins. While Gamble’s way of
thinking makes a good deal of sense in terms of contemporary research on the
origins and dispersal of hominins, it remains a stage system. Shea (Shea, 2013a,
2014, 2016) has argued for replacing stages with neutral technological modes,
and for examining behavioural differences among hominin taxa rather than time
periods. The structure of this book represents another sort of attempt to move
away from conventional stage systems and their tendency to force us into progres-
sive narratives of human evolutionary change. The simple solution that I advocate
is to examine evolutionary change in individual elements of culture, behaviour,
and cognition within a framework defined by chronology, and not by cultural
stages. By approaching things this way I hope to identify the timing and contours
of interesting behavioural transitions independent of pre-defined intervals. As
will become apparent, separate dimensions of technology and behaviour some-
times changed in rough synchrony, seeming to represent broader evolutionary
developments, whereas at other times the various dimensions changed in isola-
tion. In fact, some important changes in technology and associated behaviour
do coincide with pre-defined periods of transition. However, a great many other
developments do not.
2.1.2 Evolution by milestone

The evolutionary schemes of Lewis Henry Morgan (Morgan, 1877) and his
contemporaries were built around lists of key cultural traits. The appearance of
characteristics such as the bow-and-arrow, agriculture and animal husbandry, or
institutionalized leadership roles marked the major transitions from one stage to
another. The assumption was that the appearance of these traits signalled a particular
level of advancement in the cultural, cognitive, and moral progress of the human
species. Contemporary cultures sitting at lower rungs on the developmental scale,
it was thought, lacked the knowledge, social infrastructure, or more perniciously,
the cognitive or moral qualities needed to climb upward.Thus, some cultures never
developed metallurgy because they lacked whatever it took –social infrastructure,

native intelligence, moral fibre –to learn how to smelt and work metals.
No professional archaeologist or anthropologist working today would advo-
cate retaining Morgan’s perspective on social progress. Nonetheless, its influence
is still felt in how we evaluate evolutionary change. Prime examples are the lists of
features used to define “modern human behaviour,” or any equivalent behavioural
transition. The specific contents of the list vary but all of them consist of tallies of
things that behaviourally modern hominins should do, and behaviourally archaic
hominins should not do (e.g. d’Errico et al. 2003; Henshilwood & Marean, 2003;
Hoffecker, 1999; Klein, 1995; McBrearty & Brooks, 2000; Mellars, 2006). There is
an implied, though seldom-stated assumption that pre-modern humans didn’t do
certain things because they were unable to, because they lacked the cognitive or
physical capacity which enabled their descendants or more successful cousins to
make complex composite tools, catch fish, or design beaded garments.
On one hand it is indisputable that hominins gained capacities over the course
of human evolution. Very likely Homo habilis would not have been able to invent
or build a computer. However, it is equally indisputable that the absence of a par-
ticular pattern of behaviour cannot be equated with the absence of a capacity for
it. All organisms fail to engage in behaviours of which they are fully capable simply
because they have evolved other ways to get on with life. Lions do not typically
hunt frogs, not because it is beyond their capacities, but because they have more
energetically profitable ways to get a meal.
Another problem with lists of modern behavioural traits is the fact that they are
generated post-hoc. Typically, they consist of things that scholars once thought were
within the behavioural repertoires of Homo sapiens but not of earlier hominins.
Inevitably, as knowledge accumulates and our understanding of behavioural vari-
ation increases, the boundaries between the modern and not-modern drift. Recent
discoveries have expanded what we know about the behavioural repertoires of
Neanderthals, Homo heidelbergensis, and other hominins. These findings are invalu-
able in helping us understand the pace and timing of behavioural evolution in the
hominin lineages. The chronology for many developments has been moved back,
forcing us to re-evaluate our thinking about their causes and consequences. At the
same time, however, we need to ask ourselves why we considered these particular
phenomena so important in the first place. If we care about a trait only because it
was on a list of post-hoc markers of cultural advancement, its significance is up for
debate.
Two examples can illustrate this tension. For much of the 19th and 20th cen-
turies, prismatic blade technology was thought to be a trait exhibited only by Homo
sapiens, and it was featured on most trait lists defining modern human behaviour.
Nobody really knew why it was so modern. Blade production was assumed to be
particularly advanced simply because only modern people seemed to be able to do
it. However, we now know that versions of prismatic blade production date back
to 450 ka or slightly earlier (Bar-Yosef & Kuhn, 1999; Johnson & McBrearty, 2010;
Meignen, 2007; Révillon, 1995; Shimelmitz, Barkai, & Gopher, 2011; Wilkins
& Chazan, 2012), and so were the work of hominins other than H. sapiens. This
has prompted researchers to claim that earlier blade-making hominins were more
clever than we thought. But there was no a priori reason to identify blade-making
as something especially complex and sophisticated. In fact, what is really needed is
to re-evaluate assumptions about the essential complexity or sophistication of blade
production. Blade-making may not be any more complex or mentally demanding
than Levallois production, a set of methods practiced by Neanderthals and even
earlier hominins, for example (Gao, 2013; Muller, Clarkson, & Shipton, 2017;
Perreault et al., 2013).
A second example concerns shaped bone tools. For many decades it seemed
clear that European Neanderthals and their predecessors did not habitually produce
shaped tools from osseous materials such as bone or antler.They often used unmodi-
fied bones as percussors or retouchers (Blasco, Rosell, Cuartero, Peris, et al., 2013;
Daujeard et al., 2014; Moigne et al., 2016), and much more rarely, flaked thick
cortical bone into handaxes (Biddittu & Celletti, 2001; Costa, 2010; Radmilli &
Boschian, 1996). However, the use of shaping techniques such as carving, abrasion,
and polishing, which take better advantage of the fibrous composite structure of
cortical bone or antler, seemed exclusively in the province of Upper Paleolithic
and later MSA and LSA Homo sapiens. Consequently, it was always safe to include
shaped (or at least carved and polished) tools of bone, antler and ivory on any list
of modern behavioural traits. Again, there was no particular reason to think that
carving or polishing bone somehow required capacities that only modern humans
possessed. Its apparent “modernity” was simply a matter of association. Then, in
2013, researchers reported bone lissoirs, a distinctive form of hide-working tool,
from secure Middle Paleolithic contexts in France (Soressi et al., 2013). These dis-
coveries showed that Neanderthals were capable of working bone by grinding
and smoothing and, though this is less discussed, that they sometimes took spe-
cial effort to make skins more pliable. Ironically, it has been known for some
time that Neanderthals and earlier hominins carved and smoothed artefacts using
another fibrous composite material, wood, so perhaps finding that they used similar
techniques on bone should not shock us. One more brick had fallen out of the wall
separating modern humans from Neanderthals. But it was never entirely clear why
the brick was there in the first place, so the consequence of removing it remains
uncertain.
A wide range of discoveries and new dating results have shown us that
Neanderthals and indeed earlier members of the genus Homo could and often
did a number of things that were once thought to be the exclusive purview of
Homo sapiens, ranging from producing bladelets (Faivre, 2012; Fernández, Cabrera-
Valdès, & Bernaldo de Quirós, 2004) to making ornaments out of durable objects
(Peresani et al., 2011; Romandini et al., 2014). The results of these findings have
been two-fold. Some scholars simply move the boundary between the modern and
the not-modern, staking out an increasingly small territory encompassing what
only Homo sapiens apparently could do. Others argue that the boundary is increas-
ingly blurred or even non-existent (Hayden, 2012; Roebroeks & Soressi, 2016;
Villa & Roebroeks, 2014). Still, despite this upheaval, and despite many calls to
abandon trait lists in the pursuit of what it means to be modern, the field seems to
be content to continue using them. The main disputes still concern how to define
lists and where and when to apply them. Advances in knowledge aside, we have not
bypassed the conceptual problem arising from using historically contingent, arbi-
trary behavioural thresholds to measure evolutionary change.
To be clear, it is interesting to know whether a particular hominin taxa or
populations could or could not do something. But information about the behav-
ioural capacity for something is elusive at best, and negative information is par-
ticularly unreliable. The archaeological record is a document of tendencies, things
hominins were predisposed to doing, and doing often enough to leave a robust
material signal. I assume that humans and human ancestors did things because these
activities provided certain social or material benefits. If particular forms of behav-
iour were not at least marginally advantageous, people generally didn’t bother with
them. So we have to ask: does the absence of a particular behaviour indicate the
absence of capacity to execute it, or does it indicate the absence of a strong motiv-
ation to do it? For example, figurative art and well-shaped osseous tools are scarce
in the Upper Paleolithic of the Levant (Belfer-Cohen & Goring-Morris, 2014a,
2014b; Gilead, 1991) but we don’t take that to mean that Levantine modern humans
lacked some expressive spark that their cousins in temperate Europe possessed. Early
Paleoindians in North America very seldom made personal ornaments or figurative
depictions, but nobody would argue that they had somehow lost capacities enjoyed
by their Homo sapiens forebears in northern Asia.
By this same token, the simple fact that two groups of hominins sometimes
left the same kinds of material evidence in the archaeological record is not really
telling us very much. As Mary Stiner and I have been arguing for some time (Kuhn
& Stiner, 2001), we need to understand variation in behaviour if we are interested
in behavioural and cognitive evolution (see also Shea, 2011). It is not enough to
know that Neanderthals could make beads or spears or that they could kill rabbits.
There was never any reason to think they couldn’t. Recent hunter-gatherers did
not always fish, make complex composite tools, or create durable works of art, even
though we know they possessed the biological capacity to do so. The interesting
questions involve how often and under what circumstances they did these things.
Were they occasional, opportunistic behaviours or regular strategies? Were these
behaviours deployed differentially or were they seemingly obligatory? And how did
factors such as ecology, geography, divergent cultural traditions influence that vari-
ation? Until we establish (1) why particular behaviours are evolutionarily signifi-
cant, and (2) how and why they varied in the past, ticking traits off a list just follows
in the tracks laid down by Louis Henry Morgan and other 19th-century advocates
of progressive evolution.
In this book I assume that specific developments in technology are important,
but not as indicators of capacity. Rather, they demonstrate the predisposition and
knowledge to do something often enough to be recognized archaeologically.
It seems axiomatic that the presence of recognizable of behavioural tendencies
post-dates the evolution of the capacity for the behaviour. Frequent engagement
with specific activities cannot produce capacities, though they may help to refine
and sharpen them. For example, as will be discussed in Chapter 6, several researchers
argue convincingly that the particular way Levallois technology is executed may tell
us important things about the makers’ cognitive abilities. But by the time Levallois
production is recognizable in archaeological records, those capacities had probably
been in existence for a long while.The specific role of tool making in the evolution
of these mental abilities is also uncertain. What is important about the archaeo-
logical fluorescence of Levallois is that hominins chose to exercise their capacities
toward certain ends, to do it repeatedly, and to do it in a context that left durable
evidence.
2.1.3 Modelling by subtraction

One of the most difficult, and most exciting, challenges of Paleoanthropology is
understanding non-analogue phenomena. In studying early humans, we are often,
perhaps almost always, faced with ways of being and thinking that have no parallel
in the contemporary world. Dealing with non-analogue phenomena is by no means
restricted to Paleoanthropology. Paleontologists and paleoecologists are sometimes
confronted with non-analogue communities or ecosystems, associations among
organisms that simply do not co-occur in the contemporary world. In attempting
to understand a community of animals that has no contemporary parallels, a pale-
ontologist has a wide range of partial analogues from which to extrapolate and a
number of solid ecological principles to help predict how species abundance ought
to vary. Researchers interested in the evolution of human behaviour face more
difficult challenges. The field of potential analogues for early hominins is a small.
There are very few intelligent, tool-using animals in existence today that can help
us understand how Homo erectus or Homo habilis made their way in the world. All
we really have are living non-human primates such as chimpanzees, bonobos and
capuchin monkeys, and recent humans. Recent humans represent the derived con-
dition, the outcome of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Living non-
human primates are probably closer in some respects to the ancestral condition but
they are also derived to one degree or another.There are simply no reasonably close
contemporary behavioural or cognitive analogues for extinct beings such as Homo
habilis, Homo erectus, or Neanderthals.
The prospect of studying extinct ways of thinking is an extraordinarily exciting
prospect. It also presents daunting challenges. To paraphrase the question noted
biologist Frans de Wall asks in the title of his 2016 book (de Waal, 2016), “are we
really smart enough to study intelligence in other organisms?” I sincerely hope that
at least some of us are. However, there has been surprisingly little discussion of how
we should go about it. And the prevailing approaches may be quite problematic.
A paleontologist might try and understand an extinct, non-analogue community
of animals by combining principles of community assembly and function with skel-
etal evidence for the potential ecological role of each component species. Ideally,
one would also like to create heuristic models for early humans based on common
principles.We can understand a lot about the way early hominins walked by applying
well-established principles of biomechanics to skeletal evidence pertaining to their
locomotor anatomy. Unfortunately, we have many fewer established principles for
predicting cross-species variation in cognition or behaviour. This is not to say that
such principles do not exist or can never be discovered. Researchers have proposed
compelling ecological explanations for global variation in cultural behaviour in
small-scale hunting and gathering societies (e.g. Binford 1990, 2001; Collard et al.,
2011; Grove, 2009; Hamilton et al., 2007a, 2007b; Hayden, 1981; Hayden et al.,
1986; Kelly 1992, 2013) as well as in non-human primates (e.g. Luncz, Mundry,
& and Boesch, 2012; Nishida et al., 1983; McGrew, 1983; Whiten, et al. 1999,
2001). However, the two sets of ideas are difficult to synthesize and may require
levels of precision in reconstructing environmental parameters that are currently
not achievable.
Lacking the ability to predict behaviour or cognition in early humans from first
principles, Paleoanthropologists often resort to a gambit we can call “modelling by
subtraction.” All too often, we (and I emphatically include myself in the collective
noun) think about earlier humans as similar to more recent humans…just missing a
few key traits.The crudest form of this sort of thinking is to imagine past hominins
simply as less competent, less intelligent versions of recent humans. A slightly more
sophisticated approach is to identify specific traits which evolved later and which
mark the emergence of a new cultural or biological form. We might characterize
Neanderthal culture as basically like the culture of Homo sapiens except that it
lacked long-distance projectile weapons and durable forms of representational art.
In the cognitive domain we imagine earlier species as having minds that were much
like ours but missing a few important capacities. For example, Mithen proposed that
Neanderthals and earlier pre-modern hominins lacked the ability to think across
cognitive modules the way that contemporary humans can, which, among other
things, could explain the apparent lack of innovation (Mithen, 1996).
This practice of modelling by subtraction is quite consistent with progressivist
thinking about human evolution. The reconstructions of cultural evolution created
by L. H. Morgan involved passage through a series of set stages, each marked
by a few key technical or social innovations. The Neo-Evolutionary framework
proposed by Sahlins and Service replaced the ladder of technological development
with a series of stages marked by the appearance of ever more complex and hier-
archically organized social institutions. In order to move backwards down the evo-
lutionary scale one simply had to remove a few vital features of technology or social
organization. Take agriculture, tribal confederacies and pottery away from “lower
barbarians” and they become “savages.”
Clearly, evolution has added important new elements to human cognition and
human culture with time. Nonetheless, modelling by subtraction is a poor approach
to retrodicting the nature of early humans. Any early hominin species that we rec-
ognize was a fully-functional, highly evolved organism. They persisted as species
for hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years and many of them were able to
colonize and flourish in a range of environments. Thinking about early humans

as incomplete versions of modern humans is similar to describing maniraptoran
theropod dinosaurs as birds without wings. Our ancestors were much more than
partial representations of recent humans. Homo erectus had, on average, about two-
thirds of the cranial capacity of H. sapiens, and some of the cognitive functions
that modern humans enjoy were certainly not as well developed among them. But
a population of modern humans with two-thirds of the average mental capacity
would be unlikely to survive a generation, much less persist for a million years or
more and colonize most of Eurasia. Regardless of how well they would have done
on intelligence tests, Homo erectus individuals and groups were capable enough to
thrive in a wide range of often difficult and dangerous environments.
Modelling by subtraction also leads to the misleading conclusion that there is
only one evolutionary pathway to intelligence, complex behaviour, or high-level
cognition (Kuhn and Hovers 2013; Coolidge and Wynn 2016). Studies of animal
cognition have shown that while humans may lead the pack in terms of raw com-
puting power, certain dimensions of perception and cognitive processing, such as
memory, are actually more highly developed in other organisms (e.g. Inoue and
Matsuzawa 2007; Qadri et al. 2018). If other animals have evolved different sorts
of intelligence than extant humans, why should this not have been true of our
ancestors as well? In fact, it seems almost inescapable that minds, societies, and tech-
nologies of earlier hominins were in many respects fundamentally different from
those of recent humans.We readily recognize that the evolution of human anatomy
followed ramified, branching pathways, with many widespread lineages that have
no contemporary descendants. We should be equally open to the notion that the
cognitive and cultural evolutionary history of the hominins is equally complex and
equally rich in evolutionary experiments with no surviving representatives.
Changing understandings of egalitarianism in human history illustrate the pitfalls
of modelling by subtraction. Early cultural evolutionists such as Morgan assumed
that the apparently egalitarian, acephalous societies of recent hunter-gatherers were
the ancestral condition of humans. They were simply societies that had not yet
developed the concepts of hierarchy and leadership which underpin most con-
temporary social systems. The notion that humans in “a state of nature” would
form egalitarian social relations became fundamental to some branches of political
philosophy. Yet as evidence from primatology and ethnology accumulated it was
clear that this model was false. C. Boehm (Boehm, 1999, 2012) argues persuasively
that egalitarianism is a derived state, not the ancestral condition. Our most recent
common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos very likely exhibited either strong,
despotic hierarchy (like chimps) or milder forms of dominance (like bonobos).
The kind of overtly egalitarian behaviour manifest by many human populations
living in small groups can only be maintained by an explicit ethos of egalitarianism,
backed up by well-developed social mechanisms for reducing unevenness in the
wealth, power and authority of individuals (Boehm 1997, 1999; Cashdan 1980;
Kelly 2013: 243–244; Wiessner 1996). And the strength and effectiveness of those
mechanisms varies: in many so-called egalitarian societies, for example, there is
distinct inequality along gender lines (Hayden et al., 1986; Kelly 2013: 241–261).
The point is that, by conceptualizing acephalous hunter-gatherer bands in terms of
what they were missing (leaders), the field long ignored an important set of evo-
lutionary developments related to the origins of egalitarian ethos and institutions.
I can provide no comprehensive alterative programme to replace the prac-
tice of modelling early humans by subtraction. Without a comprehensive theory
for cognitive or cultural variation among intelligent, tool-using animals, the best
strategy for recognizing non-analogue technologies and social formations is to
adopt a strategy of “triangulation,” or working with multiple lines of evidence.
Observations about any single line of evidence can be mapped onto a real or
theoretical curve of progress from primitive or ancestral to modern. In principle,
examining many kinds of evidence simultaneously will reveal incongruities, places
and times where signs of change in different dimensions of behaviour do not seem
to fit together. These anomalies should point us towards forms of behaviour that
are unexpected.
Where our expectations come from is another matter. One possible strategy is
to develop models of early humans from the bottom up, starting with null models
based on the simplest possible assumptions about behaviour and seeing how far
they can take us (e.g. Tennie et al. 2017). This is certainly a valid approach, although
building up to realistic levels of complexity will be a difficult enterprise. The other
strategy is to start from established principles of cross-species variation in cognition,
behaviour or social organization and use them to work back into the hominin past.
Given the scarcity of such principles, however, this strategy is viable at present to
only a limited degree. For the time being the approach must begin with a critical
stance on our own tendencies to model past behaviour by lopping off elements
from more recent behaviour, and to remain open to the possibility of discovering
non-analogue ways of thinking and doing among our ancestors.
2.2 Methodological challenges of studying long-term change

(when you think like an anthropologist)
There is a constant tension in archaeology and paleoanthropology between the
temporal resolution of our data and the temporal frames implicit in the theory
that most archaeologists use to understand it (Perreault, 2019). Much of what we
know, or think we know, about human behaviour is framed at an experiential
time scale. As humans, we best understand how and why other humans do things
when we think in terms of days, weeks or years. On the other hand, the kinds
of data that archaeologists normally access can provide chronological resolution
no finer than decades or centuries. The mismatch is even greater in Paleolithic
studies, where an “instant” in archaeological time may actually represent dozens
of human generations. Reconciling these perspectives is a major challenge but not
an insurmountable one. At the simplest level it requires that we be attentive to the
sorts of explanations offered and be cognizant of the fact that valid explanations
of phenomena unfolding at different time scales may appear to be inconsistent.
Observations of the same phenomena at different scales may require very different
sorts of explanation.
Artefacts bear witness to and embody chains of human decisions. The questions
that we ask of artefacts often concern the factors that influenced those decisions.
Why did the maker choose to use one method of tool shaping or core reduction
over another? Was the choice motivated by practical considerations, and if so, which
ones? Was the artefact’s overall form determined mainly by its function or was it
influenced by ideological concerns? These kinds of choices are by definition prox-
imal, short-term phenomena. They occur when an individual opts to do one thing
and not another. However, there is more than one valid explanation for the choices
made, and often these explanations refer to causes originating at very different levels
of experience.
Take the following example. A woman wakes up one morning and decides she
needs a new stone knife for a task she is planning. She strolls down to the river
behind the place she and her family have been living and casts about for a cobble
of material appropriate for making the knife. Having found a suitable piece of stone
she sits on the bank and begins working. She first removes a large flake from one
end of the cobble. She then uses the surface created by this removal as a platform
for striking a series of flakes along the length of the piece. The outer surfaces of the
first flakes are completely covered with cortex and so are inappropriate for use as
a cutting tool. However, the second generation of flakes have sharp edges on one
margin, with cortex on the opposite edge. After a few minutes she has a big pile
of flakes in front of her. She picks through them, putting aside a handful of flakes
that will work well for the job she has in mind. She also selects a few additional
flakes that will be useful for making scrapers and other tools. Collecting the selected
pieces in a bark tray she carries them back to camp to begin the work.
This simple scenario embodies a common way of conceiving technological acts.
It summarizes a long series of decisions on the part of the maker.What sort of arte-
fact is needed for the anticipated job? What kind of raw material is best of this sort
of artefact? How can appropriate blanks be produced? Of the blanks made, which
ones are suited for making the tool in question, or for other kinds of tools? And of
course we can imagine a long series of additional decisions down the line, contin-
gent on each artefact’s life history and on evolving circumstances.
If we were to ask the artisan why she made the choices she did, we would
undoubtedly get a variety of answers. The choice of raw material might be a very
practical thing –the type of quartzite she chose makes especially effective and long-
lasting cutting edges. Maybe it was not the ideal stone for the job, but it was the
best option given the choice of rocks at hand. Explanations for decisions about how
to turn the cobble into flakes might be more vague: maybe she had experimented
with other methods and found that this is the one she could execute best, but per-
haps this is just the way her mother taught her to produce flakes. Choices made later
in the life-cycle of the tool about modifying it, renewing its edge, converting it to
another purpose or abandoning it, would reflect a similar range of explicit rationales
and references to received knowledge.
Most of us fall quite easily into this experiential gaze when looking at
ancient artefacts. And it is certainly one appropriate way to think about them.
But analysts dealing with ancient artefacts seldom concern themselves with indi-
vidual artefacts: such a perspective is a better fit with the aims and materials of art
historians. Artefact analysis in Paleolithic archaeology is, with very few exceptions,
concerned with aggregate phenomena, with assemblages or collections of artefacts
representing particular places or periods. While the individual objects making up
those assemblages were made and used by individual humans and embody the
sequences of decisions that those people made, our questions about them concern a
different order of phenomenon. Evolutionary phenomena emerge from the actions
of countless individuals rather than being implicit in the actions of the individuals
themselves. And like other emergent phenomena such as crowds, flocks, or cliques,
the behaviour of the whole may be only indirectly connected with the motives of
the singular actors which constitute that whole.
This is not to say that individual behaviours are unimportant. The pre-
dictable properties of crowds, flocks and cliques emerge from the real-time
decisions made by individuals that compose them. Understanding individual
choices (or decision rules) may help us understand the behaviour of the aggre-
gate, but by definition it is not enough. The behaviour of the group cannot be
reduced to the behaviour of single individuals, and vice versa. In the end, we
are interested in knowing why a particular decision rule or a particular choice
became common at a given place and time, why a number of people adopted
a particular way of doing things and kept on doing it for years, decades or
centuries. These questions reference the kinds of factors we know or expect
to influence choices made by individuals, such as cost, effectiveness or effi-
ciency. They also implicate the ways information was passed between individ-
uals within and across generations as well as changes in the array of options that
individuals could draw on.
Cultural transmission, or dual-inheritance theory, has been developed exten-
sively over the last two decades. Its development is marked by the publication of
landmark volumes by L. Cavalli-Sforza and M. Feldman (Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman,
1981, 2003) and R. Boyd and P. Richerson (Boyd & Richerson, 1985; Richerson &
Boyd, 1978).The field has certainly developed and diversified over the past 40 years,
but these works laid the groundwork for what was to follow. One of the funda-
mental lessons from these early works was that cultural transmission differed from
genetic transmission in at least one fundamental way (some would argue in all
fundamental ways but that is a separate issue). An individual has no choice in what
genes it will inherit –the genetic dice are cast at the moment of fertilization.
Developmental and environmental factors may influence how and whether genes
are expressed but again the individual has limited influence over those things. In the
case of cultural transmission, learners have a choice of where to get their informa-
tion, whom to learn from, which sources to attend to and which sources to ignore.
Thinking about cultural transmission is therefore focused on decision rules, rules
governing how an individual obtains and acts on new information.
Unlike one’s genes, cultural information can come from a range of sources and
generations. People may obtain large parts of their cultural knowledge (as well as
their genes) from their parents in what Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (1981) call “ver-
tical transmission.” However, cultural organisms can also learn from individuals of
the previous generation other than their genetic parents –so-called “oblique trans-
mission.” Certain kinds of information come from peers, from members of the same
generation as the receiver, leading to “horizontal transmission.” Boyd and Richerson
took this formulation several steps further, asking how individuals decide what is a
good option and what is not. Sometimes a person can learn on their own through
trial and error, in what Boyd and Richerson (1985) call guided variation. More
often people learn what to do and how to do it in a social setting, by watching,
listening to and imitating others. Essentially the individual accedes to the wisdom of
crowds, trusting in the accumulated knowledge of generations of experiential and
social learners, rather than absorbing the costs and risks of experimenting on his
or her own. Social learning is an efficient and successful strategy in many contexts,
particularly where the conditions that influence the efficacy of different techno-
logical options are stable. However, learners still have to decide whom to imi-
tate: they need strategies for choosing their teachers or models.These strategies can
be based on demonstrated success –one can imitate the best hunter’s method for
making arrows but follow the best cook’s recipe for roasting wild tubers. In other
instances, the actual performance of a technology may be opaque. Its consequences
may not be so obvious that an observer can be sure about what really works best,
thus requiring other strategies for choosing models in social learning. People can
choose an individual to emulate at random, which guarantees that, on average, they
will do no worse than anyone else.They can choose the most popular variant (con-
formist bias). Or they can opt to imitate the most successful or prestigious individ-
uals (prestige bias). External conditions as well as social circumstances can favour
one strategy over another. In contexts where performance is difficult to measure,
choices about whom to learn from may be more important than actual effectiveness
in determining what becomes popular and what is relegated to the remainder bins
of technological history.
Let’s return to our original scenario of the woman making a stone knife but
adopt a perspective more appropriate to an archaeological context.We discover that
in one layer at one site people tended to choose certain raw materials over others,
and typically used the same method to produce flakes from them. Most production
seems to have been done off-site but the tool-makers preferentially selected certain
kinds of flakes to transport back to camp. At this point, our questions are no longer
about individual choices but group-level tendencies, the aggregate of innumerable
choices. Instead of asking why a person decided that she needed to make a knife,
we ask why a group of people decided they needed to make more knives than
scrapers, or vice versa. Instead of asking why an artisan selected a particular type of
stone for a particular implement, we often want to understand why people settled
for the locally available rocks when a better variety of stone could be obtained a few
hours walk away. Instead of inquiring why someone decided to flake a cobble in a
particular way, we want to understand what the options might have been and why
for generations people in this place always chose to flake cobbles in the same way,
or alternatively, why they chose to flake cobbles using so many different methods.
We may get very different answers to questions about group behaviour than to
questions about individual actions. An individual may flake stone in a particular
manner because it is the only way she knows how to do it, or because it suits her
anticipated needs. But if we consider why a whole group of people only knew or
used one method to flake stone, we have to ask about the factors that influence
the flow of information. Why was knowledge homogeneous and stable, why was it
that everybody knew or preferred that one method and no others? Was that par-
ticular method uniquely well suited to their needs and the economic constraints
they operated under, such that no other really good options were available? Was it
because culture transmission was somehow highly conformist, such that everyone
only adopted the most frequent variant? And if so, why? Or was the favoured
method simply the simplest and easiest to learn, the only thing this population
could really master? Similarly, an individual might have many immediate reasons
to use a local stone of lesser quality rather than to walk to the next drainage to
collect better stuff: perhaps there were kids back at camp waiting to be fed, or it
was getting dark, or it had recently rained and the path was treacherous. But if the
people using a particular site consistently settled for stone of lesser quality, we have
to ask a different sort of question: after all, the kids weren’t always hungry and the
path wasn’t always wet. Instead we need to think in terms of general constraints
on movement. Did people typically move no more than an hour from camp while
using this place because they didn’t stay long and it wasn’t worth the extra effort?
Did they spend all their time foraging in other parts of the landscape, so that the
next valley with the good flint was never within their usual rounds? Were there
social boundaries that prevented them from travelling to the next valley to collect
the nice flint that was so abundant there? Or were they just not used to (or capable
of) planning their actions far enough in advance to conceive of walking two hours
to get a better type of stone for the job?
The differences between scales of analysis, the types of questions we ask, and
the types of answers we expect become particularly salient when we are thinking
about the origins of novel phenomena, when we consider why a new way of
doing things appears –suddenly or gradually –in the archaeological record. When
speaking of the appearance of novelty, it is important to distinguish between inven-
tion and innovation (Rogers, 1983; Schiffer, 1992, 2002). Scholars interested in the
history of technology often refer to invention as the process of coming up with a
novel solution to a new or existing problem. Innovation refers to the populariza-
tion and spread of an invention. Using genetic analogues, invention is equivalent to
gene flow or mutation –it is the way new variants enter a population. Innovation
is equivalent to selection or drift –it is the way new variants become common or
fixed within a population.
One major difference between biological and cultural evolution is that the
source of novelty is not usually very important in biology. Mutation and gene flow
just happen, though rates are variable and mutation rates may be under selection
themselves (Baer, Miyamoto, & Denver, 2007; Drake et al., 1998; Sniegowski et al.,
2000). One might like to know where a novel trait originated, but it is not typic-
ally important when considering adaptation.With cultural evolution we are dealing
with human agency and inventiveness, and we are justified in asking why new
variants appear where and when they do, and whether rates of invention varied
over time. On the other hand, invention may be less important than we sometimes
imagine.Yes, new forms of culture and technology need to come from somewhere.
But at the scale of temporal resolution accessible to Paleolithic archaeologists (or
most archaeologists working beyond the reach of recorded history) the precise
origin of an invention is essentially inaccessible. New ways of doing things only
come to our attention at the points in the past when large numbers of people
adopted them: in other words, archaeologists typically recognize an invention
only when it has become an innovation. Isolated occurrences of novelty are often
written off as anomalies or results of geological mixing.
This distinction is also important because invention and innovation occur at
different scales and therefore require different sorts of explanation. Invention can be
random or it can be purposeful, and most often it is probably a little of both. But
it is something that involves individual actors or small groups of actors. Someone
perceives a problem with how things are done and sets out to find a better way,
or someone stumbles upon a solution to a problem that has been simmering for a
long while. In contrast, innovation is a group phenomenon. It emerges from innu-
merable individual decisions about where to get information, whom one should
listen to and whom one should ignore. And while invention and innovation may
well be guided by the same forces, they can also be almost entirely detached from
each other.
A modern example helps illustrate the difference. Four-wheel-drive vehicles
were originally developed to navigate difficult terrain or to cope with bad driving
conditions. For decades they were used mainly by people who had to drive on
unsurfaced roads or who lived in areas plagued by heavy snow or deep mud. They
were typically utilitarian, bare-bones vehicles, derived from ancestral forms such
as the original Willys jeep and the military ambulances made by Dodge. These
specialized forms remained scarce and only a few companies even produced them.
This situation changed sometime in the 1990s. SUVs, fancy versions of the old
four-wheel drive cars trucks, became wildly popular in North America and glo-
bally. Dozens of new versions appeared, some made by companies that previously
specialized in luxury or high-performance vehicles (Cadillac, Porsche). It is now
common to see parking lots full of 4-wheel-drive SUVs that have never been
driven in snow or mud, in places like Tucson or Los Angeles that seldom see either.
If we want to explain the changing frequencies of 4-wheel-drive vehicles in
the United States it is crucial to differentiate processes of invention and innov-
ation. These machines were originally invented to solve very specific problems,
namely to move people and things over difficult surfaces and in bad weather
conditions.Very different factors are at work in the exploding popularity of SUVs.
These vehicles may have become so common because late baby boomers and sub-
sequent generations sought to project status or youth through the material symbols
of “sporty” lifestyles, or as they sought to avoid becoming like their parents who
chose station wagons or mini-vans for their growing families. I am not sure of the
best explanation. However, I am very certain that the reasons for the populariza-
tion of 4-wheel-drive vehicles and SUVs are not the same as the reasons for their
invention.The climate of North America did not become colder and wetter during
the 1990s, such that people from California to Florida were forced to drive through
deep snow or mud. The American road system had not deteriorated to the point
that suburban families had to cross bottomless pits and steep ravines when taking
the kids to school. SUVs were invented to fill specific functional roles.They became
widely popular for very different reasons.
Paleolithic worlds were very different than the globalized capitalist world-system
in which modern SUVs have flourished.There were no competitive markets accel-
erating product turnover or high-powered advertising firms working to sway con-
sumer behaviour in one direction or another. The larger point is that we must be
attentive to scale and causality in explaining changes in technology and material
culture. We may never document the invention of a novel form of artefact or pro-
cedure: it is exceedingly unlikely that we will ever find the first Levallois core or
bladelet ever made, much less recognize it for what it is. More important, a satisfac-
tory explanation for the initial experiments with a particular technological option
may not help us understand why that option later became widely used. In fact, the
widespread adoption of a particular technological solution often long post-dates
its original invention. Sometimes the problem that the artefact or technique was
developed to solve was uncommon at the outset but became more common later.
Sometimes the technology or tool form only became widely useful after it was
repurposed to serve different needs (exaptation). Sometimes refinements in manu-
facturing technique were needed before things could be widely replicated. And of
course ideas cannot spread unless people are in contact with one another. Isolation
of small groups by physical barriers or impermeable social boundaries may pre-
vent great inventions from spreading. Expanding social networks and population
migrations can permit all kinds of ideas, useful or not, to travel widely (e.g. Bentley
and Shennan 2003).
2.3 Age is just a number, and probably an incorrect one

at that
One of the strategies I adopt in this book to avoid structured thinking imposed by
conventional stage or phase systems for the Paleolithic is to examine the evolution
of various dimensions of Paleolithic technology and material culture in terms of
absolute chronology if possible, and where not, in terms of general geochrono-
logical periods such as subdivisions of the Pleistocene or Marine Isotope Stages
(MIS). It is not important whether the first bladelets or hafted spear points can
be assigned to the Early, Middle, or Late Stone Age. What is important is when,
where, and in what contexts they were produced. But what does it really mean to
say something is the first or the earliest example of a phenomenon? Not as much
as one might hope.
It is axiomatic in the historical sciences that any current estimate for the first
appearance of a phenomenon is a minimum age estimate (MacDougall 2011: 237).
The chance that we actually stumble upon the world’s very first stone tool or
thereopod dinosaur is vanishingly small. Instead, each additional discovery pushes
us closer to the earliest date. What we accept as the earliest date for something will
almost certainly be invalidated in the future by discoveries of even older examples,
at least until sample sizes get large enough. Meanwhile, dates of first appearance are
seldom made younger unless there was a serious error in the initial age estimate or
identification. Consequently, as new discoveries are made and as dating methods
improve, we can expect that our estimates of the dates for the origins of particular
phenomena will move ever backwards in time.
A personal example can illustrate how quickly things can change. In the spring
of 2015, I was teaching a large general education class on human evolution at the
University of Arizona. One of my favourite lectures (of course) concerned the
appearance of the genus Homo and the earliest stone artefacts. For a decade or more
I could say with confidence that the earliest fossils assigned to Homo and the earliest
stone tools date to roughly the same interval, ca. 2.4–2.6 ma. This rough temporal
association did not prove that early Homo was the toolmaker, or that stone tools
had anything to do with the appearance of our genus, but it was certainly food for
thought. Then, two or three days after I gave that particular lecture, the fossils from
Ledi-Geraru Ethiopia were published (Villmoare et al., 2015), revising the earliest
date for Homo, meaning that the genus had appeared 200,000 years before the
(then) oldest known stone tools, from Gona, Ethiopia (Semaw, 2000). Of course,
I could use this is a “teaching moment,” a way to show students how knowledge is
revised in historical sciences. It also raised the possibility that the earliest members
of the genus were not tool-makers. Then, a month or two later, the discoveries
at Lomekwi 3 (Harmand et al., 2015) were announced, showing that stone tools
appeared more than half a million years earlier than the genus Homo, providing the
first strong evidence that the earliest stone tool-makers were Australopithecines.
Another teaching moment to be sure, although at that point the students were
probably wondering whether I actually knew anything at all.
The point is that dates for the first, or the last, example of anything have a finite
shelf life. Sooner or later they will be revised, sometimes substantially. If this book
has any staying power at all, most of these estimates will be wrong when some of
you are reading it. Throughout this book, I will use what I believe are currently
(in early 2020) the most reliable estimates for the earliest or latest appearance of
some phenomenon. However, I will treat all of these as what they are, minimum
estimates, subject to an appropriate degree of uncertainty and almost inevitably
prone to future revision.
Fortunately, it is not all about invention. As discussed, the widespread adoption
of a behaviour is as important or more important than is its first appearance.
Estimates of when a particular behaviour became common, locally or globally, are

both fuzzier and more robust than dates of its first appearance. Because it involves
evaluating multiple occurrences, assessing when a particular technology became
widely used will inevitably involve a higher degree of uncertainty. But by that same
token, a single discovery will seldom change the story of innovation completely.
And it is highly unlikely that age estimates for a whole series of occurrences will
be wrong in the same way.
2.4 Assemblages as units of analysis

Most studies of Paleolithic technology take the assemblage as the basic unit of ana-
lysis and comparison, and this study follows in that tradition. There are few viable
alternatives to this practice. However, basing our studies on these collections of
artefacts demands that we consider what an assemblage is and what it isn’t, what we
can assume about its content and structure and what we cannot.
Paleolithic assemblages are most often defined based on geological criteria.
In stratified sites, they are defined as the total of material coming from a par-
ticular stratigraphic unit. Their upper and lower limits are defined by changes in
sedimentation, whether anthropogenic or geogenic. Geological boundaries are
partially or wholly independent from hominin behaviour. Of course, the factors
that led to changes in sedimentary regimes did not necessarily correspond to
changes in behaviour: this is especially true in cave deposits where sedimentation
may reflect conditions occurring within the karst itself. Conversely, there is no
reason to think that uniformity in conditions of sedimentation equates to uni-
formity in behaviour. As a consequence, we cannot assume that assemblages are
homogeneous just because they are contained within a homogeneous package of
sediment, or that they are different because they are contained within different
kinds of sediment.
Even where assemblages are defined based on more behaviourally relevant
factors, homogeneity is not a reliable default assumption. The wide availability
and application of efficient systems for 3-D recording of finds and features makes
it possible to divide stratigraphic sequences according to the density of materials,
to separate periods of intense anthropogenic input from intervals with little or
no deposition of cultural material. However, density of archaeological finds is
partially but not entirely attributable to behaviour: it is also affected by rates of
sediment accumulation or loss, as well as conditions of preservation.
It has been widely observed that stratigraphically-defined assemblages have a
temporal dimension. An assemblage that contains debris from more than a single
act, meaning any assemblage worth studying, is time-transgressive. Temporal grain
varies immensely –some collections of artefacts and features formed over periods
of hours or days, whereas others formed over centuries or millennia. But even the
most finely-resolved stratigraphic units contain material remains from a sequence
of actions and events. Layer IV in the spectacular late Upper Paleolithic site of
Pincevent in northern France (Bodu et al., 2006; Brézillon & Leroi-Gourhan, 1966;
Enloe & David, 1989) almost certainly represents a single “event,” in the sense of
one continuous period of occupation bounded by intervals when people were
not present. Yet even within the limits of this seemingly synchronous snapshot,
the excavators have revealed temporal changes in the ways objects and features
were used.
Because Paleolithic artefact assemblages incorporate the material fallout of a
series of small-scale events over a period of unknown duration, we cannot pre-
sume that there is a close relationship between most components of an assemblage.
Likewise, we cannot assume that the same sorts of things were deposited, in the
same proportions, from the beginning of the assemblage’s accumulation to its end.
In claiming that assumptions about assemblage homogeneity or temporality need
to be re-examined, I do not mean to undermine past work or to claim that we have
to abandon hope of gleaning interesting behavioural information from them (c.f.
Dibble et al. 2016). My aim is simply to show that we need to be attentive to how
we think about the basic units in our studies. Assemblages accumulated: they were
typically not created whole-cloth. Comparisons of artefact assemblages should be
framed in terms of formation and not just content. Some of the relevant formation
processes, and the most interesting ones by far, are behavioural, but others are geo-
logical or chemical.
Because assemblages accumulated over time, we must be particularly attentive to
assumptions about association. Observing that two artefacts or two kinds of artefact
co-occur in an assemblage that formed over the course of a century does not guar-
antee that they were used and/or discarded at the same time: the makers of the two
artefacts might have been separated by a generation. Consequently, the behavioural
significance of associations in single assemblages is highly ambiguous. On the other
hand, repeated associations are more robust and reliable indications of some sort of
behavioural link between two or more processes or things. If different kinds of arte-
fact or procedure consistently co-occur in assemblages dating to a particular span of
time, we are safe to assume that they were brought together by some sort of behav-
ioural process unfolding at a finer temporal grain than the assemblages themselves
allow us to capture. One such fine-g rained process could be a true behavioural
association: these things co-occur because the same groups of hominins made and
used them. Of course, there are other possibilities. Certain actions could have typ-
ically been performed in a particular sequence, but never together, or different
groups might have regularly visited a site sequentially. It is impossible to make a
programmatic statement about which explanation is more appropriate. However,
the assumption of behavioural association seems a more parsimonious starting point
in this particular instance.
2.5 Trends, tendencies, and progress

Researchers with progressive views of hominin evolution have tended to empha-
size long-term trends as evidence of gradual, more-or-less continuous progress
in human technology. A. Leroi-Gourhan’s notion of la tendance technique is one
example. In his seminal book, La Geste et la Parole (Leroi-Gourhan, 1964), he argued

that the major phases of the Paleolithic embodied a stepwise increase in the effi-
ciency with which cutting edges were produced. An Acheulean biface provided
more useful edge per kilo of stone than an Oldowan chopper, a Levallois core was
more efficient than a bifacial handaxe, an Upper Paleolithic blade core was more
efficient still, and so on. Others have made similar claims about the efficiency of
techniques for sharpening edges (Hayden, 1987). On the other hand, tendencies
as general as these, and even ones that make such good evolutionary sense, have
exceptions. Experimental studies support Lerio-Gourhan’s sequence to a point
but they show no significant improvement in cutting-edge production efficiency
between Levallois and percussion blade production (Muller & Clarkson, 2016).
Another study covering the Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic, but not focused
on modal systems of core reduction (Režek et al.,2018), confirms a progressive
increase in the upper limits on efficiency but also an expanded range of variation.
These authors argue that over time hominins came to exercise a wider array of
options with respect to efficiency, suggesting that they were responding to a broader
array of adaptive challenges in applying stone tools (Režek et al.,2018). One can
also point to major reversals in the trend toward greater efficiency in lithic pro-
duction, such as the widespread “deterioration” of lithic technology that occurred
across the globe soon after people became sedentary (Parry & Kelly, 1987).
In fact, broad, seemingly progressive trends are not antithetical to Darwinian
evolution (Gould, 1988; Gregory, 2008; McShea, 1998). Darwinian theory can
account for long-term trends in evolution. However, rather than being the norm
each one must be carefully interrogated and explained. To a “progressive” way of
thinking, directional change is the expected outcome, and it is almost inevitably
seen as improvement,
I would argue that many long-term trends in Paleolithic technologies can also
be understood as evidence for an evolving role of material culture in human life
(Kuhn, 2004a; Leroi-Gourhan, 1964; Shea, 2017). We can be certain that, over the
evolutionary history of our lineage, material culture and the knowledge and skills
needed to produce it have taken increasingly central roles in human existence. At
some time in the remote past, probably in the Pliocene, tools played the same basic
role for members of the hominin lineage as they do for modern chimpanzees and
other tool-using animals. They helped the hominins obtain particular types of food
that they could not access with their hands and teeth alone. Like some populations
of extant non-human primate (Luncz et al., 2012; Whiten et al., 1999, 2001) some
Pliocene hominins may have used an impressive array of material aids. But, also like
extant primates, other local populations of the same species may have used tools
little or not at all.
Contrast this with the human condition today. It is safe to say that humans are
dependent on technology as a species. There are no exceptions. Just about every domain
of life, from maintaining proper body temperature to getting food to interacting
with our fellow humans, seems to require artefacts, sometimes a great many of
them. Because of the places many of us live, and because of the self-domestication
our species has undergone, humans as a species are minimally prepared to survive
without a great many technological aids. Certainly, the variety and complexity
of material culture vary widely across human groups. Some human groups rely
for their survival on what seems to 21st-century Westerners a truly minimal array
of material things. But everyone needs and uses a range of artefacts. Claims for
very primitive peoples without even basic technologies are inevitably proven to be
either hoaxes or the result of shoddy ethnography (e.g. McGee 1898; Nance 1975).
Today, material culture participates in essentially every facet of our existence.
We use, in fact we need, artefacts to communicate with other people and to worship
our gods. For some people, even mating and reproduction, things that most other
animals can do pretty well all by themselves, also require technological assistance. At
this point in time technology has infiltrated just about every realm of our existence.
Cyborgs, flesh and machine woven together into a functioning whole, are typically
the stuff of science fiction. But given our species’ complete dependence on material
culture for survival one can also argue that Homo sapiens is already a cyborg species
(Haraway, 1991). If you are sceptical think about how many memory functions
many of us have out-sourced to smart phones and tablets, or for the less techno-
logically savvy, to ink and paper.
As much as we might bemoan the dominance of “high-tech” in daily life of the
early 21st century, our species’ dependence on material objects and technological
knowledge did not begin with digital technology or the written word. It probably
began when hominins first ventured into places where they needed some kind of
help just to maintain their body temperatures, or when they became reliant on
resources that could not be effectively exploited with the legs, hands, and teeth that
evolution gave them. Hominins began off-loading some of the demanding work
of digestion to cooking hundreds of thousands of years, perhaps millions of years
ago (Wrangham, 2009;Wrangham et al., 1999).Telling the story of how our species
became cyborgs, how hominins changed from occasional dabblers in the world of
artefacts to partners in a life-long co-dependent relationship with technology, is
one of the grand challenges of Paleoanthropology.
Archaeologists often take a quantitative or pseudo-quantitative approach to
assessing material culture. The popular aphorism “whoever has the most toys wins”
does have some relevance to the study of technological evolution, though I would
add “…the most and the fanciest.”The broad sweep of technological change over the
course of human evolution does in fact involve demonstrable changes in the diver-
sity of material culture and the complexity of individual elements: these topics are
examined in Chapters 3, 7, and 8. Presumably, more elaborate and costly artefacts
were more effective or efficient. But the story of our species’ growing depend-
ence on artefacts is more than just a case of making more and better tools to
do more things better. A great many artefacts did help people gain a mechan-
ical, energetic or chemical advantage in dealing with the material world, aiding
users in doing a job more easily or more quickly than we could with their bodies
alone.Yet many artefacts also embody information, sometimes imposed intention-
ally and sometimes not. Some researchers refer to the informational aspects of
artefacts as non-functional, which is an error. They have functions, important ones,

just not in the practical/material sphere. M. Schiffer captured this idea decades ago
in distinguishing between techno-functions, socio-functions, and ideo-functions (Schiffer
1992: 132–133; Schiffer 2001:219). A single object might function in one or all
of these realms. For example, a pair of shoes could simultaneously fulfil a techno-
function (to protect the wearer’s feet), a socio-function (to project membership in
a certain social stratum based on cost or brand), and an ideo-function (supporting
“green” causes if made of recycled or non-animal materials).
Objects may gain or lose functions in particular domains over time. There once
was a practical rationale for some of the seemingly bizarre features of academic
regalia (Hargreaves-Mawdsley 1963), but for centuries it has fulfilled only sym-
bolic functions We can assume that, in the frame of human evolution, most items
of material culture found their first applications in the practical or material sphere.
This assumption is justified by the fact that artefact use by non-humans is all about
gaining a mechanical advantage in the world, which makes it the most likely ances-
tral condition. A few kinds of artefacts made by later humans do operate in other
spheres of functionality from their first invention. As far as we know, objects such as
ivory figurines carried information from the very start. However, similarly to aca-
demic regalia, many classes of material culture took on additional symbolic roles later
on in their history. As will be discussed below, the earliest large bifacial cutting tools
or stone-tipped spears probably had only techno-functions: they helped people cut
things up or bring down game. At some times and places, however, such objects may
have entered the realm of signifiers, taking on socio-or techno-functions.
Obviously, thinking about when artefacts entered the symbolic realm is
interesting from the perspective of understanding how human symbolic thought
evolved and was expressed. But it also expanded the field for change in material
culture. The migration of some aspects of material culture into the realm of com-
munication has profound implications for rates of change and diversification. Once
artefacts entered the symbolic or communicative realms, the forces that acted to
constrain and guide their designs changed as well. When the main influences on
artefact design come from the rules of culture rather than just the laws of physics,
the potential for dynamism and variation is amplified (explored in greater detail in
Chapter 7).
3
PARTS AND WHOLES
3.1 The importance of composite artefacts

Archaeologists are fascinated by stone tools as objects, and for good reason. Some
of them are beautiful, and many more are enigmatic. Understanding the basics of
lithic technology and terminology also requires mastering obscure and abstruse
knowledge, something that appeals to the inner nerd in many of us. Yet in our
obsession with the objects that remain, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that
there was more to ancient material culture than just stone tools. We may express
regret that artefacts of perishable materials such as wood, hide, fibre, and sinew are
not preserved except under extraordinary circumstances, and we speculate about
what these technologies might have been like. But that is usually the limit of our
involvement with things other than lithics. Stone is what we have to work with so
stone is what we tend to think about.
Yet sometimes studying stone tools is not sufficient even for understanding the
stone tools themselves. Although we recover them as singular specimens, many
lithic artefacts were just small parts of much larger and more complex composite
implements. Arrowheads or spear points, microlithic barbs or sickle inserts, or thumb-
nail scrapers were nothing without the shafts, hafts, handles, and binders that went
into making the complete implement. Without some idea of the larger whole the
stone bits make little sense. In and of itself, a Magdalenian backed bladelet (Figure 3.1
a) is hardly a formidable object. It looks like something suitable for light cutting tasks,
at best. But when combined with other parts (Figure 3.1 b) and other knowledge
systems (Figure 3.1 c), a backed bladelet formed a remarkably robust foraging tech-
nology that helped people to expand into and flourish in the often-harsh landscapes
of western and central Europe soon after the retreat of the MIS 2 glaciers.
From the perspective of human evolution there are several important reasons to
pay attention to whether artefacts were parts of larger composite implements, and
Parts and wholes 39
FIGURE 3.1 Schematic diagram showing the role of a Magdalenian backed bladelet

in a larger hunting system. Backed bladelets themselves are relatively small stone
artefacts. Sophisticated hafting systems (b) were used to attach the bladelets to larger
and more elaborate spears or atl-atl darts, used by hunters equipped with a range of
other technology (c) such as skin clothing and drive lines. (a, b, from Pétillon et al.
2011, Figures 4.2 and 7.1); c, from Czech Academy of Sciences, the Institute of
Archaeology in Brno, the Centre for Paleolithic and Paleoethnological Research,
http://www.iabrno.cz/agalerie/aagalery.htm); © Libor Balák and Antropark. Used by
permission.
to consider what these larger tools were like. First, it helps us understand the stone
artefact itself. A hidescraper to be held in the hand must be of a different shape
and size from one that is mounted on a handle. Different kinds of handles also
have specific design requirements. Second, understanding the larger whole gives
us a new perspective on complexity in manufacture. The variability in production
complexity manifest in procedures for making stone tools is only part of the story.
Shaping a wood or antler handle or haft, preparing adhesives, and binding all these
parts together into a functioning whole can create another order of procedural
complexity (Barham, 2013: 196; Hoffecker and Hoffecker, 2018).
Composite tools offer many advantages. They change the way force can be
exerted through the working edge of a tool. Mounting a hidescraper to a handle
allows one to apply more force than would be possible if the same stone tool were
held in the hand. Handles also create a spatial separation between a tool’s working
40 Parts and wholes
parts and the tool user. Putting a handle on a cutting edge keeps the user’s hand
away from the material being cut, affording a better view and more freedom of
movement. A hafted atl-atl dart point or arrowhead allows the implement to be
administered at a significant distance, without any direct contact with the target.
Hafting stone tools also permits people to take advantage of the best properties
of different raw materials. Flakeable stone can produce sharp and durable edges,
but it is by nature brittle and consequently prone to catastrophic failure. Mounting
sharp points and cutting edges of stone into tough, flexible armatures of bone,
antler or other organic fibrous composites produces a weapon that is sharp enough
to penetrate the hide of a prey animal but resilient enough to survive impacts with
bone or with the ground (Paleolithic hunters probably missed their prey often
enough) (Elston & Brantingham, 2002). Similarly, a small stone endscraper attached
to a 10 cm–long wooden handle is much less likely to snap when force is applied
to it than would be a 12 cm flint blade. Because only certain elements of the com-
plete tool are likely to fail though use, composite artefacts can be maintained fairly
easily: a flaked stone cutting edge or bit can be replaced without having to make a
whole new implement. Finally, creating the prehensive part of a tool out of another
substance can save on weight and raw material, allowing toolmakers to use light
and readily available resources such as wood for the bulkier parts of an implement,
reserving heavy and sometimes scarce stone for the “business end” of the thing.
At a more general level, assembling artefacts by joining multiple parts creates an
open pathway to innovation through a process that Barham (2013) calls “combina-
torial evolution.” One of the great lessons of the evolutionary development para-
digm in biology is that modularity allows organisms to evolve more quickly. Simple
changes in growth rates for adjoining structures can result in radically different
designs, forms that would take much longer to evolve were selection operating
on the structure as a whole. The same is true of modularity in tool design. In
a classic article on the northern European Mesolithic, David Clarke (D. Clarke,
1976) illustrated how the same simple geometric inserts could be used in artefacts
ranging from fishing spears to sickles to root graters (Figure 3.2). This is true of
the other components as well. The glue that holds a dart point to its shaft can
also affix a cutting blade to a knife handle or attach feathers to a headdress. The
same techniques used to carve a bone foreshaft can be applied to making a socket-
handle or a figurine. By restructuring the suite of techniques and products that go
into making one complex composite tool, an artisan can produce a whole host of
different artefacts suitable for different needs.
If hafting and composite tools offer so many advantages, then why didn’t everyone
make them all the time? Like all good things composite tools have drawbacks as
well as advantages. Most notably, making multi-part tools can be costly in terms
of time, energy, and raw materials. Flaking stone is a relatively fast and easy kind
of technology to execute. Shaping resilient, flexible materials such as bone, antler, or
wood is a more time-consuming endeavour. Producing a serviceable wooden spear
shaft takes more time and effort than making a relatively simple flaked point to
mount on the end of it. Add to that the potential costs of collecting and processing
FIGURE 3.2 Some of the diverse applications for microlithic inserts based on

ethnographic and archaeological evidence (from Clarke, 1976, Figure 2).
mastics and fibres to bind the whole thing together and one can see that produ-
cing in even simple composite tools involves substantial upfront investment (Kuhn,
2013: 258; Shea, 2013b: 302). So even if they work better, composite tools are not
always an easy choice.
The other potential limitation on the manufacture of composite artefacts relates
to the knowledge and know-how they require. Producing a simple knife with a
wooden handle requires application of at least three different sets of techniques
and recipes for action. The stone must be flaked, the handle carved into shape, and
some kind of binder prepared and applied. Each of these sets of procedures may
be relatively simple, but they are all mandatory. Putting them all together involves
execution of a more complex set of procedures than does executing any one of
them alone. In a widely cited set of papers Ambrose argues that making complex
composite tools requires a mental ability analogous to grammar –the capacity not
just to assemble all of the elements but to put them together in the correct order
(Ambrose, 2001, 2010). More broadly, the act(s) of creating and joining together
parts of different materials requires coordinating and integrating knowledge and
actions at a scale unmatched by any other kind of Paleolithic technology, thus
implying a range of high-level cognitive processes (Barham, 2013; Hoffecker &
Hoffecker, 2018). By implication, the appearance of such artefacts in the Paleolithic
record should tell us when hominins were capable of thinking in certain ways.
But is mental grammar a necessary precursor to tasks that involve serial organ-
ization of different activities? Beavers are able to build dams in a series of stages –
they do not try to patch holes with mud and small sticks before assembling the base
structure with larger limbs first. Some chimpanzees modify and use a sequence of
different tools to fish for termites (Sanz, Call, & Morgan, 2009; Sanz & Morgan,
2007). It is possible that a repeated sequence of procedures involving diverse
materials can be organized as a simple cascade of responses to an initial choice,
without having the entire sequence already diagrammed in the mind. In the end,
while arguments about the cognitive requirements of composite tools are plausible,
we would like to see more experimental or neuro-imaging evidence to back them
up. Nonetheless, they at least provide a viable and interesting hypothesis.
Accepting for the sake of argument that the presence of composite tools in
the Paleolithic is a useful gauge of hominins’ mental abilities, it is also important
to remind ourselves that recent human technologies have varied radically in this
aspect. Late Pleistocene and Holocene humans had all had the cognitive and
manipulative capacity to make complex composite tools, but not all of them did.
Some people made very elaborate artefacts because they provided advantages in
making a living or gaining recognition as an artisan, advantages that outweighed the
tools’ added costs. Archaeologists and ethnologists are well aware of the pronounced
differences in the number and elaboration of artefacts used in the subsistence quest
by foragers worldwide (Bousman, 1993; Collard et al., 2011; Collard, Kemery, &
Banks, 2005; Oswalt, 1976; Torrence, 1983). We would never attribute the relative
simplicity of the traditional subsistence toolkits of foragers living in the Australian
desert, or the elaboration and ingeniousness of Inuit seal hunting gear, to differences
in the cognitive capacities of the respective populations. The same ought to apply
to our understanding of Paleolithic technologies. When we observe variation in
technological complexity across time and space, we ought to first consider the eco-
nomic contexts in which artefacts were made and used, the constraints imposed
by mobility, subsistence risk, and other factors. Taking these factors into account
provides a richer picture of the ways that the hominins we study were able to cope
flexibly (or not) with environmental challenges. We should attribute contrasts in
artefact complexity to evolved differences in capacity only if we can be confident
that do not reflect different adaptive responses to differing conditions of life.
3.2 Recognizing composite tools from their isolated parts

How do we recognize when stone artefacts were parts of larger wholes? Sometimes
we are lucky enough to find the complete artefact, but this requires extraordinary
circumstances such as dry caves or melting ice patches (Reckin, 2013;Vanderhoeck
et al., 2012). More commonly, but still not all that often, Paleolithic archaeologists
find the organic haft or handle. But these kinds of discoveries are relatively rare
and highly dependent on conditions of preservation. Except in extraordinary
circumstances, even recent sites seldom yield entire artefacts with their perishable
parts intact. North American archaeologists have probably excavated hundreds of
thousands of arrowheads dating to the last few centuries before European contact,
but how many complete arrows have they found? Not many. The rare examples
of preserved composite tools or elements of them do provide us with models for
understanding what complete implements may have been like at particular times
and places, but quantitatively they remain anecdotal.
The most common form of evidence for composite tools consists of modifications
of the shapes of stone tools that facilitate hafting. Typically, these signs include basal
modification such as tangs, notches, thinning, fluting, as well as backing of blades
and bladelets. Some forms of modification are ambiguous: for example some
projections that appear to be tangs meant for hafting could be drills (Falzetti et al.,
2017). And of course such evidence only tells us what was happening at one end of
the stone part: it does not tell us about the rest of the composite artefact. Somewhat
more controversial are forms of damage that allegedly could only occur if a tool
was hafted. Here I speak mainly of what is interpreted as impact damage, distinctive
fractures to the tips of pointed stone tools that result from high-speed contact with
resistant materials such as bone. A growing literature, much of it experimentally
based, is focused on distinguishing traces of impact from other kinds of use-related
or post-depositional damage. This is not the place for a complete summary, but
I will return to the topic below when discussing particular cases. On rare occasions
other forms of evidence speak directly to hafting, such as points firmly embedded
in the bones of prey animals.
Microscopic or chemical traces on stone tools can also provide direct evidence
of how things were put together. Use-wear analysts are sometimes able to distin-
guish microscopic polishes and striations likely to come from contact between a
stone tool and its handle or armature. How the frequency of such evidence relates
to the frequency of hafting is another question. Use-wear specialists often point out
that the better an object is hafted, the less it moves around in the haft and the fewer
wear traces are produced. Finally, and perhaps most promisingly, is chemical evi-
dence for materials used as binders. In recent years a variety of analytical techniques
have revealed the presence of bitumen, plant resins, and other potential adhesives
on parts of stone tools, presumably because they were attached to a handle or shaft
(Figure 3.3). The special importance of this sort of evidence is that it tells us about
the other technological elements that went into making complete implements.
The downside is of course that evidence is fugitive and the analytical techniques
require specialized knowledge, so that the corpus of evidence is still small, though
expanding.
Finally, we come to the simplest, and least clearly diagnostic evidence of hafting,
artefact size. Evidence for organized production of very small elements too diminu-
tive to have been held by the hand is indirect evidence for widespread use of
composite tools (Pargeter & Shea, 2019). The pressure micro-blade technologies
of North Asia and Beringia constitute a prime example. Here we are on fairly safe
ground in assuming that people would not have repeatedly and intentionally made
such tiny things unless they intended to put them into handles that made them
more useful. However, it is not always so clear. Nearly all lithic assemblages con-
tain an abundance of tiny flakes and chips that seem too small to have been held in
the fingers. Typically, these are interpreted as waste from production and mainten-
ance of larger artefacts. However, there are indications that people sometimes made
very small blanks intentionally, even in assemblages typically characterized by larger
tools. The primary evidence for the latter is the regular extension of reduction past
the point that cores were capable of yielding anything but tiny flakes (Dibble &
McPherron, 2006). This could be a kind of indirect evidence for hafting. On the
FIGURE 3.3 Line
drawing of flake with lump of birch-bark pitch on proximal end.
Campitello Quarry, Italy (from Mazza et al., 2006, Figure 2). Scale bar = 2cm.
other hand, experimental evidence shows that flake size does not always equate
with effectiveness, and people are capable of working with remarkably diminutive
tools (Key & Lycett, 2011, 2014, 2015a).
3.3 What about the handles?

All handles are not created equal. Archaeologists and ethnologists have identified
a number of strategies for joining stone tools to other parts. Based on a study
of material in museum collections, Barham (2013) describes six major forms of
hafting. In large part, classifying an object with Barham’s typology of hafts requires
knowing a good deal about the haft and the object being hafted. In keeping with
the austerity of the Paleolithic record I will use a simplified system, based on likely
modifications of the stone component in order to achieve a good fit with the rest
of the artefact: these are the actions which will leave consistent evidence in the
lithic record. One strategy, which I will call Mode A, is to custom-fit a handle to
a stone (this corresponds with Barham’s type “e,” or “applied” haft). Spinifex gum
handles on stone knives in central Australia (Binford, 1986; Gould, Koster, & Sontz,
1971; Noone, 1949) are a prime example (Figure 3.4). In this case the handle is
“bespoke,” made to fit a single stone artefact. Given the likelihood that hafts will
FIGURE 3.4 Examples of hafting Mode A. Ethnographic Leilira blades from

Australia. Second and fourth from left have “bespoke” spinifex resin handles
(courtesy of Australian National Museum https://australianmuseum.net.au/
indigenous-leilira-blades-from-arnhem-land).
FIGURE 3.5 Examples of hafting Mode B; experimental versions of tanged Aterian

artefacts with different kinds of socket haft (from Tomasso and Rots, 2018, Figure 5).
last longer than chipped stone bits, this strategy seems unlikely to be very common
except perhaps as in the Australian example, where the gum handle itself can be
reused for other purposes. Once more durable polished stone axes came into use,
around or before 40 ka in Australia and New Guinea (Clarkson et al., 2017; Geneste
et al., 2010; Geneste, David, Plisson, Delannoy, & Petchey, 2012; Hiscock, 2008;
Morwood & Trezise, 1989), soon after 38 ka in Japan (Izuho & Kaifu, 2015;Takashi,
2012), and during the terminal Pleistocene or early Holocene in western Eurasia,
this strategy of making a handle to fit a stone bit was probably more common.
A second strategy, Mode B, is to custom-fit the stone object to a durable handle or
intermediate part. Typical examples would be crafting a spearhead to fit a foreshaft
or trimming the base of an endscraper to fit a socketed handle (Figure 3.5). These
correspond more closely with Barham’s haft types a, b and c. Here the stone tools
are modified to fit the holder. If handles are more costly to make and more durable
than the lithic bit (Keeley, 1982) such a strategy should be effective and common.
A third strategy (Mode C) abandons custom fitting altogether, shaping both haft
and inserts so that they are interchangeable, so that many different stone elements
could fit into a single armature or haft. In this strategy, stone inserts must accom-
modate the haft, but when used in series or in sequence they must also fit with
each other (Figure 3.6). The work of fitting together various parts is accomplished
mainly at the stage of artefact design. Technologies based on interchangeable parts
are most often identified with the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and 20th cen-
turies, but as discussed below they were probably first developed tens of thousands
of years ago.
FIGURE 3.6 Examples of hafting Mode C. Remarkable find of Mesolithic arrow with

five microlithic inserts in place, dating to ca. 9k–8 ka. Larsson and Sjöström, Antiquity
Project Gallery, http://www.antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/larsson330/. Photograph © Arne
Sjöström.
I emphasize that these three modes do not represent a series of progressive evo-
lutionary stages. Mode C hafting is probably the last of the three to appear in evo-
lutionary time, but there is no necessary priority of Mode A and B. As discussed
below, some of the earliest evidence of hafting relates to Mode B, fitting stone parts
into durable handles. Moreover, all modes can occur together. At Eland’s Bay Cave
in South Africa, the two preserved examples of stone tools with resin handles (Mode
A) come from Middle and Early Holocene layers that also yielded microlithic stone
tools indicative of Mode C hafting strategies (Charrie-Duhaut et al., 2016).
The three general approaches to creating composite tools should leave different
sorts of traces on stone artefacts. When the handle is custom-fitted to the stone
bit (Mode A), especially in the case of amorphous resin handles, there is less
need to modify the stone tool. Consequently, we have limited opportunity to
detect it in assemblages of ancient artefacts except perhaps from traces of adhe-
sive. The Mode B approach to hafting, where lithic elements are accommodated
to an organic handle or haft, should be recognizable through the appearance
of standard modifications such as tangs, basal thinning, fluting, and notches.
Alternatively, people could simply select blanks that are the right size to fit the
handle. We should not necessarily expect assemblage-level metric standardiza-
tion with hafting Mode B: it depends on whether the hafts themselves were all
the same size. If handles or foreshafts were produced first and stone bits crafted
to fit them, one could expect a good deal of variation within an assemblage of
discarded stone artefacts. On the other hand, metric standardization might well
come about due to functional and raw material constraints. The sizes of arrows
and arrowheads can be constrained by the type of bow used or even the sizes of
the reeds available to serve as arrow shafts. Finally, the third strategy, Mode C,
ought to be reflected in both metric standardization and accommodative modifi-
cation of stone inserts. Backing, steep blunting retouch along one margin, would
be one example of hafting-related modification of standardized stone elements. If
stone inserts are mounted serially, as sickle blade elements or barbs for instance,
then some degree of standardization of size and shape would certainly be benefi-
cial, especially when it came time to repair a tool.
3.4 When, how, and why did stone artefacts become parts of
bigger wholes?
For the first 2.0–2.5 million years, all stone tools were hand-held. This is not to say
that early stone tools are easy to understand, that their functions or life histories
are transparent: as the following chapters will show, things get complicated early on
in the history of technology. However, prior to the Middle Pleistocene it is fairly
certain that stone tools were used as is, without hafts or handles. Common artefact
forms, including choppers, spheroids, handaxes, pics and cleavers, were not only
big enough to be hand-held, many were actually too large to have been effectively
hafted. Moreover, they lack consistent patterns of modification that would indicate
accommodation to a handle or mount. Even the smaller flake tools are large enough
to be comfortably held and manipulated with the fingers. Assemblages do contain
very small flakes that would have needed to be hafted in order to make effective
tools, but there are no consistent indications that these tiny flakes were used or
hafted at all.
As of this writing, the earliest claims for hafting come from the Acheulean site
of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov (GBY) in the Jordan valley. GBY is dated to ca. 800
ka, just at the boundary between the Lower and Middle Pleistocene. The evi-
dence consists of several hundred small flakes exhibiting a range of modifications
including removal of the platform and thinning of the bulbar surface, sometimes
(but not always) leaving a short tang-like projection (Alperson-Afil & Goren-Inbar,
2016). The authors conclude that the modification does not produce functional
edges, but that it is consistent with accommodation for insertion in a haft. They
decline to speculate on the functions of these many modified flakes. However, it is
worth noting that the artefacts are not consistently pointed: in fact, many forms of
retouched and unretouched flakes show basal modification. If the GBY assemblage
does indeed show evidence of hafting, it also shows that the earliest forms of hafted
tool probably were not weapons.
There is a gap of 300ky between the GBY flakes and the next strong claims for
hafting in the Paleolithic. This hiatus may eventually be filled with new discoveries.
The artefacts from GBY have been subject to more intensive and thorough analysis
than assemblages from almost any other Lower Paleolithic site. Moreover, there is
a tendency to pay much more attention to the large handaxes and cleavers than to
other artefacts from Acheulean assemblages in general, so flake tools are especially
under-researched. It could well be that more unrecognized evidence is out there.
On the other hand, the case for hafting at GBY is entirely circumstantial. The
authors cannot envision any other explanation for the regular modification of the
proximal ends of flakes, but there is no positive evidence that the modified tools
were actually put in handles.
More conventional evidence for composite artefacts comes later in the Middle
Pleistocene. Beginning around 500 ka a range of direct and indirect evidence for
hafting appears in Africa and Eurasia (Barham, 2013: 225). Speaking chronologic-
ally, the earliest case to date is from Kathu Pan, Namibia. Both basal modification
and typical impact scars on a group of large pointed artefacts have been put forth
as evidence for hafting, specifically of spear tips (Wilkins et al. 2012) (Figure 3.7).
These claims have been disputed (Rots and Plisson, 2014) by researchers arguing
that micro-and macroscopic traces commonly interpreted as evidence for
FIGURE 3.7 The world’s earliest hafted spear points (for now), from Kathu Pan, South
Africa (photograph © Jayne Wilkins).
projectile use may have other origins. On the other hand, the claimed evidence
for early hafted spear points at Kathu Pan is no different from the observations
used to support less controversial claims for hafted spear points later in time.While
that does not necessarily validate the Kathu Pan material, it does show that we
are often too ready to accept relatively weak evidence for a phenomenon that is
non-controversial.
Although the Kathu Pan artefacts are the earliest claimed spear points in the
Paleolithic record, a wide range of other evidence for hafting and composite tools
appears later in the Middle Pleistocene. Thieme (Thieme, 1999) describes short
wooden rods with deep grooves at one end from the remarkable later Middle
Pleistocene locality of Schöneingen (Figure 3.8). Thieme interprets these as hafts
for small flake tools, though not as weapons. Subsequent microwear analysis of flint
tools from the site (Rots et al., 2015) identified possible hafting wear on a few
small flint flake tools. Use-wear analyses of artefacts from the famous Zhoukoudian
site near Beijing, China, indicate possible hafting of small quartz flake tools (Shen,
Zhang, & Gao, 2016). At the semi- contemporaneous locality of Qesem Cave
(Israel), use-wear analysis of large Quina-type scrapers indicates that while most
were hand-held, a few might have had simple handles (Zupancich, Lemorini,
Gopher, & Barkai, 2016). Mazza and colleagues (Mazza et al., 2006) report direct
evidence for hafting in the form of birch bark resin on two flakes from a butchery
site at the Campitello Quarry (Italy), which dates somewhat later in the Middle
Pleistocene. Rots and colleagues (Rots,Van Peer, & Vermeersch, 2011) also provide
use-wear evidence for hafting of core-axes that were used as hatchets in the later
Middle Pleistocene of Sudan.This is a different, more sophisticated mode of hafting
than is suggested for any other early artefacts.
The evidence for Middle Pleistocene hafting is fragmentary and scattered, but
it is too diverse and well documented to ignore. Starting around 500–400 ka, it
appears that hominins began experimenting with a range of modes for making
composite tools. Some, though by no means all, of these innovations were related
to hunting weapons. For instance, at Schöningen the potential hafts do not appear
to be weapons, and the hafted stones are not points, whereas the large, well-made
wooden spears from the site (Thieme, 1997, 2007) functioned without stone points.
Both hafting Mode A (Quesem, Campitello Quarry, Sudanese core-axes) and prob-
ably Mode B (Schöningen, Kathu Pan) are represented in these early sites. While
hafting and composite tools may have been geographically widespread, it appears
than hominins relied on the strategy to a limited degree: the great majority of
implements were still hand-held. It is noteworthy that the early appearance of
hafting does not correspond with a conventional transition: depending on how
one defines the periods it occurs within the late Lower Paleolithic/Early Stone Age,
or within the early Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age.
In searching for the earliest of hafting and composite tools it is also important to
recognize the importance of preservation and taphonomy. Except for macroscopic
hafting-related modifications of stone artefacts, traces of hafting are prone to deg-
radation in most circumstances. Use-wear polishes and organic residues decay or
are obscured over time. Sites such as Schöningen that preserve artefacts of wood
FIGURE 3.8 Possible
wooden haft from Schöningen site, Germany. This is not a
weapon but a simple handle for stone inserts (photograph by Christa S. Fuchs,
courtesy of Niedersächsischen Landesamt für Denkmalpflege).
are exceedingly rare.The increasingly fragmentary nature of evidence as one moves

back in time probably reflects spotty preservation as much as behaviour, and we
should not be surprised by earlier evidence when conditions are right. On the other
hand, the absence of the more durable macroscopic traces of hafting before the
Lower/Middle Pleistocene boundary is a robust pattern that cannot be dismissed.
Evidence for hafting and composite tools becomes more common, and more
diverse, after around 250 ka. Middle Stone Age and Middle Paleolithic assemblages
from Eurasia and Africa contain a wide range of evidence for hafting, including
intentional modification, residues of mastics, and use-wear evidence. MP and MSA
assemblages are full of pointed artefacts. Things called “points” are particularly
common in the African MSA (McBrearty & Brooks, 2000; Shea, 2006; Tryon &
Faith, 2013), although they are also abundant in some Eurasian Middle Paleolithic
assemblages. As will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 6, the term “point” is a
morphological rather than a functional definition in common typological systems,
and not everything that is pointed functioned as a point. Things that do not look
like obviously hafted points can and were used as such (Dinnis, Pawlik, & Gaillard,
2009; Pawlik & Thissen, 2011) while objects typically identified as points may not
show any signs of having been used as such (Beyries & Plisson, 1998; Chacón et al.,
2016; Groman-Yaroslavski, Zaidner, & Weinstein-Evron, 2016). However, there is
other, more direct evidence of stone elements being fastened to the ends of spears
or javelins.
Bifacially-worked lanceolate artefacts that resemble spear points from later
periods are typical of a range of Middle Paleolithic and MSA assemblages (Figure 3.9).
Arguably the earliest examples are associated with Lupemban assemblages from
central and eastern Africa, which date to the latter part of the Middle Pleistocene
(though absolute dates are few) (McBrearty, 1988;Taylor, 2016;Van Peer, 2004).The
finely worked points of the Stillbay industry in South Africa are perhaps the best
known of later Upper Pleistocene examples (Lombard et al., 2010;Villa et al., 2009),
but well-made bifacial foliates are present in contemporaneous or earlier Aterian
assemblages in North Africa (Bouzouggar & Barton, 2012; Bouzouggar, Kozłowski,
& Otte, 2002). Bifacial foliates are also characteristic of Upper Pleistocene Middle
Paleolithic assemblages from central and southern Europe (Bolus & Conard, 2001;
Kozłowski, 1992; Svoboda, 2004). Basal modifications such as thinning or removal
of the platform and bulb, which could also facilitate hafting, are common in some
early Upper Pleistocene Middle Paleolithic and MSA assemblages (Lazuén, 2012;
Villa et al., 2009;Villa & Lenoir, 2009) though they are far from universal.
Aterian assemblages, which occur throughout North Africa, from the Maghreb
into the Sahara, present some of the most abundant evidence for hafting-related
modification in the later Middle and Upper Pleistocene. In addition to the afore-
mentioned bifacial foliates, Aterian assemblages are well-known for stemmed or
tanged (pedonculée) pieces, artefacts with narrow, retouched projections at the prox-
imal ends (Figure 3.10). Tangs occur on a wide range of artefact forms, including
pointed pieces but also side and end scrapers, denticulates, or even unretouched,
un-pointed flakes (Tixier, 1959, 1967). There is some use-wear evidence for use of
the tang itself as a working edge (Falzetti et al., 2017). However, abundant traces
of varied use on the other parts of these artefacts show that the tangs were more
than just drills or concave scraping edges. While tanged points do resemble spear
heads, and shape variation is consistent with the artefacts having been reworked
while hafted, the data indicate the edges rather than tips as having been the object
FIGURE 3.9 Bifacial “leaf ” points

from various contexts dating to MIS 4 or early
MIS 3. Top row, Stillbay MSA, Blombos Cave, South Africa (from Villa et al., 2009,
Figure 1a, 1c, 1e); middle row, Altmuehlian or final Micoquian, Mauern, Germany
(from Zotz, 1955); bottom row, Aterian MSA, Mugharet el ‘Aliya (from Howe, 1967,
Fig. 51.11, 51.13, 51.15 and 51. 16). Scale bar = 1cm.
FIGURE 3.10 Sample of tanged artefacts from Aterian deposits at Bizmoune Cave,

Morocco. Forms with tangs include possible points as well as endscrapers and
unmodified flakes. Scale bar = 5cm.
of resharpening (Iovita, 2011). Irrespective of how artefacts were used, the Aterian
does seem to represent an unusually strong commitment to the strategy of hafting
stone tools, perhaps associated with expansions of land use and heavy depend-
ence on transported gear (Iovita, 2011; Scerri, 2013a). This strategy of putting tangs
on everything is also rather unique globally. Tanged pieces are scarce in Middle
Paleolithic and MSA assemblages outside of North Africa. With a few exceptions,
such as the early Upper Paleolithic of Korea and Japan (Chang, 2013) and during
the mid-Holocene in the Pacific (Lipo et al., 2016; Torrence, Kelloway, & White,
2013), the practice of crafting a narrow projection as a hafting element on stone
tools did not become common globally until the widespread appearance of bow
and arrow technology in the European later Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic. It
also is worth noting that while Aterian craftspersons might put a tang on some
things, they certainly did not put tangs on everything.Tanged pieces always account
for a small proportion of the retouched tool inventories in Aterian assemblages, and
just about every form of retouched piece, from endscrapers to pointed elements,
were made and discarded both with and without a tang.
In some instances, archaeologists can make a strong case for composite tools on
the basis of artefact size. Consistent production of artefacts too small to have been
held securely in the hand is often taken as evidence for composite tool making.
The widely discussed Howiesons Poort (HP) assemblages of the late MSA of South
Africa, defined based on the presence of small (<3cm) backed and/or truncated
artefacts, are often cited as the origin of complex composite tools (Barham, 2013;
Henshilwood, 2012; Lombard, 2005, 2015; Lombard & Wadley, 2016). Based on
use damage as well as the distribution of hafting traces, many small HP geometric
segments are thought to have functioned as the business end of projectiles, per-
haps even arrows (Figure 3.11), though the geometric segments were also used for
cutting and other activities (Lombard, 2011; Lombard & Pargeter, 2008; Lombard
& Phillipson, 2010). Apparently systematic production of small bladelets, similar
to those produced in the Late Stone Age (LSA) and Upper Paleolithic actually
dates back to slightly earlier than the Howiesons Poort in Africa (Brown et al.,
2012). Small numbers of diminutive backed tools occur even earlier, in late Middle
Pleistocene assemblages at Kalambo Falls and perhaps the Twin River site (Barham,
2002). This is not an exclusively African phenomenon either. In Eurasia, Middle
Paleolithic assemblages contain evidence for the systematic production of small
flakes (Dibble & McPherron, 2006) and even bladelets (Jean-Philippe Faivre, 2012;
Fernández et al., 2004), though there is little evidence that any of these diminutive
stone tools were systematically hafted, much less used as weapon tips.
Another form of evidence for hafting associated with the Middle Paleolithic and
MSA consists of traces of natural mastics adhering to stone artefacts (Figure 3.12).
Such residues have only been recognized recently and are not always easily detected,
so the evidence is currently sparse. We can anticipate many additional cases to
emerge now that the researchers are better aware of the phenomenon and are
learning the best techniques for identifying residues. In any case, the geographic dis-
tribution and range of substances used is broad enough that we can assume that the
practice was very common in the past. The earliest evidence reported so far, from
the Campitello Quarry site in Italy, dates to “a cool stadial episode before isotope
stage 6 …” (Mazza et al. 2006: 1310), placing it earlier than 200 ka. A wide range
of cases date to MIS5–3. Materials used as adhesives include birch bark pitch similar
to that reported from the Campitello Quarry (Grünberg, 2015; Koller, Baumer,
& Mania, 2001) as well as natural bitumen (Boëda et al., 2008; Boëda, Connan,
& Muhesen, 2002; Carciumaru et al., 2012; Hauck et al., 2013). In the African
Middle Stone Age various resins, often combined with ochre, seem to have been
preferred for gluing artefacts into shafts or handles (e.g. Villa et al. 2005; Wadley,
2005; Lombard, 2007;Wadley et al. 2009; Charrie-Duhaut et al. 2013). Not surpris-
ingly, resin-ochre glues are often, though not always, found on small backed pieces
from Howiesons Poort assemblages. In addition to conferring a striking red colour
to the artefact, mixing iron oxide into resins can increase their toughness, making
them much less likely to fracture under loading (Lombard, 2006; Wadley, 2005).
More pervasive, if less persuasive traces of hafting are found in distinctive patterns
of damage thought to result from impact, such as that particular to projectiles
or thrusting weapons (Figure 3.13). A range of burination, fluting and “spin-off
fractures” have been shown to occur when hurled, propelled or thrust projectiles
encounter resistant materials. Impact traces were initially recognized because they
occurred on what were thought to be points, but subsequent experiments have
confirmed the significance of many forms of damage (e.g. Hutchings, 2016; Iovita
FIGURE 3.11 Hypothetical hafting positions for backed segments from Howiesons

Poort layers at Umhlatuzana Rockshelter, South Africa (potential hafting
configurations re-drawn by L. Davis after Nuzhnyi, 2000). Reprinted courtesy of
Australian National University Press.
FIGURE 3.12 Middle
Paleolithic artefacts with traces of bitumen adhesive on proximal
ends mapped, Hummal, Syria (from Monnier et al., 2013, Figure 1).
et al. 2014; Iovita & Sano 2006). Ambiguities remain to be sure (Rots & Plisson,
2014) and it is best to combine a range of evidence, including hafting modifica-
tion or wear, residues, and other observations (Lazuén, 2014) for identifying hafted
weapon tips. Nonetheless, most researchers believe that specific kinds of damage
to pointed tools are fairly robust indicators that they artefacts were subjected to
the stresses typical of projectile weapons. And such damage turns out to be quite
common. It has been identified on early Middle Stone Age artefacts (Sahle et al.,
2013;Wilkins et al., 2012) as old as 500 ka, and on early Middle Paleolithic artefacts
dating back to >200 ka from both northern Europe and the Levant (Rots, 2013;
Yaroshevich, Zaidner, & Weinstein-Evron, 2016). Traces of impact are common
though not ubiquitous throughout the Eurasian Middle Paleolithic and African
MSA (Shea 2006; Villa and Lenoir, 2009). Perhaps the clearest smoking gun is the
FIGURE 3.13 Impact scars on pointed artefacts from early Middle Paleolithic layers
at Misliya Cave, Israel (from Yaroshevich, Zaidner, and Weinstein-Evron, 2016,
Figure 8.8a, 8.9). Scale bar = 1cm.
tip of a point embedded in a vertebra of a wild ass from the site of Umm et Tlel,
Syria (Eric Boëda et al., 1999). There is no conceivable way that point ended up
where it did except on the end of spear, but this remains a fairly unique case.
When thinking about hafting and composite tools it is important to recall the
implied but invisible components of artefacts. Except for highly unusual depositional
situations such as that at Schöningen, the perishable organic parts of hafted tools,
the wood handles and fibre bindings, do not survive. Likewise, organic- based
adhesives seldom persist and even mineral substances such as bitumen can disappear
from stone artefact surfaces. So for every stone tool with hafting traces there are at
least two other elements –the handle and the binding substances –that are typic-
ally invisible. The most extreme examples of implied but invisible components are
the finely worked bone harpoons recovered from MSA levels at the site of Katanda
9 in Zaire. These artefacts, which date to at least 80 ka (Brooks et al., 1995; Yellen
et al., 1995), closely resemble fishing harpoons from much more recent periods. If
they were used in a similar way to more recent artefacts, they should also have had
a shaft, possibly a foreshaft, and a long string or thong connecting the point to the
handle.
On the other hand, we should also avoid filling in the missing bits of ancient
composite tools with overly elaborate perishable elements that may never have
existed. We can safely assume that spear or javelin points were once mounted on
long wooden or reed shafts, and that the mounting involved adhesives and/or fibre
bindings. The complexity of the hafting technology might have been greater, but
then again it might not have. Some parts of composite weapons are regularly made
of durable materials such as bone. Interestingly, evidence of components such as
bone or antler foreshafts in the MSA or Middle Paleolithic is quite sparse. Such
artefacts were an integral part of projectile technology going back as far as 40 ka
in sub-Saharan Africa (Villa et al., 2012) but are uncommon in the MSA. Late
MSA bone artefacts are mainly awls or other non-weapon implements (Backwell &
d’Errico, 2005; Backwell, d’Errico & Wadley, 2008; Henshilwood, 2012), although
a few bone points or foreshafts have been reported from Howiesons Poort levels
in southern Africa (Backwell et al., 2008). In western Eurasia Neanderthals regu-
larly hafted spear points and sometimes worked bone (Soressi et al., 2013; Villa
& d’Errico, 2001) but composite artefacts seldom if ever seem to have included
osseous components.
Much of the published evidence for hafting in the MSA and Middle
Paleolithic is associated with pointed objects that may have been used as weapon
tips. To a certain extent this is a functional association. Because they produce
obvious macroscopic damage, projectiles may be easily recognized. Moreover,
there is widespread and persistent interest among Paleoanthropologists in the role
of weaponry in human adaptations and dispersals (see discussions in McBrearty
and Brooks, 2000; Sahle et al. 2013; Villa & Roebroeks, 2014; Lombard, 2016).
Because of the over-r iding interest in projectile technology researchers may have
not looked as closely at other artefacts for traces of hafting (but see Pawlik &
Thissen, 2011; Rots, 2011, 2013; Rots et al., 2011). Evidence may eventually
point to artefacts other than points having been hafted more often than expected.
Interestingly, the earliest example of mastic or adhesive on a Paleolithic tool is a
simple flake embedded in a mass of pitch (hafting Mode A), not a weapon but a
tool for cutting or scraping.
In the end, what we may learn about hafting of artefacts other than points may
be more significant from the perspective of decision making (Rots et al. 2015).
Points cannot function well as weapons unless they are hafted. Hand-held scrapers
and other implements can and often did function perfectly well. Decisions to invest
in hafting scrapers and similar artefacts represent a narrower set of constraints, and
they may be telling us interesting things about pressures to improve the efficiency
or precision of manufacture and processing activities.
A number of researchers have proposed that advances in projectile design were
key to the rapid geographic spread of Homo sapiens after 50 ka (Barham, 2013; Beyin,
2011; Churchill & Rhodes, 2009; Shea & Sisk, 2010).They assert that improvements
in stone-tipped projectiles, and in particular the invention of projectiles that could
be propelled long distances by a spear-thrower or bow, resulted in more effective
hunting by early modern humans. These innovations allowed them to disperse rap-
idly across multiple environments. These technological developments also helped
them outcompete indigenous hominins that were equipped only with short-range
thrusting or throwing spears.
It is true that the earliest secure indications of smaller, lighter projectiles associated
with the bow and spear-thrower seem to associate with Homo sapiens exclusively,
and that some of the earliest evidence comes from southern and eastern Africa
(bows are not preserved, for obvious reasons) (Backwell et al., 2008; Lombard, 2005;
Lombard & Phillipson, 2010; Wurz, 1999, 2013). It is also true that these kinds of
implements could have been advantageous, especially in mid-and high-latitude
Eurasia. To be clear, we have no direct evidence about the relative effectiveness of
different kinds of weapons in hunting the same animals, or in hunting animals that
had been ignored before, but this is still a plausible hypothesis.
The idea that projectile weapons were key to the geographic and evolutionary
success of H. sapiens finds limited archaeological support. Even in South Africa the
Howiesons Poort strategy of making microlithic composite tools seems to have been
abandoned by around 50 ka (Wurz, 2013), and assemblages with similar artefacts
(e.g. the Uluzzian of southern Europe) appear only sporadically.The best candidates
for projectile tips in the earliest Upper Paleolithic assemblages in western, central,
and northern Asia and in Europe differ little in size and shape from the tools of
the late Neanderthals. Smaller, dart-sized points and microlithic inserts reappear
later on, with the proto-Aurignacian in southern Europe and the Ahmarian in the
Levant (Sisk & Shea, 2011). If anything, the evidence for elaboration of projectile
technology seems to come from slightly later in the Upper Paleolithic of Eurasia.
In temperate and sub-arctic Eurasia at least, some of the most impressive advances
in projectile technology seem to associate with well-established local adaptations
rather than with the initial spread of modern humans and the Upper Paleolithic
technoculture. A variety of bone, antler and stone tools from the Aurignacian and
Gravettian (ca. 40–20 ka) in Europe and the Ahmarian in southwest Asia point to
more experimentation and elaboration of weapons over time. In northeast Asia
a range of apparently dedicated bifacial, stemmed and even transverse lithic pro-
jectile tips, as well as bone and antler artefacts, appeared fairly early in the Upper
Paleolithic, but not necessarily in its earliest phases. Meanwhile there are few if any
indications for hafted stone projectile tips of any sort in east and southeast Asia
prior to the late Upper Pleistocene (Barham 2013:231–233). The first people to
arrive in Australia also appear to have thrived without any sort of elaborate pro-
jectile weapons. The scarcity of early points in tropical Asia may not surprising, as
we would expect alternative subsistence strategies in the tropics with less focus on
large game hunting than in temperate or sub-arctic contexts. Nonetheless these
cases remind us that elaborate weapons were not the only key to hominin popula-
tion expansion.
The widespread adoption of macro-blade technology across Africa and Eurasia
after 50 ka has attracted the attention of prehistorians for decades. Assumptions
about the inherent complexity or cognitive demands of macro-blade technology,
justified by little more than the statistical association between blades and anatomic-
ally modern humans, do not hold water (see Chapter 8). An alternative explanation
for the attractiveness of blades as blanks is their suitability for making hafted tools
(Bar-Yosef & Kuhn, 1999). Although the concept of predetermination is more closely
linked historically to Levallois, prismatic blade manufacture also permits a large
measure of shape control (Shea, 2013a). What is most closely controlled in fact are
width, thickness and cross-sectional morphology of blades: length is free to vary
more. And these are the dimensions that are crucial to Mode B and especially Mode
C hafting strategies. Moreover, blade-based assemblages often contain evidence for
other hafting-related modifications such as thinned butts or backing. The hafts or
handles themselves are not often recovered, probably because they were made of
FIGURE 3.14 Bladelets
from proto-Aurignacian layers at Grotta Fumane, layers A1 and
A2 (from Falcucci, Conard, & Peresani, 2017, Figure 5).
perishable materials such as wood, or because they were costly and long lasting and
thus seldom discarded before being reduced to fragments (Keeley, 1982), but micro-
and macro-wear as well as traces of adhesive may provide evidence that particular
artefacts were hafted (e.g. Deacon & Deacon, 1980; Rots, 2011; Shen et al., 2015).
Curiously, there are fewer published studies of hafting in Upper and Epipaleolithic
and LSA assemblages than in Middle Paleolithic and MSA assemblages. This prob-
ably reflects the fact that, while hafting was once considered exceptional in the
earlier periods, its existence in the Upper Paleolithic and LSA is non-controversial.
Certainly the most drastic change in the roles of stone artefacts as parts of
larger wholes since their inception came with the near-global adoption of micro-
lithic bladelet or micro-blade technology in the late Pleistocene. While the earliest
reported systematic production of very small blades dates back to 70 ka or even
earlier (Brown et al., 2012), for the next 45,000 years or so bladelet produc-
tion is only sporadically represented in the archaeological record. It was heavily
emphasized in some assemblages, such as the Howiesons Poort in South Africa (de
la Peña & Wadley, 2014; Soriano,Villa, & Wadley, 2007;Villa, Soriano, Teyssandier, &
Wurz, 2010), the proto-Aurignacian in Europe (Le Brun-Ricalens, 2005; Tsanova,
2008;Tsanova et al., 2012; ) (Figure 3.14) or the “Paleolithique intermediare” in the
Syrian desert (Boëda & Bonilauri, 2006). Howeever, bladelets were utilized much
less in other contemporary or later Upper Paleolithic or late MSA assemblages.
The big change began around 25 ka, when micro-blade and bladelet technology
in different forms became widely established across Africa and much of Eurasia.
Micro-blade production even expanded into northern and central China, marking
the first widespread disruptions of a nearly continuous sequence of relatively simple
“small tool” technologies that began >1.5 mya (Bar-Yosef and Wang 2012; Qu et al.
2012; Wang & Qu, 2014). The precise dates for the first true micro-blade assem-
blage in northern Asia remain highly controversial but their appearance is roughly
synchronous with the beginning of MIS 2 (Buvit et al., 2016; Kato, 2014; Kuzmin,
2017; Nian et al., 2014).
Some scholars treat micro-blade and bladelet as equivalent terms, and to be fair
both involve serial production of very small, elongated blanks. However, East Asian
FIGURE 3.15 Pressuremicro-blades and cores, late Pleistocene Dyuktai complex,

northeast Asia (from Gómez Coutouly and Ponkratova 2016, Figures 2 and 3).
Photograph courtesy of Dr. Yan Axel Gómez Coutouly, CNRS UMR 8096 ArchAm.
micro-blade technologies and bladelet technologies of western Eurasia and Africa

are technologically distinct. East Asian micro-blade production involved the use
of pressure to detach very small blades from small cores. Cores were often very
extensively prepared, using complex sets of procedures to achieve the correct
morphology (Bleed, 2002; Nakazawa & Yamada, 2015) (Figure 3.15). And the
micro-blades were typically used without secondary modification. In contrast
Paleolithic bladelet production in the west typically involved direct or indirect
percussion; in western Eurasia, pressure was not used in blade production until
the Neolithic (Desrosiers, 2012; Inizan, 2012; Laurent et al., 1990). Bladelets
were usually larger and more robust than Asian pressure micro-blades and were
often retouched to achieve desired sizes, shapes and cross-sectional morphologies
FIGURE 3.16 Retouched
and backed bladelets and cores, early Epipaleolithic (Kebaran)
from Meged Rockshelter, Israel. Scale bar = 3 cm. (Drawings by Kristopher Kerry.)
(Figure 3.16). Bladelets were sometimes segmented using the micro-burin tech-

nique (Figure 3.17). Although their products may be similar, eastern micro-blade
and western bladelet production systems seem to have emerged from very different
technological substrates. Neither is necessarily the ancestor nor descendent of the
other. They could represent parallel developments, a case of convergent evolution
on a similar technological solution.
FIGURE 3.17 Schematic illustration of microburin “notch and snap” technique for

sectioning small blades and bladelets. (Re-drawn by M.C. Stiner, after https://
technolithiks.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/la-retouche-a-faire/coup-du-microburin/.)
Most micro-blades and bladelets were likely hafted laterally, with one edge attached
to an armature and the other exposed to do the work of cutting or piercing. Some
were hafted by sinking one end into the armature and leaving a sharp point exposed.
The different treatments of bladelet and micro-blade edges suggest different strategies
for attaching them to the handle. Bladelets were frequently blunted along one edge by
retouch. Presumably the blunted edge was the one attached to the haft. In addition to
strengthening the piece, experimental evidence suggests that the practice of creating
a wide back via retouching promotes better adhesion of the bladelet to the arma-
ture, probably because the thicker edge provides more contact area for the adhesive
(C. Clarkson, personal communication, 2015). If so, this raises the question of how
micro-blades were attached to armatures: perhaps they were inserted into grooves to
increase surface contact areas for adhesion.
These differences aside, both bladelet and micro-blade production represent a
profound shift in the roles of stone elements in Paleolithic technologies. Hominins
had been hafting stone bits and producing small blanks for hundreds of thousands of
years. Products of other flake and blade production systems might have been hafted
but most of them could function perfectly well as hand-held implements. Not so
for micro-blades and bladelets.
The later micro-blade and bladelet technologies were focused specifically on
making blanks that could not have functioned effectively without a haft or handle.
At this stage the stone components can no longer be viewed as the primary end
product of the larger production system. Like the handles or the adhesives, they
were simply one step toward the manufacture of larger composite artefact that
was extremely effective, but the constituent elements were of limited use on their
own. The emphasis on small blanks also points to a widespread shift toward Mode
C hafting strategies, the manufacture of standardized blanks to fit (relatively)
standardized holders. There is very little potential for reshaping these small artefacts
except by making them shorter, implying that they were made to fit a limited array
of pre-made sockets or groves.
I should emphasize that microlithization did not stop people from producing
larger stone tools in the later periods. Larger scrapers, burins, and other forms are
typically found in the same late Pleistocene assemblages, although some of these
forms underwent some diminution as well. Apparently, some tool applications
required robust edges or forms of leverage that could not be replicated using sets
of small blades. We don’t actually know what typical toolkits would have been like
back then and how many kinds of implements would have incorporated micro-
lithic elements. Bladelets and micro-blades are often numerically dominant in the
assemblages, but they also had different life histories than other implement forms.
Because they were designed to be replaceable parts, they were readily discarded
when broken or worn rather than being reworked or resharpened.
The near-global tendency toward microlithization around the beginning of
the LGM in Eurasia and Africa is a phenomenon that resists easy explanation (see
papers in Elston and Kuhn 2002). The strategy offers many possible advantages.
Making composite edges out of many tiny elements reduces demands on raw
material quantity and nodule size, allowing makers to produce long edges from
many small pieces of stone. The fact that toolkits can be refurbished from a store
of replacement parts that weighs next to nothing also makes such technologies
ideal for mobile peoples. Yet bladelet and micro-blade technologies were readily
adopted in many places where good quality raw material was abundant, by groups
of foragers who responded to the LGM by increasing mobility in some areas and
becoming less mobile in others.
Adopting composite tools with easily replaced stone cutting edges for certain tasks
could increase both the effectiveness and the maintainability of the implements (Bleed,
2002; Elston & Brantingham, 2002; Pétillon et al., 2011), though to be clear we have
no experimental results to show us how much more effective these implements would
have been. At the same time, making such artefacts would have entailed substantial
costs in terms of production time. A more general explanation hinges on the fact that
technological systems involving Mode C hafting and interchangeable parts have a very
high level of flexibility and evolveability. The same basic parts can be used to produce
implements with a vast range of forms and functions (D. Clarke, 1976). The profound
environmental changes that occurred across the globe after 25 ka initiated a diversity
of economic responses, running the gamut from dietary intensification and specializa-
tion to marked broadening of diets. Changing environments and economies may have
placed a premium on the adaptability of technologies. It is also worth emphasizing
that the remarkable dispersal of technological procedures such as those associated with
pressure micro-blade production could only occur in a densely inter-connected social
world. Conditions must have been right for people to adopt specific sets of procedures
over very wide areas during toward the end of the Pleistocene, but conditions must also
have been right for people to learn about those innovations.
3.5 Summary: The global record of hafting and

composite tools
Global patterns in the development of hafting and composite tools during the
Paleolithic are summarized in Figure 3.18. Note that here, and in subsequent
FIGURE 3.18 Summary of developments in hafting and composite tools.
summary figures, the vertical chronological scale is logarithmic: this effectively

expands recent time periods relative to earlier ones. I have included data from both
Africa and Eurasia in the same table.
The earliest definitive developments with respect to composite tools occur
during the first half of the Middle Pleistocene. Although claims have been made
for hafting even earlier (at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov), the earliest cases for hafting
supported by direct evidence date to ca. 400–500 ka. Hafted elements include pos-
sible spear points (e.g. Kathu Pan) as well as simple flakes and flake tools (somewhat
later at Schöningen). Evidence for composite tools, whether weapons or processing
implements, becomes more and more common over the course of the later Middle
and early Upper Pleistocene. In part this trend may reflect a reverse taphonomic
effect, the consequence of better preservation of fragile evidence, but the trend also
certainly represents increasing ubiquity of hafting as a strategy for improving the
functionality of artefacts. Evidence for hafted points is regularly encountered in
assemblages in Africa, western Asia and Europe dating to after 250 ka. The earliest
use of natural or manufactured resins is documented at ca. 200 ka (Campitello
quarry) but widespread hafting of pointed tools at the ends of handles, whether as
weapon tips or knives, must have involved the use of some kind of mastic or glue
even if traces not typically preserved.
The frequency and abundance of composite tools continued to increase into the
early Upper Pleistocene, with phenomena such as the Aterian. However, there is
no obvious break from earlier technologies –it is simply more of the same kind of
thing, at least as far as can be determined from the lithic component.
The next major development involved the incorporation of microlithic inter-
changeable parts into composite tools. Although earlier examples have been
reported, production of geometric segments, probably evidence of Mode C hafting,
is robustly represented after 55 ka in the Howiesons Poort industries in South
Africa. Bladelet or segment-dominated assemblages appear in Europe around 42
ka, with the Uluzzian and the slightly later proto-Aurignacian. Yet bladelet-based
technologies continued to come and go in Africa and western Eurasia until around
25 ka, roughly coincident with the onset of MIS 2. At this juncture, the appearance
of the Gravettian in Europe, early Epipaleolithic in southwest Asia, and the earliest
micro-blade assemblages in northwest Asia mark the appearance and rapid spread
of technologies involving a wholesale commitment to Mode C interchangeable-
part technologies for the manufacture of weapons and other implements. Eastern
(micro-blade) and western (bladelet) manifestations of the strategy involved different
methods for making the stone elements, but the broader emphasis was on flexible,
“evolvable” artefact forms. This emphasis on small blade(lets) and multiple stone
insets in composite tools continued through the end of the Pleistocene, and well
into the Holocene in some places.
4
RAW MATERIAL ECONOMIES
4.1 The paleoeconomics of raw material

Many different sorts of rock are suitable for knapping, and stones that can be used
to produce serviceable tools are not necessarily rare globally. On the other hand,
distributions of high-quality flakeable stones, such as flint, obsidian, quartzite or
basalt, are fragmented at a range of scales. Great loess plains, such as cover large
parts of northern China, eastern Europe, or the middle of North America, contain
few surface exposures of stone of any kind. The same can be said of vast alluvial
plains of Mesopotamia or the Mississippi Delta. In places where bedrock is exposed
not all of it can be flaked, and large areas may be bereft of stone suitable for making
serviceable implements. At the level of resolution of geological maps (typically
1:100,000 at best) these areas may appear to contain continuous distributions of
raw material sources, but at the scale of human movement, measured in tens of
kilometres, raw materials may be quite patchily distributed. Even in areas that are
nominally rich in high-quality stone, such as the eastern Mediterranean Levant,
southwestern Europe, or the volcanic landscapes of the southern Caucasus or cen-
tral Anatolia, one can find large stretches without primary sources of good quality
lithic raw material.
The discontinuous distribution of usable rocks presents a fundamental problem
for people who make and use stone tools, especially when they are mobile: they
cannot always count on finding necessary raw materials where and when they
need them. Spatial discontinuities are obvious, but even where raw materials are
essentially ubiquitous a temporal element comes into play. For activities such as
butchering animals or carving wood it might be practical make what you needed for
a task when a need presented itself. However, for an activity that takes place within
a more restricted temporal window, say hunting large animals with stone-tipped
spears, some kind of prior preparation is crucial. The strategy of producing tools
Raw material economies 69
only when a need presented itself would result in despondent hunters watching
their intended prey disappear over the horizon as they worked frantically to fashion
and mount a spear point.
Because distributions of stone seldom map perfectly onto the places and times
where people may need tools, users of stone tools have developed a range of strat-
egies for making sure they have artefacts on hand when they need them. Over the
past three decades studies of the ways people maintained an adequate supply of raw
materials have grown in number and sophistication. Studies of “lithic raw material
economy” or the “approvisionnement du matière premièr” in one form or another,
have become an integral part of research from the Lower Paleolithic to the histor-
ical periods. Part of the growth in interest in raw material economy is a response
to technical developments which permit more reliable and cheaper attribution of
materials to sources. The wider availability of multiple techniques for source attri-
bution, and their lower costs, enable archaeologists to answer questions that were
previously unresolvable. Another part of the attraction is the recognition that raw
material economy, sensu lato, impacts and is impacted by a wide range of other phe-
nomena relevant to the evolution of human behaviour and societies: it is a nexus
for learning about many aspects of the remote past.
As the term “raw material economy” implies, most studies of raw material
used begin from a cost/benefit perspective. While it is not always stated expli-
citly, a widespread assumption is that people will try and optimize their use of raw
materials, obtaining the greatest utility with the least effort. This seems like a rea-
sonable assumption. Artefacts help people do what they really need to do-nourish
themselves, keep warm and dry, or communicate with others –better or more
efficiently. Time and energy expended on maintaining a supply of artefacts is not
available for pursuits that more directly contribute to well-being and biological
fitness. So it is reasonable to imagine that people ought to minimize the costs of
making the artefacts they need, leaving more time and energy for more crucial
pursuits. On the other hand, this is, or should be, a heuristic null hypothesis rather
than an assumption. Optimal outcomes are not inevitable. Conflicting needs and
exigencies conspire to prevent foragers –human or not –from achieving a truly
optimal solution in any single domain (Parker & Smith, 1990). The same should be
true of raw material use. Departures from the optimal, evidence that people in the
past did not behave as expected, point to these conflicting factors, to errors in the
choice of currencies or to variables that overrode benefits of using raw materials
with maximum efficiency.
Integral to much current research on lithic raw material economy are the
concepts of curation and expediency introduced by L. Binford in a series of sem-
inal papers (Binford, 1973, 1976, 1979).The proper definition of the these concepts
and appropriate measurement of the phenomena have received a great deal of crit-
ical attention which I will not review here (but see Nash, 1996; Shott, 1996). The
broader influence of these concepts can be boiled down to the recognition of one
fundamental fact.There are two ways to make tools available when they are needed.
One is to make things on the spot, which is what Binford called an expedient
70 Raw material economies
strategy. The other is to make tools in advance of any intended use, which is what
he termed curation. In his original 1973 article Binford was concerned mainly with
the fact that making tools in advance resulted in a disjunction between locations of
manufacture, use, and discard, so that the functions of artefacts in an assemblage of
“curated” implements might have little to do with the activities actually conducted
on site. As he developed the concepts in later papers (1976, 1979) he began to
explore the situations in which the strategies might be beneficial.
As originally proposed, the concepts of curated and expedient production were
obviously simplified in the extreme. There are many variations on each theme, and
many shades of difference between making things in advance and making them on
the spot. Early on, M. Nelson (1991) offered a refinement of the notion of expe-
dience. She distinguished between opportunistic or ad hoc production and expedi-
ency per se. The difference is in the degree to which artefact production is planned.
People can plan to be expedient. If they know that raw materials will be available
where needed and that they will not be pressed for time, they can simply plan to
make artefacts on the spot. This sort of strategy saves people putting unneeded
effort toward making artefacts that will never be used. Opportunistic production in
contrast is unanticipated: people make do with whatever is at hand to meet unfore-
seen needs. Empirically it may be difficult to tell the products of the two strategies
apart, but the distinction is not trivial. It reminds us that simple tools and localized
production can be a result of strategic thinking and not just improvisation.
There are also different varieties of curation, or at least of forward planning.
I find it easiest to think about this in terms of “technological provisioning” (Kuhn,
1992, 1995, 2004b). If people want to make certain artefacts are available for future
exigencies, and they can’t count on the necessary raw materials being available, they
have two basic options. They can make sure each individual is provided with the
implements she or he will need. Alternatively, they can make sure that raw material
or finished tools are on hand at the places where activities are likely to occur.
Because individuals are mobile and places are not, strategies of provisioning indi-
viduals and provisioning of places should entail different choices about the kinds of
artefacts to use and how to treat them. Choices between these strategic alternatives
should depend on the distribution of raw materials, the way people organize their
activities across landscapes, and the nature of the activities themselves.
Before proceeding, it is important to emphasize that Paleolithic raw material
economies are inherently interesting (to some of us anyway), but learning about
them is not the ultimate goal. Studies of raw material economies have become
an important part of research on human evolution because the making and using
of tools would have been closely linked to many other domains of hominin
life. Learning how Paleolithic hominins dealt with the challenges inherent in
maintaining their supplies of raw materials and finished implements can advance
our understanding of their ecology, cognitive abilities, and social relations. Most
fundamentally, the treatment of raw materials is directly linked to the degree to
which hominins relied on technology in their daily lives. As discussed in the second
chapter, artefacts have become increasingly central to the survival of hominins over
the past 3 million years or so. Early on, stone tools were probably helpful adjuncts
but not absolutely essential. Hominins could get the resources they needed without
the aid of artefacts (albeit less efficiently) or could forego the resources that required
tools to extract. Under such circumstances there was little need to plan ahead: it
was sufficient to rely on ad hoc production because there was no great cost to being
caught short. However, as stone tools –or implements of other materials made and
maintained with stone tools –became more important for day-to-day survival, the
pressures to anticipating needs in advance increased. If you cannot survive without
stone artefacts, it is mandatory to adopt strategies for making certain you never run
out or them.
Archaeologists have also looked to the economics of raw material manage-
ment for clues about hominin cognition. A number of researchers have pointed
to distances over which raw materials were transported as indicators of the ability
of hominins to anticipate their future needs. Changes in the scale of transport,
usually measured as maximum transport distance, have been cited as evidence for
differences among hominin taxa in cognitive capacity to plan: likewise, similar-
ities in transport distances have been used to argue that different taxa had similar
cognitive abilities (e.g. Roebroeks, Kolen, & Rensink, 1988). Other scholars have
considered the complexity of tactics for extending the utility of artefacts, arguing
that strategies such as lateral recycling of artefacts and “ramified life histories”
are indicators of complex forward planning (Barkai, Lemorini, & Vaquero, 2015;
Bourguignon, Faivre, & Turq, 2004).
In principle, the ways that Pleistocene hominins managed raw materials and
husbanded the utility of implements ought to be limited by their abilities to think
ahead and to develop and execute necessary strategies. However, as argued above,
people did not always have to think ahead in order to cope with future needs.
Where raw material was abundant and time was not limited, people could plan
to make tools when needs arose, freeing them from the need to carry heavy rocks
around with them. Anyone who has used a handy rock to hammer in a tent stake
or removed a cap from a bottle using the base of a plastic lighter is proof that even
contemporary humans with fully modern minds often rely on expedient or even
opportunistic strategies. Before we can draw conclusions about changes in cogni-
tion or the role of tools in hominin adaptations we need to understand the other,
more proximate conditions that influence strategies for managing artefacts and raw
materials.
One obvious influence on strategies for raw material management is mobility.
Arguably the simplest way to make sure implements available when needed is to
stockpile raw material or finished tools at places where activities are likely to take
place. However, the viability of this strategy depends on how regularly and how
often people revisit the same locations. If people are tethered to one or a few
locations, if most of the things they do with stone tools take place in a few spots
on the landscape, then provisioning those places with raw materials is a very prac-
tical option, especially if the raw material can be accessed easily. However, if people
move around a lot, if they spend relatively little time in any one location, or if they
return to places infrequently, irregularly, or not at all, it is a waste of effort to stock-

pile implements or workable stone there. The more people move around, and the
less frequently the revisit specific places, the more they must rely on what they carry
with them. As residential mobility increases we expect people to reply more on
provisioning individuals with “personal gear” (Kuhn, 1992, 1995, 2004c). Of course,
we shouldn’t expect to find evidence of pure strategies in Paleolithic sites. Among
sedentary groups some individuals move over considerable distances and require
personal gear. And even the most mobile foragers will remain in some locations
long enough, or revisit them often enough, to make it worthwhile caching some
tools or raw materials there. Add to this the phenomenon of time-averaging in
archaeological accumulations and it is obvious that any one assemblage will contain
debris representing a range of different strategies.
The scheduling of activities in time and space also affects the viability of different
strategies for controlling the supply of raw materials. Taking time out from some
economic pursuit to make tools may entail significant opportunity costs. Activities
that must be carried out within a narrow window of opportunity often require that
people “gear up” in advance. Fortunately, foragers often have down-time, time they
can devote to making things with little opportunity cost. If economic pursuits are
highly seasonal, as among many high-latitude hunter-gatherers, there may be long
periods of down-time, and manufacture is one way to fill the idle hours. Activities
such as making skin clothing are also restricted by the availability of necessary
raw materials: the Netsilik Inuit made all new clothing in the fall, when caribou
skins were in prime condition (Balikci, 1970: 52–53). The tools needed for such
concentrated work sessions can be met by amassing the necessary supplies at the
place where the work will be done. Where foraging is a more constant, year-round
activity, time to make tools may be broken up into smaller intervals and opportun-
ities to knap stone may be scattered across a range of places on the landscape. Under
these conditions people are constrained to carry with them not only the tools they
need to get food but also the implements they need to make other implements.
Male foragers in parts of arid Australia went nowhere without at least a few basic
implements, including a spear and spear-thrower, the latter of which could some-
times double as a shield or carrying tray. Affixed to the end of the spear-thrower, or
sometimes another object, was a stone adze which could be used to manufacture
or repair other wooden implements (Balfour, 1951; Gould, 1966, 1980; McCarthy,
1976). Division of labour and full-or part-time specialization can also affect the
scheduling of manufacture and management of raw materials. Specialists can more
easily block out time for their work, making it more practical to meet their needs
by planning ahead. As any working mother can tell you, individuals who need to
divide their time among more competing activities have less ability to anticipate
where and when they’ll have a chance to work on specific projects,
Ultimately, we study raw material economies to learn about the behaviour,
ecology, and cognition of past people. Trying to understand how changes in
mobility or seasonality of activity scheduling affected raw material economies in
the past can help is isolate changes that are due to evolution of hominin capacities
for planning and strategic thought. An added benefit is that mobility and the organ-
ization of labour are interesting in themselves-they are integral to the adaptations
of hominins in particular times and places. However other, non-human variables
also influence the organization of lithic raw material economies.
4.2 How important are raw material effects?

A range studies have shown how the distributions and sizes of raw material sources
as well as the qualities of the stones available in different places impact the ways
people managed raw materials. Abundant and ubiquitous raw material enables
people to be comparatively wasteful and to engage in less active preparation and
gearing up, irrespective of their capacity to think ahead or the time constraints on
artefact manufacture. Conversely, where raw materials are scarce or absent people
must make special effort to be sure that have what they need. Responses to local
scarcity typically include moving artefacts and raw materials to places where they
are needed, as well as a range of tactics that prolong the useful lives of artefacts.
Four decades ago, a debate arose about the main influences on the nature of raw
material economies. Some researchers focused on constraints imposed by factors
such as mobility and the scheduling of foraging activities (Binford, 1976, 1979;
Bousman, 1993; Kelly, 1988b; Torrence, 2001). Other researchers (Andrefsky, 1994,
2008; Bamforth, 1986) argued that raw material abundance and quality had a much
greater effect on the organization of lithic technology, and especially on the degree
to which people relied on curated or expediently produced tools. Some important
generalizations and principles came out of this debate, but ultimately it is not an
either-or question (Kuhn, 1991, 1995; Odell, 2000). We can assume that both sets
of factors had important effects on choices about how and where to make, maintain
and discard tools. However, it is also important to recognize that we are interested
in these two sets of variables for very different reasons. We do not study archaeo-
logical lithics to learn about the distributions of useful stones: this is more easily
understood by studying the contemporary geosphere. Ultimately, we would like to
use lithic evidence to learn something about the ways past peoples organized their
activities in time and space. Consequently, raw material effects are of interest mainly
because of the ways they might have constrained responses to other factors. Facts
about lithic raw material distributions are analogous to knowledge of vertebrate
anatomy in zooarchaeological studies of butchering practices: understanding what
skeletons are like informs researchers about the practicality of different solutions to
taking them apart.
The qualities of lithic raw materials can also constrain what people do and what
options they have for artefact manufacture and maintenance: some of these effects
are discussed in more detail in Chapter 6. However, differential quality of raw
materials is a particular logistical challenge. If people aim to make specific artefact
forms, they will figure out how to produce them, whether by making them with
local stone or importing the quality raw materials that will make their jobs easier.
If people must have stones with particular qualities to accomplish their goals, and
if such materials can only be obtained from distant sources, then they must take
special efforts to collect and transport the stone to places it is needed. Evidence for
high-effort exploitation of raw materials with unusual properties can be inform-
ative about the importance of particular artefact forms and production strategies
(e.g. Tomasso & Porraz, 2016). Conversely, evidence that hominins were compara-
tively indifferent to raw material quality, that they were content to use whatever was
available, may be telling us that the functional properties of the artefacts in question
were not terribly important. But such indifference can also indicate that constraints
on time, mobility, or even cognitive capacity over-rode functional considerations.
Stone tools were important to the survival and evolutionary success of Paleolithic
hominins. An interesting, though perhaps unanswerable question, is whether
hominins made decisions about where to move and where to stay based on the
presence of stone raw materials (e.g. Daniel, 2001). Like more contemporary and
historically-documented foragers, we can assume that they went out of their way
to collect stone, especially if it was of good quality. But did they decided where to
camp based on whether stone was plentiful? On economic grounds this is very
unlikely. People consume much more water, firewood, and food than stone over the
course of a day, week, or month. Requirements for water, food energy and heat are
also effectively fixed by metabolism, group size and climate. One can easily carry
enough stone tools to survive for several months, but it is effectively impossible to
carry enough food, fuel or water to get one through the same period. People have
many options for conserving raw materials, for extending the useful lives of tools
and cores. So unless one is there just to extract raw material, it doesn’t make sense
to camp next to a raw material source if it means you have to carry water, fuel, or
food farther.
But if this is true why do we often see higher densities of sites around raw
material sources and in areas where raw material is abundant? Some of these places
were probably attractive locations for a range of reasons. However, the associations
may be more a function of visibility than settlement frequency or duration. When
raw material is abundant people afford to be wasteful with it –they create masses of
debris, which make sites easier to identify. The farther they are from raw material,
the harder it is to obtain, the more carefully they conserve it. A group of 25 people
staying for two weeks in a camp adjacent to a source of high-quality flint will gen-
erate a much larger, more persistent and more easily discovered accumulation of
debris than if they were camping 50 km from the closest flint source. Consequently,
holding numbers of occupants and length of occupation constant, sites located
close to raw material will be more easily spotted, and more resistant to geological
destruction, than sites situated at some distance from usable stone.
4.3 Assessing cost
A fundamental concept in any discussion of economy is cost, the amount of time,
energy, or other commodity required to obtain a particular good. With stone
artefacts a very large part of the cost is embodied in the raw material. Most stone
tools did not require substantial amounts of time and energy to produce. Fairly
elaborate products such as Clovis points or micro-blade cores on bifacial blanks can
be prepared and/or fully exploited in an hour or less. I am unaware of published
studies detailing the energetic costs of flintknapping, but similar low-impact, non-
aerobic, seated manual activities have energy costs only slightly higher than resting
metabolism (Vaz et al., 2005). On the other hand as Beck and colleagues have so
perceptively observed, “rocks are heavy” (Beck et al., 2002) Extracting stone from
the geological substrate and moving it to the places it will be processed or used can
demand substantial amounts of time or energy. The energetic costs of fetching and
carrying heavy materials such as wood, water, or stone are more than twice those of
seated manual work (Food and Agricutural Organization, 2001).
Even though we may recognize that raw material procurement and transport
are potentially the most costly dimensions of lithic technology, assessing cost is no
simple matter. The most common proxy for cost is the distance from the point of
procurement to point of discard. Assuming that sources can be identified, the linear
distance from the nearest source is often used as an index of the amount of time
and energy needed to get the materials to where they were needed. In fact, distance
to source is typically our only way of gauging how much effort people put into
obtaining raw material, and thus how much effort they put into producing stone
artefacts. But distance is also a highly imperfect measure.
Models of lithic raw material use in Paleolithic sites typically take one of two
forms. Sometimes researchers refer to concentric zones of exploitation with the
site at the centre. One of the best known and most widely-emulated concentric-
ring models was proposed by J.-M. Geneste in his pioneering studies of Middle
Paleolithic raw material economies in the French Perigord (Geneste, 1985, 1988,
1992) (Figure 4.1). The concentric-r ing approach is better suited to areas with
many different sources and exposures, where it is difficult to link an archaeo-
logical specimen to a specific spot on the landscape. An alternative approach is
to create “spider diagrams,” with straight lines connecting sites and sources (e.g.
Féblot-Augustins, 1993, 1997, 2009) (Figure 4.2). This way of thinking about
the phenomenon is more appropriate to situations where sources are fewer and
more discrete.
There are two principal weaknesses with both the concentric-r ing or straight-
line approaches to assessing raw material costs. One realization coming out of fine-
grained, GIS-based studies of raw material exposures is that the cost of obtaining
a raw material and moving it to a particular place is highly dependent on local
landscape structure. Straight-line distances between source and site or concentric
zones of raw material procurement assume a two-dimensional world. Depending
on how steep and convoluted the topography is, straight-line distance may be a
poor estimate of the amount of energy needed to get from point A to point B on
a real landscape. A source that looks close on a map may be difficult to reach from
a particular starting point, whereas another seemingly more distant source may be
quite accessible. The solution is simply to take topography, accessibility and nat-
ural routes of movement and transport more seriously in considering raw material
FIGURE 4.1 Schematic version of “concentric-r ing” model of raw material

exploitation, from the early Middle Paleolithic site of Grotte Vaufrey, France. Rings
indicate zones of raw material procurement, whereas lines show direction and distance
to specific sources (indicated with numbers and letters) (redrawn after Geneste, 1988).
economies (Browne & Wilson, 2013; Heasley, 2015; Wilson, 2007b, 2007a; Wilson
& Browne, 2014) (Figure 4.3).
The second weakness with using straight-line distance as a proxy for raw material
cost is its assumption about how materials were procured and moved. Somewhat
miraculously, every site appears at the dead centre of concentric-r ing maps or “spider
diagrams.” The implication is that stones were always carried directly from source
to site, that people went out from the place to collect raw materials for use there.
This is a reasonable assumption for sedentary peoples but it makes less sense when
thinking about mobile foragers. Mobile people come and go from persistent places
on the landscape, and artefacts can find their way to those places in different ways.
The two provisioning strategies discussed above have very different implications for
the relationship between cost and distance to source. In provisioning a place, people
collect raw material in order to return it to location where it will be used. In this
context, site-to-source distance should have a direct relationship to cost, especially
when topography is taken into account. However, artefacts provisioned to individ-
uals entail very different costs. Objects making up transported personal gear may
be moved around quite a bit before being abandoned. Thinking about our own
personal gear illustrates this very well. I recently retired a daypack that I had used
for about 10 years. The pack had travelled thousands of kilometres as I carried it
back and forth to field projects, conferences and vacation spots. I finally replaced it
when the zippers wore out. But it entered the archaeological record –the regional
FIGURE 4.2 Example of a “spider diagram” showing direct distances between a site

and sources of lithic raw materials. In this case the site is Gargas, France, well-known
for its Gravettian archaeological sequence and rich parietal art (from Foucher, 2015,
Figure 7).
land fill to be precise –a few kilometres from the store where I purchased it. Since
personal gear is carried around habitually rather than being taken directly to a par-
ticular location, the distance between its source and its final resting place is related
to its true cost in a peripheral way: it is at best an absolute minimum measure of
transport distance, and possibly a severe underestimate.
Even when dealing materials transported as part of provisioning of place, dis-
tance to source is not an unambiguous measure of cost. The distances people
would have had to travel from a site to a source is a good measure of cost only
in the case of direct procurement. Binford (1979) coined the term “embedded
procurement” to describe a strategy where people obtain the raw materials
they need for toolmaking in the context of other subsistence tasks. Rather than
making a special trip from basecamp to quarry, they would wait until other needs
brought them into the area where stone could also be collected. Organizing the
procurement of raw materials so that stone is collected during other foraging
activities reduces the cost of raw materials to the effort expended in carrying
the extra mass from quarry to base camp: it avoids the time and energy costs
of a two-way journey. Binford further claimed (1979:259) that embedded pro-
curement was the rule among hunter- gatherers, stating that “Raw materials
used in the manufacture of implements are normally obtained incidental to the
FIGURE 4.3 Potentialraw material exploitation zones expressed as travel time around

the Côa Valley, Portugal (from Aubrey et al. 2012, Figure 2).
execution of basic subsistence tasks.” Although there is little direct evidence to

support this generalization, it has become a fundamental assumption in many
studies of lithic raw material economy (Tomasso & Porraz, 2016). In fact, we
cannot say a priori how often lithic procurement was embedded in other sub-
sistence tasks. It is a reasonable null hypothesis in so far as it minimizes costs
(Surovell 2009: 128–129), but it should not be taken as a given. Close analysis of
the relationship between raw material utilization and the effective distances from
sources to sites as well as the general accessibility of particular exposures should
reveal whether particular kinds of rock were accessed via direct procurement
(targeted forays) or embedded procurement.
4.4 The epistemology of source attribution

Crucial to understanding lithic raw material economies is identifying the sources of
raw materials. Sourcing of lithic raw materials is widely perceived as being primarily
a technical challenge.While the technical aspects are indeed crucial, and while there
have been many advances in the geochemical and petrological fingerprinting of
rocks, there are other conceptual issues with which we must contend. Perhaps the
most fundamental of these is “what is a source?”
The term “source” applies at multiple levels and scales of resolution. At the
coarsest level of resolution is the geological or primary source. This is the bed or
deposit in which a particular rock originated. An intermediate level of source is the

depositional or secondary source, the place where the rock ended up subsequent
to its geological genesis. Rocks may not be available in their original context, and
indeed the original context may be buried or destroyed. Usable packages of poten-
tial raw material often occur in gravels or conglomerates which are more-or-less
widely distributed. The third, and smallest level of source consists of exposures that
people can access. Primary or secondary sources, as shown on geologic maps for
example may extend over very large areas, but these are seldom accessible to people
in their entirety. Most often, humans can access the rocks they are after through
small and sometimes changing windows of exposure.
These three levels of source may be effectively identical, or they may be quite
different in scale and mutability. At one extreme we can imagine a feature such as an
isolated volcanic plug containing obsidian or vitreous basalt. Here all three levels of
source are essentially identical. The material has not been moved from the point of
its genesis and it is accessible there. At the other extreme would be something like
a tertiary gravel occurring within a large sedimentary basin or a terminal moraine
deposit extending over a former glacial front. The gravel might contain poten-
tial lithic raw materials of a range of ages and geological origins, from cherts and
quartzites to fine-g rained volcanic rocks. However, all are in secondary position,
removed from their point of geological origin. Moreover, the secondary deposit is
covered with a blanket of more recent sediment and outcrops in a limited number
of places. In such cases all three levels of source are different in spatial extent as well
as their potential to vary over time scales relevant to archaeologists.
The emphasis on multiple scales of “source” is more than just an academic
exercise. Whereas we might call all of these phenomena sources, they differ in the
level of precision with which we can attribute archaeological specimens to them.
Scientific techniques serve to attribute rocks to their primary sources. A specimen’s
chemical or isotopic makeup or its petrology can tell an informed specialist how
and where it was formed, and, with sufficient background knowledge, can be used
to link it to a specific bed or deposit. But this does not necessarily tell us where
people in the past obtained it.When secondary deposits are involved it may be pos-
sible to conclude that a material comes from some secondary context, based on the
development of neo-cortex, but little beyond that. If multiple secondary sources
are present it may be possible to distinguish things coming from one or another
of them based on their primary lithology or on the particular formation of the
neo-cortex (Fernandes et al., 2007; Fernandes, Raynal, & Moncel, 2006, 2008) but
this sort of “sourcing” is much less secure than chemical, petrological or isotopic
source attribution. And even identifying a secondary source may not tell us very
much about where rocks were actually collected by people in the past, especially if
the source covers a large area. Local exposures may not be differentiable at all, and
they can be short-lived. Returning to the two extreme examples described above,
chemical sourcing of obsidian from a specific volcanic vent might tell one with a
high degree of certainty that a particular specimen was collected from a locality a
few thousand square metres in extension. Tracing stones to a particular gravel or
moraine deposit using chemical or petrographic analyses might only tell one that
an artefact came from somewhere within a deposit covering hundreds or thousands
of square kilometres.
Learning something about local exposures is even more challenging because
they are smaller than the typical resolution of geological maps and can be exposed
or destroyed quite quickly in geological terms. Geological maps typically do not
tell one where particular elements of a deposit can be encountered on the sur-
face, and ancient landscapes are only partially accessible to contemporary scholars.
Researchers working on Plio-Pliestocene sites in East Africa, for example can make
a best guess as to the sources of knappable stone closest to a given site, but they
have limited information about might have been exposed a few hundred metres
to the other side of an unexcavated slope. Other landscapes may be so dynamic
that their current morphology bears little relation to conditions a few thousand
years ago. I learned something about this working in and around the obsidian
sources of the Göllüdağ volcanic complex in central Anatolia. In this very dynamic
landscape, dykes of obsidian can be exposed or buried within a few years. The
vast Neolithic workshops at Kaletepe (Balkan-Atlı et al., 2001; Binder, Gratuze,
Mouralis, & Balkan-Atlı, 2011; Cauvin, Binder, & Balkan-Atlı, 1998) were located
adjacent to a dyke yielding massive blocks of obsidian.Yet when excavations began
there was no trace of the obsidian source on the surface: the primary deposit was
re-exposed by erosion only after several years (N. Balkan-Atlı personal communi-
cation 2011) (Figure 4.4).
The potential for attributing different kinds of rock to primary sources varies.
Obsidian is the most easily sourced of the common lithic raw materials. X-ray
fluorescence (XRF), a widely available and inexpensive technique, is sufficient for
most obsidian sourcing problems, although sometimes more precise chemical ana-
lytic techniques are necessary (Glascock et al., 1994; Orange et al., 2016; Shackley,
2008). The development of portable XRF technology has opened the field further,
permitting analysis of larger samples, and equally importantly, more thorough docu-
mentation of exposures in the field. Sadly, obsidian was not very widely distributed
in the Paleolithic world. Other volcanic stones such as basalts and rhyolites formed
under less restrictive conditions than obsidian and it may be much more difficult
to attribute them to specific sources. Crypto-crystalline silica rocks such as flint,
chert, and chalcedony, were very widely utilized in the Paleolithic across Africa
and Eurasia. There is no single go-to method for sourcing these kinds of stones.
Instead researchers often apply a hierarchy of methods beginning with simple
description of macroscopic properties, and ending (funding permitting) with costly
methods such as Inductively Coupled Mass Spectrometry (ICPMS). Researchers
have met with increasing levels of success in using such multi-staged approaches
to attributing flints and cherts to sources (Ekshtain et al., 2016; Hughes, Högberg,
& Olausson, 2010; Wilson, 2007b; Wilson et al., 2016; Wilson & Browne, 2014).
Even so the usefulness of these techniques is unpredictable: sometimes they work
and sometimes they don’t. With many metamorphic materials (metaquartzites, for
example) or common intrusive igneous rocks such as vein quartzite there is little
FIGURE 4.4 Kaletepe obsidian deposits and workshop, central Turkey. When research
on the massive Neolithic and Chalcolithic workshop began, the primary exposures
(inset) were not visible. Only after the drainage which runs through the centre of the
photograph down-cut was the obsidian dyke exposed.
hope of precise source attribution. On the other hand, surprisingly good results
have been reported in attempts to attribute samples of silcrete, which forms when
sand and gravel in soils is cemented by silica dissolved in groundwater, to specific
sources (Nash et al., 2013).
Methods for attributing materials to secondary sources are much less developed.
Generally speaking, chemical or structural characterization is not much of a help
in these cases unless a particular secondary deposit happens to contain a rock type
that is not present in any others. Sometimes neo-cortex, the erosional rind that
develops on the outside of a pebble is sufficiently distinctive to tie a specimen
to a particular type of secondary source: for instance, the surfaces of marine
pebbles often show a very distinctive frosted, pitted appearance. Scanning electron
microscopy and petrographic methods have been used to study the depositional
history of flints from archaeological sites in Europe and North Africa, revealing
not only something about their origins but also the sedimentary histories of
the secondary deposits themselves (Fernandes et al., 2007; Fernandes & Raynal,
2006).The quantities and proportions of cosmogenic isotopes of Be and Al on the

surfaces of flint artefacts have even been used to determine the amount of time
the specimens have been exposed on the surface, and by implication whether
they had been collected from secondary position or extracted directly from the
limestone (Verri et al., 2004, 2005). However, these latter approaches are quite
costly and time-consuming, and they can only be used on specimens that preserve
dorsal cortex.
In the end, the success of any technique in helping to attribute lithic raw
materials to particular sources depends on the nature of the geological environ-
ment. If materials are sufficiently distinctive and sources sufficiently isolated, then
visual methods of source attribution may be sufficient. If there is but one source of
flint within a radius of 500 km of a site, then there is seldom much to gain from
expensive and time-consuming chemical analyses so long as the archaeological
materials resemble what comes from the source. And, contrary to expectations,
some inexpensive and unusual methods may be sufficient to distinguish between
materials in certain contexts (e.g. Hassler et al., 2013; Mackay et al., 2013; Olivares
et al., 2013). It all depends on what kinds of rocks are in the environment and how
different they are.The best rule of thumb for most materials seems to be “try every-
thing within your budget and see what works.” The pace of technical development
is also quite high so what is impossible today may be feasible a few years hence.
Excitement about technical developments in raw material source attribution is
justified. Still, the most important element of any attempt to determine the origins
of lithic materials has nothing to do with chemical analyses, petrography, or even
the archaeological evidence itself. The reliability of any source attribution is abso-
lutely dependent on the degree of understanding of the geological environment.
The most accurate technique for measuring trace element concentrations will not
help in sourcing a particular specimen if we do not know the full range of potential
sources and their chemical makeup. Often archaeologists have to do the primary
work themselves. Geologists are not often interested in the same properties of rocks
that we are, and geological maps seldom contain sufficiently fine-gained indications
of where flakeable stone can actually be found (Browne & Wilson, 2013). Anyone
who has ever visited a deposit identified on the geological map as “limestone with
flint” can attest to the fact that the limestone is easy to find but the flint is not. In
some cases researchers have developed fine-scale maps of raw material exposures
as part of specific projects (Ekshtain et al., 2016). More often this sort of know-
ledge emerges as a byproduct of decades of archaeological fieldwork. Consequently,
understanding of raw material source distributions is very thorough in areas with
long histories of excavation and survey, but less complete in places with less exten-
sive histories of archaeological fieldwork.
Despite interest in lithic raw material economies stretching back several
decades, the study of potential raw material distributions at behaviourally rele-
vant spatial scales is relatively undeveloped. Several recent projects do aim to map
actual distributions of stone on the ground (Ekshtain et al., 2016; Heasley, 2015;
Wilson, 2007b; Wilson & Browne, 2014). While it may not be possible to attribute
specimens to particular exposures within a geological deposit, such studies provide

invaluable understanding of the actual scarcity or abundance of usable stone around
specific localities, as well as the general “texture” of raw material availability on
the landscapes inhabited by Paleolithic hominins. This sort of fine-g rained research
also demonstrates the potential of integrating ground-level maps of raw material
distributions with GIS-based models of least-cost movement through specific top-
ographies, thereby showing which exposures (and sources) were most easily and
conveniently accessed and which were effectively less accessible. In the absence of
high-quality, fine-g rained information about raw material landscapes, archaeologists
may have to rely on a biased picture filtered by human behaviour. Quite often,
archaeologists know what kinds of rocks people did use based on what occurs in
archaeological sites, but they have little baseline knowledge about the full range
of potential raw materials available. Under these conditions it is possible to draw
conclusions about positive decisions to use a particular type of stone, but impossible
to know what people in the past ignored.
Very few raw materials can be sourced to only a single point on the landscape.
Essentially identical stones may be exposed in many different places where the same
geological strata outcrop. For example, flint-bearing Edwards’ Plateau limestones
outcrop over an area of >180,00 km2 in west-central Texas. Materials in secondary
deposits such as marine or riverine gravels or terminal moraines can be equally
widely dispersed. When sources are so large, just knowing that a specimen of raw
material comes from a particular source does necessarily tell you very much about
how far that artefact was moved during its lifetime. And what were once thought
to be single sources may turn out to be large and internally complex. The obsidian
from central Anatolia first identified as representing the “Çiftlik” source in Renfrew
and colleagues’ pioneering studies (Renfrew, Dixon, & Cann, 1966) turns out to
come from many dozens of exposures related to a series of rhyolitic volcanic domes
of different ages (Binder et al., 2011).
The sizes of raw material source areas can also influence what archaeologists
are able to perceive from source attribution data. Strategies of raw material trans-
port and conservation are most apparent in a geological landscape where indi-
vidual sources are small, different from one another, and widely spaced. Under these
conditions it is easy to see what has been moved and how far. If source areas are
large and comparatively homogeneous, or if local sources are very similar to one
another, it is much more difficult to measure phenomena such as artefact movement.
There are numerous examples of this. Folsom Paleoindian sites on the southern
Plains of North America are remarkable for the scale of raw material transport in
evidence: assemblages may consist entirely of raw materials from sources 100s of
kilometres away (Amick, 1996; Buchanan, 2002; Meltzer, 2006), a fact which is usu-
ally interpreted as evidence for very high residential mobility. In contrast it is very
difficult to demonstrate large-scale movement of raw materials in Folsom sites on
the northern Plains (Surovell, 2009).Yet there is no reason to think Folsom peoples
in the northern Plains should have been less mobile than their contemporaries to
the south: in fact, we might expect the opposite to be true. Part of the difference
probably stems from the respective structure of the raw material environments. In
the southern Plains raw material sources are few, spatially constrained, and often
widely separated from one another. So any displacement of stones is easily detected.
In the northern Plains of Colorado and Wyoming, Folsom hunters frequently relied
on secondary deposits of high-quality raw materials from the Hartville Uplift and
other geological formations. Because local raw materials are quite similar over a
broad area, it is difficult to know when something was locally made or imported
(Surovell, 2009).
The typical response to such indeterminacy is to assume that raw materials
were collected at the closest available source. This assumption is justified by a least-
effort argument: why would people have brought materials from farther away if
they are available closer to the site? The weakness of such an argument is that it
assumes that materials were always collected through specialized logistical forays. If
people always went out to collect stone and carried it back to the site in question,
straight-line distance is a good measure of cost, and it is reasonable to assume they
would have gone to the closest source. This assumption is unjustified when dealing
with assemblages created by mobile foragers. Depending on where people habit-
ually travelled and foraged, it might have been quite easy to collect materials at
some fairly distant source. By that same token, it might have been much more
difficult to collect stone at a “nearby” source in an inaccessible location with no
other useful resources around. What we have to keep in mind is that the “closest
source” assumption only identifies a minimum distance. The artefacts in question
might have come from much farther away, or travelled an irregular, wandering path
between source and site, but we are simply unable to detect it. The closest source
model is a reasonable null hypothesis but nothing more than that.
4.5 The local and the exotic

Studies of lithic raw material economies often divide raw materials into categories
such as “local” and “exotic” (or distant). Use of these terms is idiosyncratic and the
criteria for distinguishing between what is local and what is exotic are not always
made explicit. The distinction may hinge on little more than a judgement about
whether materials were reduced off-site or on-site. If a particular raw material is
abundant in an assemblage, and if it is represented by something like the full range
of débitage products, meaning that it was transported in raw state and worked in
situ, we often consider it local (Andrefsky, 1994). If on the other hand, a particular
material is scarce and is represented mainly as the end products of reduction—shaped
tools and/or selected blanks—we are likely to consider it non-local or exotic.
Consequently, the distance thresholds used to distinguish local and exotic materials
can vary by orders of magnitude. In studies of the early Paleolithic any material
coming from more than 5–10 km from a given locality may be considered exotic,
whereas researchers working on the late Upper Paleolithic of Eastern Europe or the
early Paleoindian period in North America may consider everything collected from
within 50 km, or even 100 km, of a site local.
In fact, the terms local and exotic typically refer to two potentially independent
phenomena. One is the distance that raw materials must have been moved before
they were deposited in a site. By definition, exotic materials should come from
far away, whereas local ones should be available close by. The second refers to the
treatment of raw materials and artefacts. What is most interesting is the relationship
between these two variables, distance and treatment of raw materials.
One general economic principle guiding many studies of raw material use is the
notion that people will minimize transport costs relative to utility. Masses of stone
are heavy and not all parts of a rock bear the same utility. Like an acorn or a clam, an
unworked nodule or chunk of stone may include a significant amount of material
that is unusable, that must be removed and discarded in getting to the “good part.”
In the case of the mollusc or acorn one must get past the shell. In the case of the
stone, it is often the outer parts of the nodule. Depending on the distance that a
resource will be transported, and the opportunity costs of spending time away from
camp while processing materials in the field, it may be beneficial to remove all or
part of the less useful material in the field, before carrying it home. Researchers
working on field processing of food resources in ethnographic or experimental
contexts have produced formal models (Bird & Bliege Bird, 1997; Metcalfe &
Barlow, 1992). Lithic analysts typically take a less formal approach, assuming people
will move unworked raw material to a site only when transport distance is minimal,
but they will transport only finished artefacts or prepared cores when transport
costs are substantial.
One of the first studies of the Paleolithic to put these two dimensions together
was J.-M. Geneste’s research on the Mousterian of southwest France (Geneste, 1985,
1988, 1992). Using data from a number of sites, and taking advantage of extensive
accumulated knowledge about raw material source locations, Geneste examined
how the representation of a particular raw material in an assemblage was related
to the distance of a source from the site. He concluded that the Middle Paleolithic
assemblages he studied showed evidence of three “zones” of raw material acqui-
sition. Materials occurring within the inner zone, a catchment of ~5 km radius,
were represented by the full range of débitage products and byproducts. They had
been carried to the site in unworked or minimally prepared states and reduced
there. Materials occurring in the outer zone, >20 km from the site, were scarce and
represented by knapped blanks, shaped tools and occasional cores; both of the latter
typically were heavily reduced. Raw materials occurring in the middle zone (5–20
km) showed a mix of forms, with debris from reduction of prepared and partially-
worked cores as well as modified implements.
Geneste’s work has been widely cited and emulated by researchers working in
southwest France and beyond. As compelling as his models are, we must remember
that they apply to one place and time. Some relationship between distance to source
and the representation of different segments of reduction sequences is probably
universal. However, the shape of the relationship and the scales over which changes
are visible will depend on topography, the structure of the raw material environ-
ment as well as the ways people used the local landscapes and the sites in question.
Changes in mobility or patterns of site occupation can make what looks like an
exotic material in one period seem like a local material in another (Kuhn, 2004c).
The innermost zone, the area from which materials were moved to sites with little
or no field processing, probably corresponds with the daily foraging radius. Within
the catchment of daily foraging trips, raw material procurement could easily be
embedded in other activities, making it practical to move raw materials without
first removing the less useful parts. Clear zonation (as opposed a gradual fall-off) at
greater distances may reflect real limits on individual mobility, such as the maximum
extent of daily movements from a base camp. The distributions of raw material
sources also play a role in structuring the appearance and scale of zonation. People
can collect raw materials from between 5 and 20 km away from a site only if there
are raw materials to be had in that area. And unless people live on an isotropic, plain
raw material procurement zones are also likely to be highly asymmetrical, reflecting
actual travel times as well as the distributions other key resources.
Finally, a survey of the literature on lithic raw material exploitation reveals a
surprising generalization. It very often seems that local raw materials are of poorer
quality than distant ones: at times, “local” seems synonymous with mediocre. This
observation represents more than the old aphorism that “the grass is always greener
on the other side” of something. Two factors, one geological and one behavioural,
underpin the generalization. First, assuming that unusually good stone forms only
under unusual conditions, average to poor-quality stone ought to be more abun-
dant than very good material. Consequently, simple probability dictates that more
sites will be located near to sources of average quality materials than to sources
of very good ones. Second, we would not expect people to regularly carry poor-
quality raw materials to places where better ones are available, at least not in quan-
tity. As a rule, we only see stones from distant sources in assemblages if they possess
qualities that made it worthwhile to move them or carry them around.
4.6 Trends in raw material economy across the Pleistocene

Transport of artefacts seems to have been integral to the first stone tool tech-
nologies. To a certain extent this may be a recognition bias. Lithic technology
at the earliest sites across the Old World is quite simple. Many of the artefacts
from Dmanisi (Baena Preysler et al., 2010; Ferring et al., 2011; Mgeladze et al.,
2011), Gona (Semaw, 2000; Stout et al., 2010; de la Torre, 2004) or Lomekwi 3
(Harmand et al., 2015) could well be misidentified as naturally-fractured stones if
they were discovered in a secondary gravel deposit. Finding these artefacts in places
to which they had obviously been moved helps confirm their hominin authorship.
Conversely, until transport of artefacts became a habitual part of hominins’ behav-
ioural repertoire, archaeologists would be less likely to recognize the things they
produced as implements.
Several independent sources of information contribute to our understanding
of artefact movement in late Pliocene and early Pleistocene lithic technologies.
One is the presence of artefacts in geological contexts where clasts of similar size
do not normally occur. A second is the frequencies of certain artefact classes. In an

approach pioneered by N. Toth (Reti, 2016; Toth, 1982, 1985), experimental knap-
ping studies provide expectations about the proportional representation of various
reduction products and byproducts. Provided geological sorting and winnowing
can be ruled out (Schick, 1986, 1987), substantial under-representation of particular
components in the reduction chain is taken as evidence that those elements were
transported away from the location. Refitting can also point to the removal of
specific pieces from sites (Bunn et al., 1980; Delagnes & Roche, 2005). However,
effective refitting studies require very large-scale excavation and intensive refitting
work to know whether things were transported off-site or just a few metres away.
Finally, there are rare instances in which researchers have recovered evidence that
stone tools were used at a site even though tools are no longer present. The site of
Bouri (Ethiopia), dating to ca. 2.5 my, contains bones bearing both cutmarks and
percussion damage, yet no stone artefacts were recovered there (de Heinzelin et al.,
1999). Possible cutmarks on bones from Dikika are claimed as evidence for stone
tool use 3.3 years ago (McPherron et al., 2010), although the hominin authorship
of the marks at Dikika remains controversial (Domínguez-Rodrigo, Pickering, &
Bunn, 2012).
Despite these challenges we have a surprisingly detailed picture of late Pliocene
and early Pleistocene raw material economies. Hominins regularly moved artefacts
such as flakes, cores/choppers, and even unmodified stones (manuports) to and
away from specific places on the landscape (Blumenschine et al., 2008; Braun,
et al., 2008; Delagnes & Roche, 2005; Reti, 2016). Because information is incom-
plete, it is not always clear whether hominins preferentially carried flakes, cores/
core tools, natural cobbles, or all three. The makers of Oldowan artefacts were
also choosy about raw materials, selecting stones according to their flaking prop-
erties or toughness (Braun, Plummer, Ditchfield, et al., 2009; Goldman-Neuman
& Hovers, 2012; Harmand, 2007). At Kanjera South at least the most durable
materials were targeted for transport (Braun, Plummer, Ferraro,et al., 2009). The
findings from Bouri also show that artefacts were sometimes moved both into and
out of sites, demonstrating that the life history of a flake or core tool did not always
end after a single use.
Identifying specific sources of raw materials is a major challenge for Plio-
Pleistocene sites. Landscapes from 2.5 my are seldom well preserved or extensively
exposed today, making it difficult to know just where knappable stones would
have been available. To compound the difficulty, Oldowan toolmakers most often
used stones from secondary deposits. Consequently, investigators normally adopt
the default assumption that stones in Oldowan sites came from the closest sources.
Based on the limited information available, researchers conclude that the first
toolmakers seldom moved artefacts more than 5 km, and typically carried things
less than that: at least there is no positive evidence of artefacts being displaced
over longer distances (Blumenschine et al., 2008; Braun & Hovers, 2009: 8;
Goldman-Neuman & Hovers, 2012; Harmand, 2007; Tactikos, 2005) (Figure 4.5).
This scale of movement of artefacts does indicate some advanced planning in
FIGURE 4.5 Diagram of raw material movement at Olduvai Gorge between 1.9 and
1.65 ma (from Féblot-Augustins 1997, Figure 2).
manufacture, showing at least that hominins thought an hour or two ahead about
their technological needs. Transport distances probably scaled with foraging ter-
ritories as much as the scale of planning. If hominins regularly foraged within a
5–10 km radius, then we would be unlikely to see movements of artefacts over
much longer distances. Scales of landscape exposure and survey coverage also
come into play. Not surprisingly, the longest transport distances observed for
Oldowan artefacts come from the Olduvai Landscape Paleoanthropology Project
(Blumenschine et al., 2008) which was designed explicitly to provide a spatially
extensive perspective on land use. Of course the earliest archaeological deposits
at Olduvai Gorge post-date 2.0 my, and there is some evidence that scales of
raw material movement may have expanded somewhat by this time (Goldman-
Neuman & Hovers, 2009.)
Typically, late Pliocene and early Pleistocene artefacts had short life histories.
Overall, it appears that hominins living during this time preferred to make new
flakes where possible rather than reshaping old ones. At the site of Dmansi, for
example, the majority of objects identified as cores have just one or two removals
(de Lumley, Nioradzé, & Barsky, 2005) and very few flakes are retouched. On the
other hand, some cores from the site of Lokaleli 2c produced 30 or more flakes
(Delagnes & Roche, 2005; Harmand, 2009). J.S. Reti (Reti, 2016) finds evidence
that hominins at Olduvai exploited different raw materials to different degrees. At
the BK site, basalt cores were used comparatively “inefficiently” (not worked to
exhaustion) whereas much more utility was extracted from quartzite cores. Reti
attributes the differences to the differential availability of the two materials. Life
histories of flake tools were similarly short and uncomplicated. Prior to 2.0 my
or so, very few flake tools were modified at all (de Lumley, Barsky, & Cauche,
2009; Roche et al., 1999; Semaw, 2000) suggesting that small tools were normally
discarded once the edges became dull or after a single task was completed. While
retouch became more common over time, it never was extensive and there are no
discussions of serial resharpening. Because it is so difficult to know how far indi-
vidual artefacts were moved, we don’t know whether the length of an artefact’s life
history is related to transport.
Several studies have noted a fall-off in the frequencies of raw materials according
to distance from source in early Pleistocene sites (Braun, Plummer et al., 2008;
Braun, Rogers,et al., 2008). Although it is tempting to view this as evidence for
economizing behaviour on the part of Oldowan hominins, identical patterns could
result from an entirely opportunistic procurement and transport of raw materials
(Brantingham, 2003). To be sure, a model of opportunistic procurement is simply a
null model. It has already been established that Oldowan hominins did select raw
materials systematically. The point is that relationships between raw material use
and distance from source are not in and of themselves evidence of economically-
motivated behaviour.
Many Pliocene and early Pleistocene sites exhibit evidence of what might
be called “over-transport” of materials. “Manuports,” stones that are out of geo-
logical context but show no other signs of use, can be quite abundant. At Dmanisi,
for example, unmodified cobbles (whole and broken) account for 53.5% of the
assemblages (deLumley et al., 2005: 7). At the FLK site in Olduvai, unmodified
stones account for less than 10% of the assemblage but are still more than twice
as abundant as cores (de la Torre & Mora 2010; Mora & de la Torre, 2005: 275).
R. Potts addressed this puzzling observation in a series of influential publications
(Potts, 1984, 1988, 1991). Potts argued that the manuports were the products of
stone caching behaviour, wherein hominins stockpiled unworked stones at places
on the landscape to which they returned again and again. The caches, Potts argued,
would have saved time and effort, eliminating the need for a round-trip journey to
the closest source every time a new implement was needed.
Although the “stone cache” hypothesis is plausible, it is not necessarily the most
parsimonious explanation for the accumulation of unworked stones at Pliocene
and Pleistocene archaeological sites. First, large natural clasts can occur in fine-
grained sediments without human intervention, and many of what have been iden-
tified as manuports could have been brought to the locations by geological forces
alone (Domínguez-Rodrigo, Barba Egido, & Egeland 2007; Mora & de la Torre,
2005: 247; de la Torre & Mora, 2005). Second, manuports are by definition unused,
and the accumulation of so much material that was never used would actually have
been a waste of energy. A more parsimonious explanation stems from the ways early
Pliocene and Pleistocene sites formed. Most of these localities are not the result of
a single occupational event but accumulated as a consequence of a great many brief

and uncoordinated occupations (Stern, 1994; Stern et al., 1993). Each time they
visited a place, it is reasonable to assume that hominins brought artefacts and raw
material with them in response to immediate needs. The hominins carried off only
a few pieces when they left, leaving most of the debris, whether unworked cobbles
or partially-exploited cores, in place. If the same sequence of events was repeated in
subsequent visits, over time a large surplus of material could accumulate. Eventually
the accumulated surplus of unused raw material might have encouraged hominins
to revisit these places (Camilli & Ebert, 1992; Haas et al., 2015), but that would have
been a byproduct of past actions rather than a goal of them.
The first appearance of Mode 2 industries with handaxes, cleavers and other large
cutting tools (LCTs) around 1.7 my in southern and eastern Africa does not appear
to be associated with major changes in raw material economies. Harmand (2007)
documents changing patterns of raw material use in the Nachukui Formation,
west of Lake Turkana, Kenya. She finds considerable continuity from 2.5–0.7 ma,
although some trends are apparent. One trend is increasing selectivity in use of raw
materials with different characteristics, perhaps related to particular tasks or tool
forms (Harmand, 2007: 20). Not surprisingly, the early Mode 2 sites are marked
by a special preference for raw materials available in packages large enough to
produce handaxes. The increasing importance of raw material size, also manifest in
the exploitation of outcrops rather than secondary deposits, is apparent in a range
of assemblages based on large flake blanks, whether they are typologically Mode 2
or something else.
A range of hominin anatomical evidence points to expanding individual and
group mobility coincident with the appearance of both Homo ergaster and Mode 2
technologies around 1.7 ma (Aiello & Wells, 2002; Cachel & Harris, 1995; Pontzer
et al., 2012). Based on the fact that sites occur in a broader range of contexts,
including localities distant from known raw material sources, Rogers and others
argue for an expansion of ranges and broadening of habitat preferences in the
early Acheulean (Barham & Mitchell, 2008: 150; Rogers, Harris, & Feibel, 1994).
The early Pleistocene emergence of Mode 2 technologies is also marked by
the appearance of large artefacts with potentially long use-lives. In later periods
there is good evidence that handaxes were regularly transported and resharpened.
Unfortunately comparatively little information is available about raw material
transport and management in the early Acheulean of East Africa (but see McHenry
& de la Torre, 2018; Potts, Behrensmeyer, & Ditchfield, 1999). Studies of flake-tool
based “Developed Oldowan” assemblages contemporary with the early Acheulean
show that hominins chose to transport different kinds of artefacts according to
whether or not stone was plentiful at the places where they were going, consistently
moving larger flakes to areas with little raw material (Braun et al., 2008). G. Isaac
(1977) proposed that handaxes at Olorgesaile were transported over slightly longer
distances than earlier artefacts. One review article claims movement of artefacts
up to 20 km in the early Acheulean (Roebroeks et al., 1988), about twice as far
as the maximum documented displacement of Mode 2 artefacts. However, a later
review of evidence found no major changes in maximum reported distances of

artefact displacement across the Oldowan/Acheulean boundary (Marwick, 2003).
Extension of the maximum range of artefact movement did not occur until after
1.2 my (Féblot-Augustins, 1997: 72–73), when there are several cases of maximum
transport distance in excess of 20 km and as great as 100 km. Isaac (1977: 94–95)
reports movement of very small numbers of quartz artefacts over distances between
40 and 50 km at Olorgesaile but is not specific about the ages of the assemblages in
which the “exotic” stones are found.
One provocative piece of evidence concerning strategies of artefact trans-
port and maintenance are the impressive concentrations of LCTs at sites such as
Kilombe (Gowlett, 1978), Olorgesailie “main site” (Isaac, 1977), Isimila (Howell
et al., 1962) and others (see Isaac, 1977: 86). In these remarkable places, hundreds
or even thousands of handaxes, cleavers and picks are concentrated within rela-
tively restricted areas. At Olorgesailie main site at least, fluvial factors alone cannot
be responsible for the accumulation of the tools, and thus hominin behaviour is
implicated in bringing so many large artefacts to this place (Potts, Behrensmeyer,
& Ditchfield, 1999: 776–777). Moreover, the quantities debris, cores and other
byproducts of reduction at these sites are too small to account for all the large cutting
tools. The numbers alone are not so impressive—after all, the assemblages could
have accumulated over hundreds or thousands of years. However, the presence of so
many LCTs and comparatively little evidence for manufacture is noteworthy. More
generally, reduction sequences related to handaxe production at Mode 2 sites were
typically “fragmented,” with production debris discarded in different places than
the handaxes and cleavers themselves (e.g. Goren-Inbar & Sharon, 2006; de la Torre
et al., 2014). Although it is not clear how far the artefacts were moved, and whether
they underwent multiple episodes of use and re-working between manufacture and
discard, this evidence shows that LCTs were regularly discarded at some distance
from the places they were manufactured (cf. Potts et al., 1999: 785).
As has often been observed, handaxes of one form or another were produced
over an extraordinarily long period of time. Large, flat, bifacially worked and pointed
stone artefacts continued to be made in Africa until at least 250 ka, perhaps even
later. In Eurasia the ubiquity of bifacial handaxes declined over the latter half of the
Middle Pleistocene, but they never went away completely. In fact, bifacial handaxes
appear in some very recent Mousterian assemblages (Mousterian of Acheulean
Tradition) dating to 45 ka or even later. Interestingly, other typical LCT forms of
the early Pleistocene, cleavers and pics, are not so persistent or so widespread.There
was something about handaxes sensu largo that lent itself to many different situ-
ations encountered by Paleolithic toolmakers. Nonetheless, handaxes seem to have
become less important in meeting the technological needs of Paleolithic hominins
over the course of the Middle Pleistocene.
The declining ubiquity of LCTs over the Middle Pleistocene was accompanied
by expansion and elaboration of another component of Paleolithic technologies.
Systems of flake production, methods for producing blanks with different shapes
and functional properties, began to diversify in Africa and Eurasia starting around
400–500 ka. Earlier methods of flake production, whether they were associated
with Mode 1 or Mode 2 assemblages, tended to be fairly simple. Flakes were
removed from a core in short series, and new platforms were created by rotating
the object piece. When the object piece was rotated on a plane a discoid core
resulted; when it was rotated in three dimensions a more globular or polyhedral
form resulted. A shift to more “organized” small flake production, focusing on
striking flakes off of the broadest face of a core, may be in evidence as early as 1.3
ma in sub-Saharan Africa (Leader et al., 2016). However, after 500 ka hominins
began exploring a range of other methods involving more extensive pre-shaping
of cores and more prolonged use and renewal of a small number of platforms.
Some of the earliest departures from simple “rotate and strike” strategies involve
the production of large, parallel-sided elongated flakes and blades from single
platform cores in South and East Africa (Johnson & McBrearty, 2010; Wilkins
& Chazan, 2012). As discussed in Chapter 2, these early examples were formerly
taken as indicators of advanced behaviour. Discoveries and dating results over the
past two decades have shown that several hominin taxa produced blades in various
parts of the world starting 400–500 ka. Still, early blades were the leading edge of
a major shift in how Paleolithic hominins went about turning raw material into
useful implements.
This shift in emphasis from large core tools to small flake tools was not sudden.
It took place over at least several hundred thousand years in Africa and parts of
Eurasia.Yet it led to a profound transformation in the ways lithic technologies were
organized. First, it opened up a vast potential “design space” for producing blanks
with different functional properties, sometimes from the same core (Shimelmitz &
Kuhn, 2017b). Not all kinds of blanks were produced intentionally to take advan-
tage of their particular characteristics, but some certainly were. Second, it shifted the
focus of raw material economics from the implement (large cutting tools) to cores
and flakes. Where handaxes and picks were made from nodules, a single tool could
be produced from a single piece of raw material. Even where the handaxes and
cleavers were made on large flakes, each core typically yielded a very small number
of blanks (Sharon, 2009). Choices about extending the utility of raw materials
focused on the implements themselves, whether to leave them behind or carry
them off, whether to reshape them or to abandon them. With small flake tools, one
can choose to extend the lives of tools or of cores. At one extreme one can, like
Acheulean toolmakers did, produce large blanks that could be carried around and
used for a long time. At the other extreme, one has the option of reducing the core
into the maximum number of small flakes. These two extreme strategies, and the
many alternatives between them, provided a much greater range of flexibility in in
keeping people supplied with the artefacts and raw materials they needed to carry
out their daily lives.
Assemblages from the eastern Mediterranean basin dating to between 400 ka
and 250 ka very clearly illustrate this new dimension of raw material economies.
Amudian,Yabrudian and Acheulo-Yabrudian assemblages from sites such as Yabrud
1 Rockshelter (Syria) and Tabun and Qesem Caves (Israel) exhibit an impressive
diversity of manufacture strategies and artefact life history trajectories. Although

the frequencies vary, many assemblages contain debris representing at least three
distinct technological systems. One involved systematic production of large flakes
to serve as blanks for heavy scrapers (Lemorini et al., 2016; Shimelmitz et al, 2014).
Extensive secondary modification and serial resharpening or re-working show
that these implements often had long use-lives. A second trajectory centred on the
production of laminar blanks using relatively simple production schemes (Barkai
et al., 2009; Monigal, 2002; Shimelmitz, Barkai, & Gopher, 2016). The blades were
sometimes retouched but secondary modification is typically light and artefact
life histories were fairly short. The third trajectory focused on bifacial shaping of
handaxes, many asymmetrical or backed. These handaxes seem to have been moved
around habitually and were deposited on a different schedule than other artefacts
(Kuhn & Clark, 2015; Shimelmitz et al., 2017) (Figure 4.6). Similarly trajectories
toward diversification in flake production and life histories have been documented
FIGURE 4.6 The diverse life histories of Acheulo-Yabrudian artefacts: (1) “scrapers”

were often extensively reduced; (2) bifaces were moved around and sometimes
reworked; (3) blade tools were lightly-used and discarded in place, Tabun Cave, Israel,
A. Jelinek excavations (drawings by L. Addington). Scale bar = 10cm.
for late Middle Pleistocene assemblages across Eurasia (Adler et al., 2014; Baena
Preysler et al., 2017; Carmignani et al., 2017; Kuhn, Arsebük, & Howell, 1996) and
Africa (Wilkins, 2013). Together, evidence suggests that beginning around 500–400
ka, lithic technologies in Africa and Eurasia were serving more masters than ever
before, that raw material economy and artefact life histories were responding to
broader ranges of technical, functional and logistical requirements than in earlier
periods. As discussed in Chapter 2, the presence of two different reduction trajec-
tories in a single assemblage which accumulated over decades or centuries is no
guarantee that they were actually used at the same time or even by the same group
of hominins. However, consistent associations across many assemblages, such as in
the deep sequences at Tabun Cave, Qesem Cave, or Yabrud Shelter 1 make it highly
probable that the various elements were the products of the same groups.
There is some evidence that this diversification of artefact life histories was
accompanied by an expansion of the scales of raw material transport, and by
implication ranges of human movement and/or the sizes of social networks. The
great majority of rocks used by Middle Pleistocene toolmakers could be obtained
within 10–15 km of the places where they were discarded, sometimes much closer.
But a few cases of longer-distance displacement are well documented. Although
96.5% of obsidian artefacts from the 335,000-year-old layers at Nor Gheghi 1 in
Armenia come from within 12 km of the site, a small proportion of pieces can
be traced to sources as far as 70 km and even 120 km away (Adler et al., 2014).
Similar scales of movement of raw materials have occasionally been documented
for the early MSA in Africa (McBrearty & Brooks, 2000). It is no accident that
the best documented cases involve obsidian, which is comparatively easy to
source. Improvements in methods for sourcing other, more widely available raw
materials, coupled with improved understanding of raw material distributions, may
well reveal other examples of long-distance movement of materials by Middle
Pleistocene hominins.
This trend toward more diverse artefact life histories and expanded ranges of
raw material movement continued through the end of the Middle Pleistocene and
into the Upper Pleistocene. The raw material economies of Middle Paleolithic
and Middle Stone Age hominins were remarkably flexible, and many assemblages
encompass a diversity of manufacture procedures and artefact life histories.
Researchers working in Eurasia have documented diverse trajectories of artefact
production, use, transport, and discard. In some cases these are correlated with
changes in environment and foraging, mobility, and site use, showing how artefact
manufacture and use were linked to the broader economies and land use patterns
(e.g. Bernard-Guelle, 2005; Conard, Bolus, & Münzel, 2012; Delagnes & Meignen,
2006; Delagnes & Rendu, 2011; Faivre et al., 2017; Faivre et al., 2014; Kuhn, 1991,
1992, 1995; Meignen et al., 2006; Meignen, Delagnes, & Bourguignon, 2009;
Porraz, 2008; Porraz & Negrino, 2008; Wallace & Shea, 2006; Will et al., 2013).
Not all technological variation is necessarily economic or functional in nature: in
fact, the field encompasses a diversity of views as to how much variation is adaptive
and how much is “neutral.” Less is known about raw material economies in Africa
simply because there has been less work done (but see Brooks et al., 2018; Igreja
& Porraz, 2013; McCall, 2007; McCall & Thomas, 2012; Porraz et al., 2013; Will
et al., 2013). It is interesting that African MSA assemblages typically have a smaller
range of retouched tool forms than Eurasian Middle Paleolithic assemblages. MSA
assemblages from sub-Saharan Africa are often described as being poor in retouched
tools, with most shaped pieces being “points” in the broadest sense (McBrearty &
Brooks, 2000;Yellen et al., 2005). More specifically, they are poor in scrapers, which
dominate many contemporaneous Eurasian assemblages. The relative scarcity of
scrapers in MSA assemblages might simply be a consequence of hominins making
less use of hide clothing and furs in subtropical and tropical Africa. Less emphasis
on time-consuming and highly abrasive activities such as hide preparation would
also have an effect on artefact life histories, particularly patterns of resharpening
and renewal.
Another, less direct indicator of the increased plasticity of raw material man-
agement strategies during the Middle Pleistocene comes from the work of Lin
and colleagues. They use a ratio of flake platform depth and exterior platform to
examine variation in flake production strategies during the Middle Paleolithic.Their
results reveal contrasting strategies which correspond roughly with different models
of flake production. One strategy involved making blanks that maximize edge/mass
ratios: Levallois production is a good example. The other, corresponding roughly
with so-called Quina production, entails producing large, thick flakes which are
uneconomical from the perspective of maximizing edge/mass ratios but which
can stand up to extensive re-working (Lin et al., 2013). In later publications, they
show a distinct expansion of raw material management strategies in the late Middle
and early Upper Pleistocene compared to assemblages dating to before ca. 750 ka
(Režek et al., 2018). Although these authors do not explore the specific contexts in
which these strategies were deployed, others have (e.g. Delagnes & Rendu 2011).
While the expanded flexibility of Middle Pleistocene raw material economies
may look quite sophisticated, the different strategies may not have been deployed in
quite the same way as they were later. A robust and widespread pattern among late
Middle and Upper Pleistocene sites in Europe and the Near East involves the rela-
tionship between proportions of retouched pieces and the density of lithic artefacts
within archaeological deposits. In a broad range of sites and locations these two
variables are negatively correlated: there are comparatively few retouched pieces in
high-density deposits, whereas shaped tools are relatively abundant in low-density
deposits (Barton & Riel-Salvatore, 2016; Barton et al., 2011; Kuhn & Clark, 2015;
Riel-Salvatore & Barton, 2007) (Figure 4.7). The tendency seems to reflect a very
simple and widespread strategy of artefact manufacture and discard among mobile
foragers. When occupations are short and sporadic people tend to rely on artefacts,
they carry with them for most tasks: that is, they rely on a strategy of provisioning
individuals when on the move. As a consequence, they abandon more modified,
even well-used implements and accumulate little debris from in situ reduction,
leading to low artefact densities and relatively high frequencies of retouched tools.
When occupations are more prolonged, there are more opportunities to procure
FIGURE 4.7 Graph illustrating typical negative correlation between proportion of flakes

transformed by retouch and density of lithic artefacts in archaeological deposits. Data
are from Mousterian levels at the site of Riparo Mochi, Italy (r2 = 0.26, N = 43,
p < 0.01).
raw materials from the surrounding landscape and to conduct manufacture in place.
Consequently, people generate more production waste, quickly overwhelming the
discarded implements and producing higher artefact densities and lower proportions
of retouched pieces. Similar tendencies play out across space in many open-air
sites, with dense piles of flaking debris interspersed with diffuse scatters containing
larger proportions of shaped tools (Clark, 2015; De Loecker, 2004). This tendency
crosses the Middle-Upper Paleolithic boundary –it characterizes the behaviour of
Neanderthals as well as modern Homo sapiens in Eurasia (Barton & Riel-Salvatore,
2016; Riel-Salvatore & Barton, 2007).
Interestingly, this near-ubiquitous pattern is difficult to identify in deposits dating
before about 250 ka. In the deep sequence at Tabun Cave, the typical negative correl-
ation between retouch frequencies and density of artefacts is detectable in the Middle
Paleolithic layers (Units I–IX). Much of the observed variation derives from the con-
trast between the dense occupations of Units I and II (equivalent to Garrod’s layer
C and the upper part of D) and the very sparse early Mousterian cultural deposits in
Unit IX. However, the trend is not apparent in the deep sequence of earlier Middle
Pleistocene (Yabrudian,Amudian and Acheulean) layers at the site (XI–XIV), whether
they are taken as a package or divided into individual sedimentary units.The fact that
this association, which is nearly ubiquitous in later MP and UP assemblages, simply
does not occur between 400 ka and 250 ka at Tabun (Kuhn & Clark, 2015) suggests
that earlier lithic technologies were organized in a fundamentally different way with
respect to the economics of artefact production and discard.
Along with this change in the basic dynamics of assemblage formation, scales of
raw material movement seem to have expanded, at least somewhat, during the first
part of the Upper Pleistocene in western Eurasia. The general trend described by
Geneste, with concentric zones of exploitation, seems to hold true for a wide range
of cases. In almost all Middle Paleolithic sites the preponderance of raw materials
used could be collected within 10 km of the site, often even closer (Féblot-
Augustins, 1997; Turq et al., 2013). Smaller amounts of material can be traced to
sources 10–20 km from sites, and material from farther away typically arrived as
blanks, shaped tools, or well-used cores. But a few assemblages contain a small
number of specimens from even greater distances. Some Middle Stone Age sites in
southern and eastern Africa dating to the late Middle or Upper Pleistocene contain
at least small quantities of exotic obsidian that was moved over distances exceeding
100 km (Ambrose, 2012; Blegen, 2017; Merrick & Brown, 1984; Merrick, Brown,
& Nash, 1994; Negash, Brown, & Nash, 2011; Negash & Shackley, 2006; Brooks
et al., 2018) (Figure 4.8). Most cases of long-distance transport in the MSA involve
obsidian, but in a few instances silcrete artefacts were moved quite far from their
source (Nash et al., 2013).
A range of factors would have contributed to variation in scales of raw material
transport in the Paleolithic, including variation in mobility influenced by ecology
or demography. In all likelihood all of these factors worked together to influence
the ways hominins moved raw materials around the landscape. The challenge is in
sorting out which has the strongest effect in a particular case. Ecological influences
at least have the virtue of being testable using independent data. For example, in
a masterful synthesis of raw material data from Paleolithic sites in Europe, Féblot-
Augustins (Féblot-Augustins, 1993, 1997, 2009) observed that maximum distances
of transport were greater in eastern Europe than in western Europe on average.
She attributed this contrast to differences in ecology, hypothesizing that hominins
occupying the plains of eastern Europe regularly moved over larger distances than
groups living in the lusher and more varied landscapes of western Europe. A decade
later, accumulation of new data and rethinking of the old information led her
to de-emphasize although not discount the differences between east and west
(Féblot-Augustins, 2009). The circulation of raw materials over greater distances
in the African MSA compared with the European Middle Paleolithic is typically
interpreted as evidence of greater cognitive and behavioural complexity among
MSA Homo sapiens (Ambrose, 2012; Blegen, 2017; Brooks et al., 2018; McBrearty &
Brooks, 2000; Merrick & Brown, 1984; Merrick et al., 1994; Nash et al., 2013; Potts
et al., 2018). However, differences between sub-Saharan Africa and Europe and
the Near East in environmental structure and productivity ought to be taken into
account as well. The fact that most examples of long-distance movement of raw
FIGURE 4.8 Example of early long-distance movement of obsidian. Some raw materials

in early Middle Stone Age assemblages at the Sibilo School Road Site (SSRS) in
Kenya come from sources located more than 120 km to the south. The assemblage
dates to >200 ka (from Blegen 2017, Figure 14D).
materials in Africa involve obsidian is also significant. As noted above, obsidian is the
most easily sourced of lithic raw materials, so the more obsidian that is analyzed, the
more likely one is to recognize the presence of exotic stones. It is illustrative that
almost half of the instances of raw material movements over distances in excess of
100 km in Feblot-Augustin’s studies of the European Paleolithic involved obsidian
(1997), even though this is an uncommon material in Europe. Perhaps Paleolithic
folk, like their Neolithic successors, just admired obsidian and liked to trade it or
carry it around. But it is equally true that the ease of source attribution for obsidian
tends to highlight movement wherever it occurs.
Most synthetic studies of lithic raw transport emphasize maximum transport dis-
tance, probably because this is commonly reported, permitting comparisons across
sites and regions. In order to understand raw material economies more fully it would
useful to know how rocks available at varying distances from a site were treated,
where the boundaries between different exploitation zones existed in particular
cases. But while there have been some exemplary site-specific or regional studies (e.g.
Geneste’s work cited above) the data are not reported consistently enough to enable
broad comparisons. In evaluating the significance of raw material movements over
long distances it is also worth considering what kinds of artefacts were transported
and the contexts in which that movement took place. For the Middle Paleolithic
of Eurasia, “Transfers greater than 100 km remain exceptional in the European
Middle Paleolithic, suggesting differences of a socio-economic nature. Moreover,
the recorded occurrences remain associated with a strategy of provisioning indi-
viduals …” (Féblot-Augustins 2009:43). The small numbers of individual artefacts
moved long distances are typically represented in sites as completely exhausted
flake tools, small cores-on-flakes, or resharpening flakes from artefacts discarded
somewhere else (Doronicheva, Kulkova, & Shackley, 2016; Féblot-Augustins, 1997;
Slimak & Giraud, 2007) (Figure 4.9). Places were typically provisioned with the
closest available raw materials, which explains why stones available nearby almost
always account for 90% or more of assemblages. As discussed above and elsewhere,
long-distance movement of personal gear or artefacts provisioned to individuals is
not necessarily indicative of long-term planning. All it really tells us is that the tool-
carriers failed to discard the artefacts during the time it took to move them from
point A to point B (Kuhn 1992, 1995). Likewise, it may not tell us about habitual
ranges of movement so much as the extremes of a territory.
There are also exceptions to this generalization. In at least two instances,
large proportions of late (Upper Pleistocene) Middle Paleolithic assemblages are
attributed to sources located more than 50 km from the site(s) in question. One
case involves a series of sites in southern Italy (Spinapolice, 2012) and the other is
Amud Cave in northern Israel (Ekshtain et al., 2016). In both studies the case for
long-distance movement of flint is made on negative evidence. The researchers
conducted field surveys of raw material sources in large areas around the respective
sites but failed to locate sources for a large proportion of the stones in the arch-
aeological assemblages. However, it is notable that there were also unavoidable but
significant gaps in the survey coverage. In the Italian study the gaps are due to
FIGURE 4.9 Extensively modified and reduced transverse scraper and limace from
the Middle Paleolithic site of Champ Grand, France. These artefacts are made of
Cretaceous flint derived from sources >100 km distant from the site (from Slimak,
2008: 360, 362). White bar = 1cm.
inundation of land that was exposed when the sites were occupied. In the case of
Amud Cave impassible political borders rendered almost half of the site’s potential
catchment inaccessible. So while we can be confident that the rocks in question
did not come from the areas surveyed, it is less certain that they did not come from
nearby locations that could not be surveyed.
Paleolithic archaeologists have begun to pay more attention to the re-working,
re-purposing or recycling of artefacts as an indicator of raw material economizing
behaviour. Archaeologists have been aware of these behaviours for a long time.
M. Schiffer devoted quite a bit of attention to recycling in general and to lat-
eral cycling (re-purposing) in particular in his original formulation of Behavioural
Archaeology (Schiffer, 1972, 1976, 1987). Intensified interest in artefact life histories
and artefact reduction over the past few decades has focused more attention on
these phenomena. Artefacts from many late Middle and early Upper Pleistocene
assemblages show signs of having been used, renewed and transformed into other
kinds of implements. Many papers have been written on phenomena such as
cores-on-flakes (Dibble & McPherron, 2006; Hovers, 2006) and truncated-faceted
pieces (Goren-Inbar, 1988; Schroeder, 2007). An entire special issue of the journal
Quaternary International (vol. 361, 2015) was devoted to the phenomenon of recyc-
ling in the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. European researchers studying chaînes
opératoires have also emphasized the phenomena of “ramification” (Bourguignon

et al., 2004; Mathias, 2016; Rios-Garaizar, Eixea, & Villaverde, 2015). This term
refers to the many successive transformations that artefacts may undergo over their
use-lives. For example, use-wear evidence shows that large Quina scrapers were
typically used as implements. At the same time they also served as sources of smaller
flakes that could be used as is or transformed by retouch (Bourguignon, 1997;
Bourguignon et al., 2004; Rios-Garaizar et al., 2015). A key component of ramifi-
cation is that the transformations are not pre-determined. Different pieces have the
potential to be transformed in multiple ways, and tool users have a choice about
whether or how to transform them.
Unquestionably, Paleolithic hominins often re-used artefacts discarded by them-
selves or by previous occupants of a place, and they sometimes transformed tools
into cores and cores into tools. Based on the frequency with which artefacts show
evidence for such transformations, the strategy of recycling was an important source
of usable artefacts in some circumstances. It is also easy to see how recycling and
ramification integrate with raw material economies: they are basically strategies for
extending the utility of artefacts. However, there are two important questions about
recycling and ramification. First, should we consider them as part of the design of
artefacts? Second, are recycling and ramification indications of planning, intentional
economization, or other sophisticated cognition? Obviously these two questions
are related, but in keeping with the organization of the volume discussion of the
first question is delayed until Chapter 6. Here I will take up just the economic
implications.
Re-purposing or recycling artefacts clearly has economic consequences. It takes
artefacts which have temporarily left the systemic context in Shiffer’s (1972, 1976)
terms, things which have entered the cultural waste-stream, and makes them useful
again. As such it is one tactic for reducing raw material costs in lithic technological
systems. But like all things, recycling is not without its drawbacks. Re-purposed
artefacts seldom function as well as purpose-made ones. Transforming flakes or tools
into cores produces more blanks, but the products are small. And while small flakes
and bladelets can be used to conduct many tasks, their effectiveness can be limited
relative to larger pieces. (Key & Lycett, 2011, 2014, 2015b). Moreover, recycling
artefacts eliminates potential future opportunities to re-use them in the future.
Today many of us think of recycling as a thoughtful, forward-looking activity.
In wealthy, developed economies we recycle our absurdly abundant waste because
we have recognized –quite belatedly –the environmental and social problems
posed by massive accumulations of trash. But this is not the only context in which
recycling occurs. Since long before we began producing containers with recyc-
ling icons embossed on them, people who had very little found ways to repurpose
and re-use the things others discarded. In many contexts recycling or, by a more
pejorative term, scavenging is just a way to get by. Rather than representing a long-
term strategy of conservation it is a short-term solution for individuals who are
constrained to live from day-to-day. One of the outcomes is that a lot of society’s
waste is turned into something useful, but that is not the aim of the individuals
involved. So recycling can be an index of desperation as much as an indication of

prudent planning for the future. It is unlikely that Paleolithic humans were too
worried about the amount of lithic trash they left behind. They were more likely
to have seen it as a potential resource. In arguing that artefact re-use and recycling
were opportunistic responses, something people did when they were caught short,
I do not deny that it can also represent a planned strategy. Archaeological sites can
serve as sources of abundant raw material or recyclable objects: lithic analysts would
be out of business if they weren’t. Where raw material is not ubiquitous, the things
people left behind when they last visited a place may be a significant resource
(Camilli & Ebert, 1992; Haas et al., 2015).
Taking into account both their positive and negative attributes, we would predict
that recycling and ramified production systems would be most advantageous where
raw materials were scarce or costly, due either to their generalized abundance in the
environment or to the costs of transporting mobile toolkits or personal gear (Kuhn
1994). Situations in which there were very high opportunity costs for procuring
raw materials would also favour extracting the last bits of usefulness out of artefacts.
On the other hand, where raw materials are plentiful or time is not an issue, people
are probably better off making new tools rather than trying to squeeze one more
use out of previously discarded items. Consequently, the frequency of evidence for
recycling ought to reflect factors such as the availability of raw materials, scales of
individual mobility and reliance on transported toolkits, and the temporal rhythm
of activities in which tools are used.
In sum, the re-use, re-working and transformation of artefacts that are so
well represented in some Lower and Middle Paleolithic sites could mean many
things. High rates of resharpening could indicate that hominins were thinking
ahead, trying to minimize their consumption of scarce raw materials. But the
same phenomenon could just as easily indicate that the hominins were not very
good at predicting their needs and were often forced to improvise in order to get
the sharp edges they needed to conduct crucial activities. Looking broadly across
the many different cases and tactics for extracting more utility out of artefacts, is
almost certain that both strategies are represented. It is pointless to make blanket
statements about proximate or ultimate causes here. Sorting out what was going
on in a specific situation requires a range of detailed contextual information.
At the same time, the abundance of evidence for transformation and recycling
starting in the late Middle Pleistocene does tell us something important about the
changing role of technology in hominin adaptations. Regardless of whether they
recycled things because they planned to or because they had too, these hominins
were going to some lengths to keep themselves supplied with implements and
sharp edges. Evidence for increasing raw material transport, diverse provisioning
strategies, as well as the frequent re-working of artefacts points to an increasing
dependence on stone tools. Hominins were unwilling to do without stone tools,
and were capable of applying a range of tactics to make sure they didn’t have to.
They also showed considerable flexibility in applying different techniques in order
to stretch things out when needed.
A great deal of attention has been devoted to evidence for shifts in raw material
economy with the appearance of the Upper Paleolithic in western Eurasia.
Claims for an expanding scope of raw material transport and procurement with
the advent of the Upper Paleolithic (R. White et al., 1982), perhaps associated
with greater advanced planning (Binford, 1989), have been directly evaluated and
yield conflicting results. Based on maximum transport distance, which is the most
easily extracted but not necessarily the best metric, there may or may not be major
differences between early Upper Paleolithic raw material economies and those of
the Lower and Middle Paleolithic (e.g. Féblot-Augustins 1993, 2009; Roebroeks,
Kolen, & Rensink 1988). Examples of raw material displacements >100 km cer-
tainly appear more common in the Upper Paleolithic (Figure 4.10) but what this
means is also uncertain: is it a reflection of more forward planning, or does it simply
reflect expansion of territories or trade networks?
As discussed above, the scales over which personal gear is moved are not good
metrics of planning depth or even territory sizes. Although the number of cases
is smaller, evidence for changes in provisioning strategies is more indicative of
important behavioural shifts. Generally speaking, Middle Paleolithic sites provide
very little evidence for provisioning of places over substantial distance, even when
local raw materials are not very good (Baykara et al. 2015; Féblot-Augustins 2009;
Kuhn 1992, 2004c). Mousterian toolmakers seem to have been more predisposed to
making do with mediocre stone than their Upper Paleolithic successors, who were
more likely to travel longer distances to get the best raw materials. Yet here again,
the evidence does not necessarily speak to changes in planning ability so much as
changes in the logistics of life. Barton and colleagues interpret broad changes in
the frequencies of retouched tools over the Upper Pleistocene (Barton et al., 2011;
Barton & Riel-Salvatore, 2016) as evidence for increasing intensity and duration of
occupations through the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, which in turn promoted
greater reliance on the strategy of provisioning of places. As changes in land use
are likely to be responses to ecological and demographic conditions, a shift in raw
material economy most likely reflects changes in the conditions around which
people were planning rather than their capacity for thinking ahead.
Over the past decade or so, many generalizations about categorical differences
between Middle and Upper Paleolithic, or between Neanderthals and modern
humans, have come under intense scrutiny. Where scholars once believed there
were clearly demarked distinctions they now see considerable overlap and similarity
(e.g.Villa and Roebroeks, 2014). To a certain extent this is an inevitable expression
of the expansion of knowledge. The more we learn about Neanderthals the more
likely we are to find evidence of less frequent forms of behaviour. In my view it also
reflects a cyclical shift in consensus views. Sometimes excessively zealous attempts
to document differences between hominins are eventually countered with efforts
to show how similar they really were.
Despite this blurring of distinctions between MP and UP, some generalizations
do hold up. Generally speaking, early Upper Paleolithic peoples were more likely
to expend effort to obtain the highest quality raw materials than were Middle
FIGURE 4.10 Map showing lithic raw material displacements in early Upper Paleolithic
(Aurignacian) sites in Central Europe. Note that while much raw material movement
occurs over distances of 80–100 km, most assemblages contain stones that came from
>200 km distance (from Féblot-Augustins 1997, Figure 122).
Paleolithic populations.This is most often reflected in bulk transport of choice stone

over longer distances (something noted by R. White, 1982; Mellars, 1973 several
decades ago). An increase in the scale of raw material movement, involving sedi-
mentary rocks as well as obsidian, can also be observed in the late Middle Stone Age
of sub-Saharan Africa (Ambrose, 2012; Nash et al., 2013). Whether people carried
the stone themselves or acquired it through exchange is immaterial here: what is
important is that people made special effort to get their hands on raw materials
with certain desirable features. Equally telling is evidence from South Africa for
heat treatment of silcrete rocks that are abundant but of uneven quality (Brown
et al., 2009; Delagnes et al., 2016; P. Schmidt & Mackay, 2016). There remains
some debate over the amount of labour and time required to effectively heat-treat
silcrete (Schmidt et al., 2013), but this nonetheless represents a substantial invest-
ment of effort, comparable to travelling to a distant location to procure particularly
desirable stone. It is widely believed that heat treatment appeared in Eurasia with
the mid-Upper Paleolithic, though detailed studies are hard to find. It does appear
that thermal alteration of flint was practiced in southwest Europe at least by the
Solutrean period (Collins, 1973). In northeast Asia heat treatment is associated with
the development and spread of micro-blade technology during the later Upper
Pleistocene (MIS 2) (Guan et al., 2015; Zhou et al., 2013).
What explains this heightened attention to and investment in raw material
quality during the late Middle Stone Age and Upper Paleolithic? One possibility
is that the adoption of demanding methods of artefact production, such as bladelet
and micro-blade manufacture (e.g. Tomasso and Porraz 2016) or the shaping of
very thin bifaces, placed a premium on raw materials with excellent flaking prop-
erties. Heat treatment lowers fracture toughness in many siliceous rocks (Domanski
& Webb, 1992; Domanski, Webb, & Boland, 1994), increasing workability at the
expense of durability or edge-holding potential. An interesting case study comes
from the Howiesons Poort and post-Howiesons Poort layers of the Mertenhof
Rockshelter. Here, evidence of heat treatment of silcrete is negatively correlated
with the proportion of other fine-g rained rocks in the assemblage, suggesting that
people invested in heating local stones when other sorts of fine-g rained, workable
materials were unavailable or difficult to come by (P. Schmidt & Mackay, 2016).
Stone raw materials could have had social or symbolic significance as well as prac-
tical advantages. There is ample evidence from later periods that certain rocks were
valued for more than just their ability to create and hold a sharp edge. The extensive
exchange of obsidian in the Neolithic and later periods in many regions around the
world certainly testifies to the aesthetic and symbolic value of the material as much
as its practical usefulness: otherwise, why would people living in flint-r ich regions
such as the Mediterranean Levant or the Maya Lowlands have gone to such great
effort to obtain volcanic glass? If later people valued materials such as obsidian for
more than just their working characteristics there is no reason that Upper Paleolithic
and Middle Stone Age peoples could not have done so as well. In some cases, the
intrinsic properties of the stones may have been relatively unimportant. The rocks
themselves may have been tokens of something more important.
Hunter-gatherers often create extensive networks of exchange relationships.

These are essentially ties between individuals that are created and maintained
through the occasional exchange of goods. The famous Hxaro exchange system
of the Kalahari !Kung acts in part as a means for establishing networks of social
relationships that can help reduce individual risk (Wiessner, 1977, 1982, 1986).
Superficially the system is manifest as the exchange of a range of objects between
neighbours as well as distant individuals. But the objects themselves (Figure 4.11)
are not as important as the relationships they represent. People seek to acquire
goods from individuals in far away places because they value the relationships with
those people: the goods themselves are simple tokens of the friendships. Widening
circulation of certain lithic raw materials during the Upper Pleistocene across the
globe may mark the expansion of active social networks by individual agents within
hunter-gatherer societies.
We should also recognize that raw material economies of the later Upper
Pleistocene (late MSA, LSA, and Upper Paleolithic) seem to extend rather than
replace tendencies established much earlier. Increasing evidence for provisioning
of long-term occupations is probably symptomatic of changes in the ways people
positioned themselves on the landscape: it is not a completely new approach to
keeping people supplied with artefacts and raw materials. Expanding scales of raw
material movement more generally may be evidence of larger territories and more
FIGURE 4.11 Ju/’hoansi “zem” or tortoise-shell compact case, decorated with ostrich

eggshell beads. Such objects were often exchanged as part of the !Hxaro system. While
useful and attractive these were not rare things – many people could make them. Their
true value was as a token of a relationship (gift to the author and M. C. Stiner from
Dr. Polly Wiessner).
extensive social networks. In so far as long-distance movement of raw materials

represents development of exchange systems and social networks, this does indi-
cate a new role for artefacts in hominin societies. However, we cannot exclude
exchange and network formation at smaller scales in earlier periods. Brooks and
colleagues (2018) argue that movement of obsidian (accounting for up to 8% of the
assemblages) over distance of up to 50 km reflects the establishment or broadening
of exchange-based social networks. However, it could just as easily be a reflection
of expanded foraging ranges, or even occasional walkabouts by mobile individuals.
Interestingly, movement of obsidian over equal or greater distances at a more-or-
less contemporaneous site in Armenia, and later Neanderthal sites in Europe, is
attributed to mobility rather than exchange (Adler et al., 2014).
One major development after ca. 45 ka is the abandonment of many methods
of blank production. Methods such as Quina débitage, discoid, and Levallois, which
had served hominins for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years, simply
disappeared from technical repertoires (see Chapter 7 for more extensive discus-
sion of this phenomenon). A comparatively narrow set of systematic methods for
producing blades were retained and elaborated across Eurasia and Africa after 40 ka.
Relatively unstandardized and informal methods of flake production were often
used as well, although these receive considerably less attention in discussions of
lithic technology. The explanation for this “selective sweep” in lithic technology
is elusive, though it may well relate to more regular and systematic hafting of
artefacts (see Chapter 3). One outcome is that economic responses to the exigen-
cies of life are no longer so clearly expressed in choices of blank types or reduction
methods: instead, they are seen mainly in the variable treatment of blades, blade
cores and blade tools (Blades, 2002; Kuhn, 2004c).
At the same time, developments in lithic technology themselves led to changes
in how raw material was managed. By the end of MIS 2, bladelet or micro-blade-
based technological systems were virtually ubiquitous from South Africa to Central
Europe and from the Atlantic to the northern Pacific. A heavy reliance on produ-
cing small lithic elements as components in composite tools minimized waste of raw
materials and maximized edge production per volume of stone. It also permitted
people to carry a large number of replacement edges for multiple implements
without substantial mass. Finally, it shifted the investment in artefact manufac-
ture, and perhaps in raw material procurement, to the production of armatures
and handles. I doubt that the economic advantages of bladelet technologies were
a primary cause for their widespread adoption. If so, we would expect them to
have appeared first in raw material poor areas and last in regions with abundant
stone, which does not seem to be the case globally. Instead the advantages of com-
posite artefacts themselves probably spurred the adoption of methods for producing
inserts for them. However, once bladelet and micro-blade technologies came into
wide use the constraints on raw material economies were reoriented in important
ways. Pressures to conserve raw materials were probably reduced to a certain extent
across the board, and responses to these pressures were expressed in strategies of
retooling rather than in extending the lives of individual stone artefacts.
Alternative techniques for renewing edges can also play a role in extending the
useful lives of implements and, indirectly, in material conservation. Percussion flaking,
especially with a hard stone hammer, removes stone in comparatively large “bites,”
and quite a bit of material is lost with each retouch or resharpening event.Techniques
such as soft-hammer percussion and pressure flaking remove less of the edge and so in
principle can help extend artefact use-lives (Hayden, 1987). Soft-hammer percussion
first appears in some Mode 2 assemblages after 1 ma (Roche, 2005; Schick & Clark,
2003; Sharon & Goren-Inbar, 1999). The earliest reported pressure flaking comes
from the Late Pleistocene MSA of South Africa (Mourre, Villa, & Henshilwood,
2010). Pressure flaking appeared later in the European Upper Paleolithic (e.g. Bradley,
Anikovich, & Giria, 1995; Collins, 1975; Geneste & Maury, 1997). For the most part
these methods were used in shaping bifacial tools (façonage), not in renewing edges.
As far as I know, the practice of resharpening the edges of flake or blade tools with
a hard hammer remained dominant throughout the Pleistocene across the world.
The most economical means of edge renewal, at least with respect to raw material
conservation, is edge grinding (Hayden, 1987). Ground edges are very robust and
can be refurbished with an absolute minimum loss of raw material: the main cost of
course is time since it takes much longer to grind a stone edge to make it sharp than
it does to flake it. In Africa and western Eurasia edge grinding is associated with the
Mesolithic or the Neolithic (Hayden, 1987; Shea, 2013a). However, edge-ground
tools (Figure 4.12) appear tens of thousands of years earlier in Asia and the Pacific.
4.7 Summary: Diversification and complexity in raw material

economies
Figure 4.13 summarizes some of the global developments in raw material economies
discussed in this chapter. Even the earliest known lithic technologies dating to the
late Pliocene and early Pleistocene provide evidence for some systematic transport of
artefacts or raw materials, although recognition bias may be at work too. Beginning
around 1.7 my with the appearance of large cutting tools (LCTs), we can hypothe-
size a bifurcation of production and use. Large, potentially renewable artefacts such as
handaxes and cleavers were regularly moved around the landscape and deposited at
some remove from the places they were made. Limited direct evidence suggests that
some of these artefacts were carried around for several days. Other artefacts, small
flake tools, had shorter life histories: typically, they were made, used, and discarded in
one place. This basic economic division persisted for at least the next 1.3 my. Over
time, transport distances for LCTs may have expanded but the evidence is equivocal.
The elaboration and diversification of methods for producing small blanks starting
around a half million years ago marks another milestone in the evolution of hominin
raw material economies. Hominins began to apply different approaches to making
small hand-held tools with different economic and functional properties: concomi-
tantly the reliance on large mobile artefacts began to decline.The emphasis on small
tools with different properties and life histories suggests increasingly fine adjustments
of artefact life histories to different needs. This trend toward diversification and dif-
ferentiation in lithic raw material economies continued through the second half of
FIGURE 4.12 Earlyground-edge tools from Madjedbebe Rockshelter, Australia (photo

by Richard Fullagar. Image reproduced with permission of Gundjeimhi Aboriginal
Corporation).
the Middle Pleistocene and into Upper Pleistocene. By the beginning of the Upper
Pleistocene it is even possible to associate specific technological strategies with par-
ticular ways of using the landscape, as expressed in faunal remains and patterns of
inter-site variability. In Africa and Eurasia there are also signs of a gradual increase
in the absolute scales over which artefacts and raw materials were moved. Whether
this reflects changing cognitive capacities, expanded social networks, or simply
expanding territories is something worth further investigation.
The transition to the Upper Paleolithic and Late Stone Age does not seem
to be associated with major discontinuities in raw material economies: trends
toward expansion of raw material movement continued, for example. Evidence
TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS
years BP
10,000
20,000
microlithic technologies common
systematic provisioning of places

50,000
first ground-edged artefacts
100,000 movement of artefacts >100km/interest in high-quality materials
multi-day transport to artefacts, >50km
diversified artefact life histories, differential reduction
500,000
1,000,000
1,500,000 habitual transport/bifurcated artefact life histories
2,500,000 stone tools widespread in Africa
earliest stone tools

3,500,000
FIGURE 4.13 Summary of trends in raw material economics.
for provisioning of places with raw materials coming from beyond 5–10 km does
seem to increase, probably as a response to changes in mobility and land use. What
also appears for the first time in some areas after 40 ka is movement of high-quality
materials in bulk over distances >50 km. Cases of systematic acquisition of high-
quality exotic materials may have been a response to the technical demands of blade
and bladelet technologies. It may also be symptomatic of the development of large-
scale exchange networks. The appearance of edge-g round artefacts and especially
microlith-based technologies late in the Pleistocene enabled hominins to extend
the lives of cores and individual implements to an unprecedented degree.
5
ARTEFACTS AS INFORMATION
“Then we went to the garden, as you remember, and we saw the very singular
contents of the little yellow box.”
“The string was of the quality which is used by sail-makers aboard ship, and at
once a whiff of the sea was perceptible in our investigation. When I observed
that the knot was one which is popular with sailors, that the parcel had been
posted at a port, and that the male ear was pierced for an earring which is so
much more common among sailors than landsmen, I was quite certain that
all the actors in the tragedy were to be found among our seafaring classes.”
Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box”
5.1 Identifying information content in artefacts

Like a good archaeologist, Sherlock Homes is skilled at extracting useful knowledge
from what might seem to others to be mute objects. The brief passage above also
illustrates some of the different sorts of information that artefacts embody. Much of
the knowledge that a good detective or archaeologist gleans from material evidence
derives from traces that were never intended to convey information. Like animal
tracks or the root casts left by plants, these are the byproducts of actions that had no
communicative function when they occurred. Sail-makers use particular varieties of
string because they stand up well to conditions aboard ship, and sailors prefer par-
ticular knots because they hold better when they are wet. A trained observer may be
able to read this message “like a book” but it is missing a central element of any text,
that of having been composed by someone in order to communicate something.
The pierced ear is quite another sort of “text.” For those not familiar with Conan
Doyle’s story, the ear was one of a pair, packed in salt and mailed in a package to
a Miss Cushing of Croydon. Based on his knowledge of the body-modification
habits of Victorian Englishmen, Holmes is able infer that it once belonged to a
112 Artefacts as information
sailor. In that sense it is not so different from the knot or the string. However, the
original owner of the pierced ear –the lover of Miss Cushing’s sister Mary, as it
turns out –wore an earring for a particular motive. Sailors pierce their ears as a
signal that they have crossed the equator or circumnavigated the globe, for example.
A pierced ear might also be part of a whole series of visual clues that would help
members of the fraternity of seafaring men identify each other. The distinction is
that the earring can be a conscious and intentional signal, the significance of which
is determined by arbitrary cultural convention. In this sense it stands in marked
contrast to the accidental signals contained in choices about which sort of string
one uses or what kind of knots one ties. In C.S. Peirce’s terminology (Atkin, 2010),
the earring is a symbol of belonging to the class of sailors whereas the choice of
knot or string is an index of the same fact.
The distinction between artefacts as symbols and indexes is a central one for
Paleoanthropology. It is widely believed that the creation and manipulation of
symbols is unique to the human lineage. It is thought to be closely related onto-
logically to the development of symbolic language, though scholars differ as to
whether gestural communication might have preceded spoken language (Corballis,
2002; Hewes et al., 1973; Kendon, 2017;Tomasello, 2008;Wynn & Coolidge, 2011).
We are very interested in when and under what conditions hominins began using
symbols to communicate. And because language doesn’t fossilize and potential ana-
tomical indicators are ambiguous, Paleoanthropologists often turn to the material
record for evidence of hominins’ symbolic actions. All flaked stone artefacts index
certain behaviours, flint knapping being the most obvious. What we want to know
is when and how they became symbols as well.
When we look to material culture for evidence of symbolic behaviour it is
important to remember the distinction between using symbols per se and rendering
symbols in physical materials. All humans today use complex symbolic language,
and while the nature of specific languages varies widely, people everywhere use
spoken language to accomplish similar ends. The rendering of symbols in durable
media is much more variable. Everyone does it, but the choice of media, audience,
and message vary over a broad range. In one community, hairstyles might be awash
in intricate social messages (Robins, 1999; Weitz, 2001) while in another group
of people these might mean little. Likewise, people may select different media for
sending similar messages: think about the diverse ways people around the world
choose to express personal or family wealth. The point is that people do not use
beads or clothing or pots or projectile points to send messages because they are gen-
etically programmed to do so: their choices are context-sensitive and historically
contingent. If we wish to use evidence of symbolic behaviour in material culture
to understand the origins of symbolic thought in human evolution, we must be
prepared to consider context and the conditions of life, as well as the evolved cap-
acities of hominins.
Why use material culture to communicate at all? Living humans benefit from the
two most effective systems for transferring information that evolution has devised,
genetic transmission and symbolic language. What does decorating pots or making
Artefacts as information 113
distinctive arrowheads add to these already powerful and versatile mechanisms?

Material symbols have very different “performance characteristics” (sensu Schiffer
& Skibo, 1987, 1997) than spoken words or genes. For one thing, materialized
information is durable. Conversations, lectures and speeches are fleeting. Prior to
the invention of sound and video recording the spoken word lasted no longer than
a single interaction: statements could be repeated and stories retold but they had
to be remade each time. Material symbols in contrast can be long-lasting, often
remarkably so. Some Paleolithic cave paintings have remained visible for more than
40,000 years, so long in fact that the original symbolic content was lost millennia
ago. Material symbols can also reach a wide audience. Before the proliferation of
electronic media, the effective audience size and range of verbal communication
were limited by how loudly the speaker could shout. Depending on its size and
positioning, a colourful mural or particularly gaudy costume can reach hundreds
or thousands of individuals. Important objects or facsimiles of them can travel for
hundreds of miles, carrying messages between people who have never met, nor
even be alive at the same time. Material messages also repeat themselves with very
high fidelity at no additional cost or risk to the sender. The uniforms of armies on
the battlefield tell everyone who is friend and who is foe without anyone having to
come within striking distance of one another.
Identifying symbolic elements of artefacts is a notoriously slippery business.
By definition symbols are arbitrary. Nothing people do with their bodies or with
material objects must be symbolic but just about anything can be symbolic, so long
as people can exercise a choice over it. Some kinds of symbols are unambiguous.
As people familiar with the written word, we have little trouble recognizing a text,
an ideogram, or a cartoon even when we have no clue what it means. But things
get knottier with objects that have material as well as symbolic functions (Chase,
1991). Many of the features that typify symbolic content –standardization of form,
aesthetic appeal, and so on –can also occur as a result of functional or material
constraints. Nature produces many redundant, symmetrical and outright beautiful
forms without any intrinsic meaning.
Normally the logic of argument brought to symbolic content in artefacts is
that a particular attribute or feature has no conceivable material or practical function and
therefore must be symbolic. The reliability of such reasoning hinges entirely on
how much one knows about the ways that the artefacts function to begin with. For
some kinds of material culture or classes of attribute this kind of logic is sufficient.
We know enough about how ceramics are made and used to be confident that
the designs people paint on the surfaces of pots have no effect on how well they
function as cooking vessels or water containers. In a similar way, we can be fairly
certain that objects such as pierced stone beads or carved ivory statuettes had few
functions except as carriers of information.
The situation is rather different for stone tools. First, lithic artefacts seldom
preserve any sort of surface decoration, with the possible exception of patterned
pressure flaking. Second, almost any modification that affects an artefact’s size
and shape could contribute to its functionality in the material realm. To take one
example, serrations on the edges of projectile points (Figure 5.1) have been vari-
ously identified as elements of stylistic expression, as functional features, or as
preparation for resharpening (S. Hughes, 1998; Loendorf et al., 2015). Moreover,
because of discontinuities in knowledge, archaeologists know a good deal less about
lithic technology than they do about ceramics. Almost everything we know about
stone tools today has been “reverse engineered” through inspection of archaeo-
logical materials and experimentation, informed by a limited number of ethno-
graphic studies. Consequently, our understandings of how artefacts were used and
what makes them good for a particular purpose are incomplete and biased. An
archaeologist’s claim that a particular attribute of a stone tool has no functional sig-
nificance and must therefore be symbolic is less reliable than a similar claim about
pottery or beads or sculptures.
A common gambit for identifying “added” symbolic elements of stone artefacts
is to focus on items with special visual appeal. Very large, very well-shaped, or
eye-catching specimens are frequently nominated as having some symbolic value.
Particularly beautiful handaxes (Carbonell & Mosquera, 2006; Hochadel, 2016) or
FIGURE 5.1 Decoration, function – or both? Serrated bifacial Dalton points from the
late Paleoindian Sloan site, Arkansas, USA (Sloan Site On-line Artifact Photo Gallery,
Figure 3.3 nos 4, 4, and 101. http://archeology.uark.edu/sloan/daltonpoints/figure-3–
3/. Courtesy of the Arkansas Archaeological Survey).
specimens with fossils exposed on the surface (Oakley, 1973, 1981) have been iden-
tified as early evidence for symbolic valuation of artefacts.While a great many other-
wise mundane Paleolithic artefacts are visually striking, the real question is whether
aesthetic appeal inevitably translates into symbolic content. As will be discussed
below, the feature that make some objects visually striking may also help them
work better as scrapers, knives or points. To reverse the argument, the features that
make artefacts work better may also increase their appeal to the senses. The emer-
ging field of evolutionary aesthetics (e.g. Coss, 2003; Davies, 2012; Kaplan, 1987;
Ruso, Renninger, & Atzwanger, 2003) investigates how evolutionary forces may
shape the sensory mechanisms and emotional responses of organisms so that they
respond positively to things which enhance their fitness. We know that Pleistocene
hominins were visually-oriented creatures who depended to a significant degree on
manipulation of objects to survive. It makes sense that they would be stimulated by
features of artefacts, such as symmetry, which typically signal soundness or health
(Hodgson, 2015; Sasaki, Vanduffel, Knutsen, Tyler, & Tootell, 2005). It also makes
sense that they would be attracted to unusual or visually striking forms or raw
materials. There is no need to appeal to symbolism or meaning to explain the
attraction.
Even if we can determine with confidence that certain features of Paleolithic
artefacts were symbolic, we may never identify the symbolic content itself. An image
of a horse or the colour red mean something very different to an observer today than
they meant to someone living 20,000 or 200,000 years ago. Indeed, these things
probably meant quite different things to contemporaneous groups of people across
the Pleistocene world. Moreover, the rarified material record of Paleolithic sites
seldom if ever provides the kinds of rich contextual information that might help
narrow down the precise symbolic content of particular objects or characteristics.
Consequently, it can be more productive to focus on the medium rather than the
message. Alternative media have different properties as conduits for information.
The relative permanence, visibility or transferability of materials and objects chosen
for conveying symbolic information tells us something about the target audience
and the desired longevity of the messages being conveyed. In the end, this sort of
information can be just as interesting as the hypothetical content of the messages
themselves.
5.2 What is the message? Different sorts of symbol

As avid and obligate users of symbols, contemporary humans have comparatively
little trouble identifying them. For the sake of discussion, I define a symbol as any
sign, sound or object that stands for something else.To further differentiate symbols
from signs or indexes in the Peircean sense I assume that the association between
symbol and what it stands for is established by arbitrary cultural convention. There
is no necessary instrumental or causal link between a symbol and its referent. The
syllable “ma” can mean “horse” in Mandarin, “but” in Italian, “mother” in some
dialects of English, and a great many other things in other languages. In contrast, a
wolf will always leave wolf tracks in the snow, irrespective of what people (or the
wolf) think about it.
It is easy to cite words and footprints as extreme and unambiguous examples
of symbols and indexes, respectively. But some things are less clearly one or the
other. One such phenomenon, which has received considerable attention from
anthropologists, is costly signalling. Also termed the “handicap principle” (Zahavi
& Zahavi, 1999), costly signalling refers to behaviours or phenotypic traits that
provide unambiguous indicators of some important quality of an individual. They
are truthful signals precisely because they are very difficult to fake. The size and
brilliance of a peacock’s tail tell the observer how healthy and genetically sound
that individual is because a sickly peacock with poor genes could not grow big,
shiny tail feathers. A gazelle’s “stotting” behaviour tells a would-be predator that
the potential prey has spotted the predator, and that the prey is strong and healthy
and likely to get away. Although the interests of the two parties to the communi-
cation are different, they both benefit from a clear signal that is difficult to falsify.
The stotting gazelle avoids being chased by a predator and the predator avoids
what would likely be a fruitless pursuit. The phenomenon of costly signalling has
received a great deal of attention from anthropologists (e.g. Bliege Bird & Smith,
2005; Hawkes & Bliege Bird, 2002), probably because it often involves spectacular
actions by signallers that at first seem wasteful or unnecessarily risky.
Costly signalling systems fall somewhere between symbols and indexes. On one
hand, the ability to jump high in the air repeatedly (stotting) is an unambiguous
index of strength and health: only an individual in prime shape can do it well. The
tail of a male peacock is a good index of its potential as a mate for the same reason.
On the other hand, the particular channel over which the message is sent is effect-
ively arbitrary. There are many other potential indicators of genetic quality or the
ability to escape. In the cases discussed here it is an evolved character rather than a
culturally-determined one. Peahens cannot decide whom to mate with based on
song quality rather than tail feathers, although it could well have evolved that way,
as it has among in other lineages of bird.
Gazelles’ stotting and peacocks’ tails are linked directly to phenotype. However,
even in the animal world there are signals which are much less direct, and many
involve manipulation of material objects (Doerr, 2012). Male bower birds attract
females by constructing elaborate nuptial stages of vegetation, stones, and other
objects. Australian bush turkeys construct enormous incubation mounds of earth
and forest duff. The male that makes the best bower or the largest incubation
mound has greater success in attracting females (Borgia & Keagy, 2015; Doerr,
2012; Keagy, Savard, & Borgia, 2009). These are both examples of costly signalling.
It takes a lot of energy to create a good mound or bower: bush turkey mounds
can incorporate as much as 2500 kg of material and take more than month to
construct (Troy & Elgar, 1991). The strongest and healthiest males will create the
largest mounds or gaudiest bowers, so females choosing mates based on these
criteria will likely be selecting good potential partners. Bowerbird constructions
may even reflect the cleverness and problem-solving ability of the males, thus
emphasizing cognitive as well as somatic quality (Keagy et al., 2009). But while
bowers and incubation mounds may be good indexes of male quality, they are also
more indirect than a somatic trait such as the size of a peacock’s tail or the volume
of a bull elk’s bugle. And again, they are effectively arbitrary. Although they have no
individual choice in the matter, bowerbirds and bush turkeys could have evolved
very different signalling systems. It is entirely possible that many generations hence
the quality bowerbird mate will be signaled by his elaborate courtship dance rather
than by his bower.
Humans have been observed to engage in a wide range of behaviours that fit the
criteria of costly signalling. These range from risky acts (hunting large dangerous
animals) to conspicuous displays of generosity or wasteful consumption (Bliege
Bird & Smith, 2005; Bliege Bird, Smith, & Bird, 2001; Gintis, Smith, & Bowles,
2001). These signals may alert observers to an individual’s physical, mental, social or
economic “quality.” However, the fundamental difference between costly signals in
humans and in other animals is the nature of the signals themselves. Costly signal-
ling systems in humans work because they are symbolically informed. Success in
hunting large, fierce animals or the capacity to give away or destroy large quantities
of valuable goods should demonstrate certain physical, mental and socio-economic
properties of individuals. However, the choice of what channel to use, the medium
for costly signalling, is fundamentally cultural. What seems like an obvious way to
express wealth or hunting prowess to a person raised in a particular cultural milieu
appears inexplicable or downright foolish to someone from a different background.
A performance such as the potlach, which clearly signalled social prominence and
economic capacity to indigenous audiences on the Northwest Coast of North
America, seemed only irrational and wasteful to early western observers and colo-
nial officials (Bracken, 1997; D. Cole & Chaikin, 1990)
Here is the central difference between costly signals in the non-human animal
world and the human world. Among non-human animals, the choice of signal-
ling medium and the criteria by which signals are evaluated are under genetic and
developmental control. A female bowerbird is born “knowing” how to evaluate
a male’s bower. She has neither the time nor the ability to learn from experi-
ence which males are actually the best mates. Among humans, the nature of signals
and the criteria for judging them are determined by convention. An individual’s
capacity to host a potlach or to own a Maybach automobile are certainly good
indicators of that person’s access to resources and capital, but people are not born
with a tendency to judge others based on the car they drive or their ability to give
away or destroy valuable goods. They must be taught that these things (and not
others) are important. In short, among humans many costly signalling systems are
symbolically informed, while among non-human animals they are not.
This distinction is important for the study of human evolution. I am not aware of
any proposition that specific forms of costly signalling among contemporary humans
are under genetic control. On the other hand, because innate signalling systems
occur in a range of other animals, there is no prior reason to think that they could
not have existed among our hominin ancestors. As is discussed below, researchers
have proposed that stone tools may have played a role in costly signalling systems
in the past (Hiscock, 2014a; Kohn & Mithen, 1999), and that these signals were
used in mate selection or other social interactions. The claims that people viewed
handaxes or Solutrean bifaces as markers of individual quality at specific times must
be evaluated on their own merits, but even accepting the proposition does not neces-
sarily mean that the artefacts were symbols. If animals can evolve signalling systems
that use material props, then ancient hominins could have done so too.
Outside of finding a gene for handaxe appreciation—an exceedingly unlikely
possibility—one signal of whether some behaviour is under genetic or cultural
control is the pace with which it evolves.The minimal unit of time for the purposes
of biological evolution is the generation: the clock ticks once every time genes are
passed from a parent to offspring. Cultural evolution can unfold orders of magni-
tude more quickly. An individual can adopt a completely different set of beliefs or
practices during their lifetime, perhaps more than once: those of us born in the era
of paper letters and land lines but living in the era of Twitter and cell phones can
give personal testimony of this fact.
Accelerated rates of change in specific elements of material culture could also
indicate that they had entered new domains of human life, and hence passed from
one form of control to another. When a dimension of artefact form takes on a
communicative and symbolic role the constraints on variation change. Having
artefact design under symbolic control, rather than simply being governed by
physical and mechanical laws, increases the potential for rapid and even chaotic
change (D. Rogers & Ehrlich, 2008). Functional and mechanical constraints on
artefact form are effectively fixed, whereas purely cultural constraints are much
freer to vary: artefacts must possess certain properties to be good cutting tools,
but just about anything can be meaningful. At any particular time people may
adhere very closely to socially-sanctioned “correct” design conventions, but these
conventions themselves can vary within broad limits and are unconstrained by
anything except recent history. Consequently phenomena such the frequencies
of baby names (Bentley, 2007; Berger et al., 2012; M. Hahn & Bentley, 2003)
behave at a large scale as if they were stochastic, even though individual choices
are anything but random. Rapid expansion in range of variation and accelerating
rates of change in a particular dimension of material culture could be an indicator
that it had taken on a role in carrying information. In the time-averaged world
of Paleolithic assemblages, more rapid change can also translate into greater spa-
tial variation. In fact, the comparatively rapid turnover and spatial heterogeneity
of many Upper Paleolithic tool forms has led some researchers to conclude that
artefacts began to function as media for signalling group membership or identity
during this period (Klein, 2009: 664–665; R. White, 1982). Feedback between the
frequency with which particular design choices are made and their acceptability
as symbolic gestures, what has been called conformist and anti-conformist bias,
even raises the possibility for chaotic non-linear systems dynamics. Of course,
there are no established thresholds telling us how fast or unpredictably things have
to change in order to demonstrate symbolic rather than mechanical influences on
design. Still, changes in the chronological or spatial heterogeneity of particular

classes of material culture are important clues that the artefacts in question may
have assumed a different role in hominin culture
Costly signalling as an idea gets a lot of attention because the costly signals them-
selves are often spectacular and superficially irrational. But not all signals are costly,
and even cheap signals can be truthful. Costly signals are likely to evolve in situations
such as mating or in interactions between predator and prey where the agendas of
the signaller and audience are not aligned, when sender and receiver prefer different
outcomes (Maynard-Smith & Harper, 2003: 16–26). In such circumstances the sig-
naller would benefit by sending a false message, and it is to the receiver’s advantage to
ignore any message that is not truthful. Cheap-but-honest signals can evolve to equi-
librium under a different range of circumstances (Godfrey-Smith & Martínez, 2013;
Maynard-Smith, 1991, 1994; Zollman, 2013; Zollman, Bergstrom, & Huttegger,
2013). They are especially likely outcomes when sender and receiver rank poten-
tial outcomes of the encounter in similar ways (Maynard-Smith & Harper, 2003,
pp. 29–31). To reframe this in terms more familiar in the social sciences, low-cost
but honest signals work best when they coordinate actions among potential allies
or promote cooperation (Torney, Berdahl, & Couzin, 2011), when interactions are
repeated so that a habitual cheater’s reputation will have a cost in future interactions,
or where dishonesty is actively penalized (Maynard-Smith & Harper, 2003: 38;
Nowak, 2006: 1563). So, for example, the two teams in a football match as well as
the referees all wear different uniforms to identify themselves. But there is no differ-
ential emphasis on cost of the uniforms and no escalation in elaboration: everyone
wears basically the same outfit, just with different designs. This is sufficient because
it is to everyone’s advantage to be able to know who is on one’s own team, who is
a member of the opposition, and who will dole out a yellow card for misbehaviour.
And of course there is always the threat of punishment: a player that donned the
jersey of the other team during play, let alone a referee’s shirt, would be severely
penalized.
The use of material objects for signalling identity is often an example of a cheap-
but-honest signal. Contemporary humans, including people living in small-scale
societies, occupy a whole range of identities, and they often mark these by the
clothing they wear, the ways they adorn themselves, or even the artefacts they carry.
Using material culture to signal identity has a number of advantages: the object
sends the same signal to everyone, and it sends it at a distance, thereby avoiding
repetitive, costly and possibly risky face-to-face encounters. Material badges of
identity tell us whom we might want to interact with and whom we should avoid.
They might even provide a basic framework for the interaction. Such material
signals can also help coordinate activities. Members of a hospital staff often wear
uniforms of different colours so that everyone knows exactly whom to turn to
when they need an orderly, a nurse, a respiratory therapist or a security guard.While
easy to fake, the signal remains honest because interests are well aligned. It benefits
nobody to mislead others about their specialization, and it benefits everybody to be
able to find the right sort of specialist in an emergency.
A seminal paper by H. M. Wobst (Wobst, 1977) galvanized the attention of

archaeologists to the role of material culture in signalling social identity. Wobst
used the example of hats in the Balkans to show how objects of material culture
could be harnessed to broadcast signals of identity in an ethnically diverse social
landscape, avoiding unnecessary conflict. P. Wiessener (Wiessner, 1983, 1984) later
termed this as a form of “emblemic style.” Wobst’s and Wiessener’s articles had pro-
found influences on the field, opening up for American archaeologists at least the
possibility that people actively manipulated artefact style as devices for broadcasting
social information. Because these early papers (especially Wobst’s) concentrated on
extra-group signalling in a fractious social landscape, many readers took the lesson
to refer mainly to signalling as boundary maintenance, to telling “us” from “them.”
Yet as the hospital or soccer examples show, low-cost signals are not just good for
distinguishing friend from enemy: they can also enhance cooperation among nat-
ural allies.
More recently, M. Moffett (2012, 2013) has proposed an even more significant
role for signalling identity in human evolution. He argues that human societies are
unique among vertebrates in that they are “anonymous.” Individuals can recognize
each other as members of the same social group without actually knowing each
other as individuals. This social configuration, which also pertains to some social
insects, is not observed in other social animals. For most animals, any sense of group
co-membership is confined to specific, known individuals. Moffett further argues
that being able to accommodate anonymous individuals into a larger social unit
frees humans from the cognitive limits of face-to-face familiarity (Dunbar, 2003,
2009; Gamble, Gowlett, & Dunbar, 2014), and ultimately permits human societies
to scale up to a degree unmatched by other vertebrates. This capacity of scaling up
in turn creates a foundation for ever larger, internally-differentiated human soci-
eties. Language is obviously a central tool for signalling group identities, but body
modification, clothing and other material expressions can be equally important
(Moffett, 2013).
5.3 Who is the audience?

People are obligate users of symbols, but they are not obligate makers of material
symbols. Social and physical distance come into play in whether or not it is worth-
while to signal at all, and how signals can be encoded. There is not much to be
gained by investing in material media for sending people information that they
already have.We do not wear wedding bands to tell our spouses that we are married
to them, or wear crosses to remind members of our family that we are Catholics.
The target audience for many messages encoded in material objects, especially
those relating to identity, are what Mary Stiner and I (Kuhn & Stiner, 2007) have
called “strangers in the middle distance.” This category includes people who share
the signallers’ understanding of the signals’ meaning but do not know very much
about the signallers themselves. Consequently, the importance of material signal-
ling of identity should be linked to the scale of social networks and the number
of individuals that people are likely to encounter. A hominin who spent her entire
life with the same group of 35 other individuals would have little need to signal
identity to anyone: everyone in her social universe would already know her, and
she would know them. When humans’ social universes expanded beyond a circle
of long-time associates, when they began encountering numerous strangers on a
regular basis, the benefits of durable symbols of identity and group membership
were amplified. Thus, the recruitment of material culture as a medium for sending
social signals should be correlated with the sizes and complexities of the social
universes people inhabited.
Returning to “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box,” Holmes’s brief discourse on
the gruesome contents of the mysterious package illustrates another important dis-
tinction for archeologists, between active and passive (Wiessner, 1983) or isochrestic
(Sackett, 1982) style. Behavioural choices that Wiessener terms passive style and
Sackett calls isochrestic style reflect shared practice and experience of a group of
people. Choices about the kind of twine to use or knots to tie may give an informed
observer facts about an individual because they reflect the unexamined, and perhaps
unconscious conventions of a group to which he or she belongs. But they were
never intended as messages. In contrast, the decision of the sailor to wear an earring
was a very conscious choice, intended to express something about the wearer.
I agree that the distinction between active and passive style is important,
although the term “style” is problematically vague and probably unnecessary. The
important questions for the study of human evolution concern when hominins
began active signalling through material culture, and under what conditions it
became a habitual practice. In pursuit of these questions we need to be attentive
to the distinction between intentional and passive or unconscious signals. Only
humans encode identity symbolically in artefacts. But culturally transmitted
behaviours that vary across groups are found among a wide range of animals,
from birds to cetaceans to monkeys and apes (see contributions to Laland & Galef,
2009). Some form of “passive style,” recognizable variation in how things are
done in different places, is likely an ancestral condition. Such variation arose as
the inevitable consequence of adaptive change and random cultural divergence
among isolated groups. Whether individuals recognized and acted on it is another
question. It is important to be able to distinguish between the two phenomena.
But this is no simple undertaking.
A number of researchers have nominated discrete patterns of spatial variation as
indications that a Paleolithic material culture had become a medium for signalling
social identity and maintaining boundaries. Increased “regionalization” of artefact
styles during the late MSA (J. D. Clark, 1988; McBrearty & Brooks, 2000) or the
Upper Paleolithic (Vanhaeren & d’Errico, 2006) is thought to mark the use of those
artefact forms as “emblemic” style. There is no disputing that regular use of objects
as badges of group identity should result in the appearance of distinctive regional or
local forms. However, this is not the only process that can lead to spatially discrete
artefact forms. Both adaptation to local conditions (e.g. Banks et al. 2009; Banks,
d’Errico, & Zilhão, 2013) and simple drift within isolated populations will have
similar outcomes in terms of structured spatial variation, without any transfer of

symbolic meaning to artefacts.
In theory we can expect spatial patterning from drift to differ at a fine scale
from patterning due to boundary maintenance. Contrasts in material culture
resulting from drift-like processes should be directly correlated with distance: as
long as there is some contact between neighbouring groups, the transitions from
one to another should be smooth. In contrast, where people use artefacts to signal
group identity to strangers the contrasts ought to be strongest at the boundaries,
where the value of clear signals would be highest. Unfortunately, while there have
been sophisticated studies of regional variation in artefact morphology and tech-
nology (d’Errico et al., 2003; Maier, 2015; Ruebens, 2013; Scerri et al., 2014), few
Paleolithic datasets offer sufficient spatial and temporal resolution for exercises of
this sort.
The nature of different technological phenomena as media for communica-
tion may also help us to determine whether they were actively used as media
for conveying symbolic information. To date, discussions of material signals in the
Paleolithic have focused mainly on the designed or achieved forms of artefacts.
Projectile point or handaxe shapes, beads and pendants, or particular pigments have
been nominated as ethnic markers. I am unaware of anyone who has argued that
procedures for making and modifying stone were symbols of identity.This bias may
be a natural outgrowth of the field’s long obsession with artefact form and design,
and the much more recent ascendency of the chaîne opératoire as an object of theor-
ization and study. In principle, however there is no reason to think that procedures
could not be conduits of information about social identity.
Artefacts such as beads or pigments have no known function other than as media
for carrying messages. They differ in their performance characteristics as tools for
signalling: particulate objects and pigments differ in permanence, transferability and
potential for amplification, making them effective for conveying different kinds of
messages (Kuhn, 2014; Kuhn & Stiner, 2007). In a similar sense procedures and arte-
fact forms have very different properties as messaging media. The main differences
are in their temporal consistency and visibility. Artefact forms are (relatively) static
over short time frames. A spear point looks the same from one minute to the next,
and it is always there to be seen. Procedures are discontinuous and temporary—an
episode of knapping may last just a few minutes. Depending on their sizes, artefacts
may also be visible over large areas, even when no person is actually present. A lost
arrow or a discarded handaxe could provide information about the maker to the
finder, even if the maker is long gone. The debris from core reduction or tool
shaping is much less informative, at least on the surface. I doubt people in the past
used refitting, experimental replication or attribute studies to reconstruct the chaînes
opératoires represented in scatters of debris they encountered. There is no denying
that flint knapping has a performative aspect: just think about the crowds a knapper
attracts when he or she is working in a public space. However, as Tostevein (2007,
2013) has so perceptively observed, really getting procedures of knapping requires
much more intimate personal contact than does learning what shape an arrowhead
ought to have. To learn how someone goes about making blades or thinning a
biface, one needs to be very close to them for a good long while.
In sum, artefact forms in principle are more effective for signalling at a distance,
for conveying information to people who are neither socially nor physically close.
Not all artefacts, and not all dimensions of artefacts, are equally suited for that.Very
small implements or tools that are buried in a haft don’t provide many opportun-
ities for embedding obvious visual cues. And of course we should not assume that
tool form was always or even often used as a signal of identity. However, artefact
forms are a more effective way to send messages to people at some social or phys-
ical remove. As signalling media, knapping procedures are much better suited to
reaching small, close-knit groups. And because of this they are more likely to reflect
passive than active style.
5.4 Trends in artefact information content in the Paleolithic

The very earliest artefacts that we know would have been very poor canvasses
for conveying information. They are procedurally simple and morphologic-
ally unstandardized. Early Mode 1 assemblages across the world show none of
the extreme or apparently “showy” extension of forms that is typically thought
to denote signalling in stone tools. Although archaeologists perceive evidence of
varying levels of skill, and perhaps even different culturally-inherited conventions
within and among late Pliocene and early Pleistocene assemblages (Stout et al.,
2019) this is quite subtle. It is likely that early Pleistocene hominins would recog-
nize lithic debris as an index that someone made or used stone tools in the area. It
is even possible that artefacts did carry implicit information about the maker’s social
or regional origins. But such signals, if they existed, were not intentionally added.
The potential for added information content began to change with the
appearance of large cutting tools and bifacial artefacts beginning around 1.7 my.The
first handaxes, cleavers, and picks were not very different from earlier core-tools, just
longer and more extensively flaked (Beyene et al., 2013; Diez-Martín et al., 2015;
de la Torre, 2016). However, over time handaxes themselves, and the techniques
used to make them, became more elaborate and more visually striking. These large,
sometimes extensively worked artefacts appear to be better media for added sym-
bolic information than earlier stone tools. By 1 my, if not somewhat earlier, some
Mode 2 large cutting tools (LCTs) began to exhibit characteristics that, for some
observers, go beyond the merely functional. Researchers have focused on three
dimensions of early LCTs as potential carriers of information: their overall shapes,
their symmetry (or “hyper-symmetry”), and the sizes of so-called “giant” handaxes.
One of the most provocative claims for early Pleistocene handaxes as signal-
ling media comes from M. Kohn and S.J. Mithen (Kohn & Mithen, 1999; Mithen,
2003). They begin by citing common observations that handaxes are (1) ubiqui-
tous and occasionally very abundant, (2) sometimes overly symmetrical and more
extensively worked than would seem to be necessary for them to function well, and
(3) occasionally very large to the point of seeming unwieldy (Figure 5.2). These
FIGURE 5.2 Very symmetrical, partially shaped handaxe on flint slab from Tabun Cave,
bed 75, Unit 11, Israel. A. Jelinek excavations (drawing by A. Ronen).
authors conclude that these qualities reflect the occasional role of handaxe manu-
facture as a performance, with the size and symmetry of the product indexing the
“quality” of the maker. By making a particularly large, symmetrical and beautifully
finished artefact, the maker (presumably male) could demonstrate to a selected
group of observers that he was healthy, skilled and neurologically well-developed.
Concentrations of perfectly good artefacts with plenty of residual utility at localities
such as the Olorgesaile main site (Isaac 1977) are identified as stages for repeated
display, an early hominin equivalent of the lekking sites where birds and antelopes
engage in competitive breeding displays.
Kohn and Mithen’s thesis elicited a lively response (Hayden & Villeneuve, 2009;
Machin, 2008; Nowell & Chang, 2009) stretching over a decade or more. Their
arguments were criticized on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Some of
their criteria, such as the apparent ubiquity of handaxes and the existence of dense
concentrations of them, can be explained with reference to sampling and geological
factors. However, the underlying question remains an important one. Could a basic,
evolved emotive response to perceptions of features such as symmetry (or size)
have been “exapted” or transferred from one phenomenon, the body, to another,
artefacts?
Studies of fluctuating asymmetry (Graham et al., 2010; Tomkins & Andrews,
2001) demonstrate that somatic traits can serve as indirect indicators of quality in
humans and other animals. If animals (including humans) respond to symmetry
as an index of quality in a body, why not in handaxes or other products? One of

the central issues in the debate is whether symmetry is in fact a universal index of
quality in biological organisms, or more precisely, whether perceptual systems have
evolved to always use symmetry as an index. A vigorous side-debate erupted over
whether humans and other animals always perceive symmetry as a sign of health
and well-being. Without going into the details –and there are many –the answer
seems to be “sometimes and sometimes not” (reviewed by Hodgson, 2009, 2015).
Human responses to facial and body symmetry are somewhat uneven across features
as well as across different subsets of observers. In the end we can only conclude that
symmetry is not universally perceived as a measure of well-being or quality, but
that it sometimes does elicit that response in human observers. Symmetry may also
produce a similar, though weaker response in non-human primates (Sasaki et al.,
2005), suggesting that it could be an ancestral trait that arose before the origins of
the genus Homo, indeed before the human/pongid split.
P. Hiscock (2014a) has proposed a more nuanced and less controversial explan-
ation for the phenomenon of excessive symmetry in early Pleistocene LCTs.
Rather than viewing symmetry as an index of a knapper’s biological quality, he
proposes that it is a direct and unambiguous indicator of skill. This is a fairly non-
controversial proposition: reliably creating symmetry in artefacts implies a high
level of control and the capacity to avoid the accidents which can result in irregular
products. Because a high level of competency can be achieved only through exten-
sive observation and practice, acquiring skill may have a substantial cost. Making
particularly shapely artefacts would be a low-cost way for skilled individuals to
broadcast their competence, as well as an unambiguous way for observers to rec-
ognize a real expert. Hiscock goes on to argue that recognizing the most skilled
knappers was especially important to learners, enabling them to choose the best
individuals to emulate. The advantages for the expert are less straightforward.
Hiscock asserts that advertising a high level of technical competency could increase
one’s status or encourage others to invest in one’s success or well-being. Hiscock’s
model has the added benefit of being able to account for long-term continuity and
stability in Mode 2 technology. Any impetus to demonstrate skill through faithful
replication of model forms would lead to a high level of redundancy in form. If the
biological world is anything to go by, sexual selection would instead tend to lead to
extreme and bizarre forms.
A central assumption of all of these arguments is that the high level of sym-
metry perceived in some early artefacts is somehow unnecessary, that it required
extra effort to achieve, and that it had no other benefit. Some of the examples
illustrated do beg practical explanation. The bilateral notches near the pointed end
of the specimen shown in Figure 5.3 have no obvious function, and would in fact
have weakened the tip. Moreover, they were created in different ways –one notch
is a byproduct of previous removals, while the other was created with a single
flake removal, as though to match the first one. On the other hand, this particular
means of achieving symmetry by secondary modification actually requires relatively
little skill, showing that it would be possible to cheat a system of signalling based
FIGURE 5.3 Large, very symmetric Acheulean handaxe, with close-up of tip, from
Isimila, Tanzania (from lithic teaching collection, School of Anthropology, University
of Arizona). Scale bar = 10 cm.
just on symmetry. However, the more generalized phenomenon of symmetry in

Acheulean tools is not so particular or idiosyncratic. Basically, it just means that the
two margins of a bifacial piece have similar plan-view profiles. And a great number
of factors, ranging from raw material to life history, can affect variation in the
overall symmetry of handaxes (McNabb & Cole, 2015).
S. Lycett (2008) argues that the distribution of symmetry measures in a series of
Acheulean assemblages departs significantly from expectations of a neutral model,
demonstrating that this shape feature was under some kind of selection. He goes
on to emphasize that simple departures from neutrality do not tell us what kind
of selection was occurring: the forces constraining handaxe shape could be func-
tional, mechanical, or social. As an alternative to seeing artefact symmetry exclu-
sively as an index of a maker’s skill, it is reasonable to propose that it has functional
implications. Shouldn’t symmetrical handaxes work better as large cutting tools?
The answer, from a single experiment (Machin, Hosfield, & Mithen, 2007), is that
symmetry explains relatively little of the variation in the effectiveness of handaxes,
at least when used as butchery tools. Unfortunately, these results do not really help
answer the question of whether symmetry in handaxes is really functional. Even a
small advantage is sufficient to push a trait toward fixation in evolution, provided
it has no major costs or disadvantages. And for someone with a reasonable level of
competence it should be no more costly to produce a symmetrical biface than an
asymmetrical one.
In the end we may not need to invoke either function or symbolism to explain
handaxe symmetry. Humans are already predisposed to appreciate symmetry in
living things. If gazing upon symmetrical faces activates certain centres in the brain
that mark it as pleasing, it is not a stretch to imagine that they would have similar
reactions to symmetry in objects, and therefore to recognize and strive for symmetry
as an indication that something is good or that it is finished. Making symmetrical
things may just have felt right to humans and human ancestors. Unfortunately, while
there are many studies of humans’ reactions to symmetry in faces and bodies, I am
unaware of similar work on fluctuating symmetry in objects. Nonetheless, it is at
least plausible that the high levels of symmetry in many handaxes are simply the
byproduct of a transfer of a basic perceptual system in the maker rather than the
viewer.
Another feature of early handaxes that has been identified as a potential medium
for signalling is size. Very large specimens, or “giant” handaxes (Barkai et al., 2013;
Kohn & Mithen, 1999; Wenban-Smith, 2004) have been observed in a range of
contexts. There is no precise threshold for what constitutes excessive size: the rule
of thumb seems to be that it is too large to be manipulated “conveniently.” This
phenomenon of unusually large specimens appears to be manifest earlier than high
levels of symmetry: the 1.7 my old assemblage from FLKW in Olduvai contains a
bifacially-flaked specimen that is 31 cm long and weighs 3660 g (Diez-Martín et al.,
2015). However, the case for size as signal is weaker than for symmetry as signal. First,
we have no clear understanding of the physical strength of early Homo erectus or later
hominins. The observation that something is too heavy to be manipulated easily by
desk-bound academics has limited relevance. Second, it is not clear whether these
unusually large artefacts are categorically different or whether they simply lie at the
upper end of a broad, normal distribution of artefact sizes.We expect artefact designs
to be size-dependent, and in many cases they are: for example, there seem to be
practical limits on the sizes of projectile points associated with different propulsion
mechanisms (Hildebrandt & King, 2012; Shott, 1997; Sisk & Shea, 2011). But we
cannot assume that this was always true. It may well be that “designs” of early LCTs,
to the extent that they existed (see Chapter 6), were less sensitive to overall size than
the designs of other, more familiar implements. Two examples of handaxes nearly
identical in shape but very different in size from Middle Pleistocene levels at Tabun
Cave (Figure 5.4) illustrate the possibility that size and overall form were somewhat
independent. The nature of the relationship between artefact morphology and size
is an interesting phenomenon, but until one understands the allometry of and func-
tional limitations on a class of artefacts it is almost impossible to isolate where arte-
fact size might have been salient enough to serve as a signal.
It is also worth recalling that, even if handaxe symmetry or size was a form of
display, it could point to an evolutionarily primitive sort of signalling. As already
discussed, a variety of animals use proxy signals (call volume, nest size, etc.) to
FIGURE 5.4 Size doesn’t matter all that much. Two handaxes of different sizes but very
similar forms, recovered within a few cm of one another. Tabun Cave, bed 842S (late
Acheulean or Yabrudian, A. Jelinek excavations; drawings by L. Addington). Scale
bar = 10 cm.
indicate less obvious dimensions of quality in competitions for mating opportun-

ities (Laidre & Johnstone, 2013; Maynard-Smith & Harper, 2003). Others, such as
bowerbirds, even use material constructions to attract mates. Recent studies reveal
the visual and cognitive sophistication of these constructions (Borgia & Keagy,
2015; Endler, Gaburro, & Kelley, 2014). Recruiting behaviours associated with tool-
making to show off or broadcast fitness may not be typical of non-human primates,
but it is not so different from what some other animals do. The message and the
mechanisms are similar: the only real difference is the medium.
A more general question about handaxes as signals involves group identity.
By the early 20th century, archaeologists had recognized that the shapes, sizes,
degrees of refinement and other dimensions of LCT morphology varied region-
ally and chronologically. Inevitably, some scholars have interpreted particular,
geographically-restricted forms as signs of their makers’ cultural or social identity
(discussed by McNabb, Binyon, & Hazelwood, 2004; McPherron, 2000; Ruebens,
2013) This is a common line of reasoning in archaeology, but one that has also
been criticized repeatedly. In fact, making the logical connection between geo-
graphic variation and signalling identity involves establishing several things. First,
and most obviously, the nature and extent of variation must be established object-
ively. Second, shape variation that is used as a signal must reflect a clear choice on
the part of the artisan. A number of factors, from the nature and scarcity of local
raw materials to the life histories of artefacts, can influence the morphology of large
bifacial tools (Iovita & McPherron, 2011; Key etal., 2016; Lycett, 2008; McNabb
et al., 2004; McNabb & Cole, 2015; McPherron, 2000; Santonja & Villa, 2006;Villa
& d’Errico, 2001). Choices of raw materials and decisions about whether or not to
reduce handaxes are interesting in their own rights but they are not prima facie evi-
dence of identity signalling. Finally, and most problematically, one must show that
the observed variation represents intentional signalling, the consequence of choices
intended to convey information to others. Regional variation can develop through
mechanisms such as cultural drift and it can be largely passive. Like the knot and
string in the grisly package received by Miss Cushing, the forms of handaxes may
convey worlds of information to an informed archaeological observer without
it having been the intent of the maker to convey that information. And learned
behaviour varies geographically in many complex organisms, including other pri-
mates (reviewed in Haidle et al., 2015; Whiten et al., 2001; Whiten & van Schaik,
2007). Encoding that variation into a conscious identity that is broadcast to others
is a much more rarified, and uniquely human, trait (Haidle et al., 2015). And in
looking for evidence of signalling cultural affiliation in archaeological record it is
this last, rarest sort of behaviour we are seeking.
Although many researchers have opinions, often strong ones, about the role
of Paleolithic artefacts in signalling identity, few researchers have attempted to
investigate the phenomenon empirically. One exception is a study conducted by J.
McNabb and colleagues (McNabb et al., 2004), who carried out extensive attribute
and metric analyses of a series of LCTs from Lower and Middle Pleistocene sites
in southern Africa. Their conclusion is quite straightforward: “Either way, it would
appear that Middle Pleistocene Homo did not use material culture in the same way as
modern humans do –to signal with” (McNabb, Binyon, & Hazelwood, 2004: 667).
As commenters on the paper observe, this conclusion should be amended to read
“…to signal group identity with.” In fact, the study’s authors believe that LCT forms
were “individualized memic constructs,” simply the products of learning how to make
tools by emulation or imitation in a social environment.The authors’ analyses focus
mainly on variation among assemblages, and they cannot rule out the possibility
that individuals within the populations who produced the artefacts intentionally
made artefacts in different ways to express their personal qualities or even just to
make it clear who made something, what Wiessner (1983) called “assertive style.”
Given the intense interest in the possible meanings of handaxes, it is surprising
how little the role of other artefacts as signalling media is discussed. Handaxes of
one form or another were manufactured in Africa and much of Eurasia for more
than 1.5 my. Yet other forms of implement, and other manufacture strategies,
became increasingly common over time. By around 500–450 ka, a range of new
and more refined methods of blank production began to appear in both Africa and
Eurasia. Eventually, these procedures, and the implements they produced, over-
shadow handaxes as indications of cultural and behavioural variability. Moreover, as
discussed in the next two chapters, in contrast to the “global” distributions of Mode
1 and early Mode 2 technologies, the Middle Pleistocene sees increasing spatial dif-
ferentiation of both methods and artefact forms.Yet this fact has excited very little
interest in terms of signalling and information. Perhaps these other, smaller artefacts
and procedures are not seen as effective media for signalling identity or individual
quality. The general attitude is summed up well by Cole (J. Cole, 2015), who states:
Artefacts maintain predominantly functional significance but may carry

limited social meaning in regards to the creator on an individual and group
scale. Social communication is centered around complex gesture and
utterance incorporated with visual display.
In other words, there might be social messages in artefacts, but they are not par-
ticularly salient or important.
In fact, some blank production technologies of the Middle and Upper Pleistocene
could well have been used as platforms for social display and signalling. Making a
particularly large and symmetrical Levallois flake or point is a potentially dramatic
process, in which a series of small, carefully controlled gestures (in core shaping)
culminates in a single act, the striking of the Levallois piece. Anyone who has spent
time around modern knappers knows that it is a great opportunity to show off.
And Paleolithic assemblages often contain impressive, finely made Levallois flakes,
blades and points (e.g. Figure 5.5). The production of very large pointed blades in
the late Middle Pleistocene Hummalian assemblages in the Syrian desert (Wojtczak,
Le Tensorer, & Demidenko, 2014) would have provided similar opportunities.
Conveying messages through the practice of knapping would be confined to single
encounters and relatively small groups, but the potential is still there. However, so
far as I am aware there has been no systematic studies aimed at demonstrating added
symbolic value or excessive size or symmetry in flakes or blades. Typically, extra-
ordinarily large and finely made Levallois flakes or prismatic blades are recognized
simply as products of extraordinarily skillful, or very lucky, artisans.
The lack of scholarly interest in stone artefacts as media for transmitting infor-
mation during the Middle Pleistocene is especially unfortunate as this is exactly
when we have the first clear evidence for a form material culture used exclu-
sively for signalling. As of this writing, the earliest solid dates for the systematic
use of pigments are around 500 ka, from sites such as Wonderwork Cave in South
Africa (Watts, Chazan, & Wilkins, 2016). The abundance and ubiquity of pigments,
principally ochre, continued to expand over the course of the Middle Stone Age
(Figure 5.6). The earliest confirmed evidence for red ochre in Eurasia (Roebroeks
et al., 2012) dates to 200–250 ka, though there are claims for earlier examples as
FIGURE 5.5 Impressively
large retouched Levallois point from bed 63 (early
Mousterian), Tabun Cave, A. Jelinek excavations (drawing by L. Addington). Scale
bar = 5cm.
well. As in South Africa, the use of pigments became more common and wide-
spread over time though the end of the Middle Pleistocene and the beginning of
the Upper Pleistocene (d’Errico, 2008). In these early periods ochre and other nat-
ural pigments were almost certainly used to decorate bodies or clothing: evidence
for pigments on artefacts and cave walls occurs much later. And while there is a
lively debate about the kinds of messages that painted bodies or clothing conveyed,
and for what intended audience (cf. Kuhn, 2014; Watts, Chazan, & Wilkins, 2016),
it is generally thought that these were social messages.
FIGURE 5.6 Pigments are the earliest dedicated technology for communication in the
Paleolithic. Illustrated are a series of red ochre pieces from the MSA site of Porc Epic,
Ethiopia (from Rosso, d’Errico, & Queffelec, 2017, Figure 6).
If there is unambiguous and widespread evidence for using material (pigments)

as a signalling medium beginning in the late Middle Pleistocene, why is it not
obvious in other kinds of material culture such as stone tools? There are a number
of possible answers. First, it could be that the evidence is there but goes unrecog-
nized by archaeologists, either because it is too subtle or because there just has not
been much interest in the topic. Ochre strikes us as a natural medium for com-
munication: it has a limited number of potential uses and today the most common
of these is for colouring things. For reasons discussed above, it will be much more
difficult to isolate aspects of stone artefacts that are only related to sending messages.
A second possibility is that, due to excessive cognitive modularity (Mithen, 1996)
these early hominins could not generalize functions across media—ochre was for
sending messages, stone tools for cutting, scraping, and piercing.
A third possibility is that the first sorts of signals sent through material culture
were more effectively sent through body paint than through the forms of small
and disassociated stone tools. Material culture used to express individual identity
is most effective when linked to the individual whose identity is being expressed.
Artefacts exist independent from human bodies, whereas body paint (and, to a lesser
extent, clothing) are by nature embodied. An object may also express something
about who I am, but it is most effective when it is attached to me. Not surpris-
ingly, the next signalling technology to appear in the archaeological record, some-
time during the early Upper Pleistocene, are beads (N. Barton & d’Errico, 2012;
Bouzouggar et al., 2007; d’Errico et al., 2005; Vanhaeren et al., 2006). Beads and
similar objects termed “personal ornaments” are also typically closely associated
with human bodies or clothing (Figure 5.7). In other words, so long as messages
were really about an individual’s role or place in a social group, or about group-level
FIGURE 5.7 Shellbeads were a widespread form of information technology in South

Africa, North Africa and the Levant starting >100,000 years ago.Various species of
the genus Nassarius, like those shown here, were extremely popular. Illustrated are
perforated Nassarius from the site of Taforalt Grotte des Pigeons, Morocco (from
Bouzouggar et al., 2007, Figure 3).
competition or cohesion, we shouldn’t necessarily expect hominins to have tried to

send them through stone artefacts.
During the later Pleistocene one encounters more obvious examples of infor-
mation being added to artefacts which already had other functions. The clearest
examples are the striking engraved ostrich eggshell fragments from Howiesons Poort
layers at Diepkloof Rock Shelter and other sites in South Africa (Henshilwood et al.,
2014;Texier et al., 2013, 2010) (Figure 5.8). Dating to around 60 ka, these are prob-
ably fragments of canteens or similar containers. In Europe, decoration on otherwise
utilitarian objects is virtually unknown prior to the Upper Paleolithic, appearing
abundantly first in the Gravettian ca. 30 ka. With a few exceptions, artefacts with
added symbolic content in the Upper Paleolithic are made of bone, antler, ivory, or
FIGURE 5.8 Ostrich eggshell fragments preserving incised decorative lines, from

late MSA layers at Diepkloof Rockshelter, South Africa. These artefacts, which are
probably fragments of water containers, date to ca. 60 ka. They are arguably the
earliest known “practical” artefacts with added symbolic elements (from Texier et al.,
2010, Figure 1.s).
other materials. In part this may simply be a matter of how obvious the symbolic
and communicative elements are. Lithic artefacts do not lend themselves to being
engraved, carved, or dyed. A reindeer carved on an atl-atl has no immediate impact
on its function as a tool for propelling darts. While one can produce eccentric
forms or non-functional attributes on lithic artefacts, these may be harder to recog-
nize except in extreme cases (see below). It is also important to emphasize that the
particular strategy of adding symbolic content to practical objects is not ubiquitous
in the archaeological record of Homo sapiens or the Upper Paleolithic in particular
For instance, comparatively few decorated objects are known from regions such
as the Levant and East Asia even during the Upper Paleolithic. Humans decorate
objects when it useful to them: decorating things is not an autonomic response of
the modern human brain.
It is likely that decorated objects were used to send different sorts of signals
than body decoration. One of the important features of decorated objects,
whether or not they have other practical uses, is that they are not attached to
individual humans. Small carvings, decorated tools, or even beads exist on their
own, independent of people. Consequently, they can be transferred among indi-
viduals across wide expanses of space, and even across generations. Whatever
the message encoded in these objects, it is not dependent on direct encounter
with the sender. These properties greatly amplify the durability of messages and
expand the audience of individuals who can receive them (Kuhn, 2014; Kuhn
& Stiner, 2007). This property of transferability makes such objects the basis for
many exchange systems and for constructing networks of ties among dispersed
populations.
There are a few possible exceptions, and one obvious exception, to the gen-
eralization that stone was seldom exploited as a signalling medium in the Middle
and Upper Paleolithic.The most obvious case concerns extremely large and finely
made “laurel leaf ” bifaces in the Solutrean of southwest Europe (Figure 5.9)
(Aubry et al., 2008; Aubry, Peyrouse, & Walter, 2003; Walter, Almeida, & Aubry,
2013). These artefacts, which have been found in caches, are masterpieces of
the knapper’s art. They are also typically too large and too delicate to have been
used for most practical purposes. A reasonable interpretation is that they were
created in order to demonstrate an individual’s stone-working prowess, either
as a kind of calling-card for a would-be specialist knapper or as part of a com-
petitive display. Alternatively, one can imagine a situation in which such artefacts
were created (and buried) as an expression of someone’s capacity to accumulate
and then “waste” resources, that is as a kind of costly signal. Regardless, this is
one of the rare cases in which we can readily recognize added features that play
no strictly utilitarian role, features that in fact reduce the utility of the artefact.
The fact that the objects are bifaces helps these particular artefacts to stand out.
First, bifacial shaping is unusual in the Eurasian Upper Paleolithic. Second, this
particular technology leaves an abundance of traces on the final product. Bifacial
shaping also provides a high level of control over many aspects of artefact morph-
ology, shape in particular. One is left to wonder whether equivalent artefacts
FIGURE 5.9 Oversized Solutrean biface with “normal” functional artefacts for scale.
From left to right: Solutrean shouldered point (missing part of base); cast of largest
known Solutrean laurel leaf (from cache at site of Volgu, France); cast of large Clovis
point (casts from Lithic Casting Lab, Inc. Shouldered point from lithic teaching
collection, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona). Scale bar = 10 cm.
produced by other systems, such as very large blades, might be present in other
Upper Pleistocene assemblages.
Other possible evidence that Upper Pleistocene hominins used stone artefacts
for signalling involves (presumed) projectile tips. While continental-scale regional
variation can be recognized in potential projectiles (J. D. Clark, 1988; McBrearty &
Brooks, 2000) going back into the late Middle Pleistocene, the vast geographic and
temporal scale of this particular pattern makes it difficult to distinguish the effects
of population vicariance (drift) from intentional signalling. However, by the Upper
Pleistocene there is evidence of variation in projectile form at scales more con-

sistent with the notion of signalling identity.
Before proceeding it is worth asking why one should focus on projectile points
as possible mechanisms for signalling group identity. For one thing, they can be
relatively large, and they would have been at least partially visible at the ends of
weapons. To the extent that individuals often carried spears, darts or arrows as
parts of their personal toolkits these objects would also have been commonly
seen by strangers. On the other hand, we should recognize that this bias is also
an extension of archaeological traditions. In North America, as well as during
later periods in Eurasia, the forms of bifacial knives, arrow, and spear points often
exhibit fine-g rained spatial variation and rapid turnover. The limited spatial and
temporal boundaries of specific artefact forms have led archaeologists to conclude
that at minimum they map onto broadly-defined networks of communication,
and perhaps even self-identifying ethnic groups. These assumptions have seldom
been tested. Moreover, the scale of point type distributions, at least in North
America, fits better with very large cultural units such as language phyla than
with individual ethnic groups (Buchanan et al., 2017). Nonetheless the expect-
ation that points will tell us something about identity is well ingrained among
archaeologists.
Caveats aside, there are several instances in Upper Pleistocene Eurasia in which
diversity in the forms of projectile weapons might reasonably be hypothesized to
represent some sort of inter-and intra-g roup signalling. One involves a variety
of what I will call “basal Upper Paleolithic” or “transitional” assemblages from
western Europe. The assemblages are typically the first non-Mousterian artefact
technologies to occur in their particular regions. They are roughly contempor-
aneous, dating to the interval between about 38 ka and 45 ka. They also occupy
similar positions in stratified sites, typically above the late Mousterian and below
the early Aurignaician or proto-Aurignacian. The basal Upper Paleolithic assem-
blage types show minimum geographic overlap (Figure 5.10). The diversity of the
basal Upper Paleolithic in Western Europe is itself noteworthy, contrasting strongly
with the comparative geographic homogeneity of the preceding Mousterian and
the succeeding Aurignacian. And a good deal of the diversity is expressed in the
forms of potential weapon tips (Figure 5.11). Attempts to establish the author-
ship of the earliest Upper Paleolithic assemblages in Europe have been min-
imally successful. At present, it is widely believed that Neanderthals made the
Chattelperronian, although there are sceptics (Bar-Yosef & Bordes, 2010). Because
fossils are either scarce or highly fragmentary, the makers of the other assemblages
remain even more obscure.
The diversity of the basal UP assemblages, and of the potential weapon tips in
particular, is interesting because it dates to a period when the signalling of group
identity could have become especially beneficial.This is the interval when anatom-
ically modern Homo sapiens expanded into Eurasia, encountering well-established
groups of indigenous Neanderthals. These populations would have interacted in
FIGURE 5.10 Map showing general distributions of earliest European Upper Paleolithic

“cultures:” LRJ, Szeletian, Chatelperronian, Uluzzian, and Bohunician or Initial Upper
Paleolithic.
FIGURE 5.11 Likely points from earliest European Upper Paleolithic complexes. 1,

LRJ; 2, Szeletian; 3,4, Chatelperronian; 5–7, Uluzzian; 8,9, Bohunician or Initial
Upper Paleolithic (redrawn by I. Sanchez-Morales. No. 1, after Pope et al., 2013,
Figure 3; no. 2 after Neruda, 2009, Figure 7, 3; nos. 3,4 after Lacaille, 1947, Figure 2–
1, 2–2; nos. 5–7, after Moroni et al,. 2013, Figure 2; nos. 8, 9, after Škrdla, 2017,
Figure 3–32,  3–34).
TABLE 5.1 Summary of “basal” Upper Paleolithic assemblage types from Europe
Assemblage type Distribution Likely point form(s)
Chatelperronian Southern and central France, Elongated arched-backed

extreme Northern Spain (?) points
Uluzzian Italy, Greece Crescents or other backed
microlith forms
Szeletian Eastern and Central Europe Bifacial foliates
LRJ North-central Europe, Large, bifacially pointed
England, and Belgium blades
Bohunician/Initial Upper Central Europe and the Unifacially pointed blades
Paleolithic Balkans and Levallois points
various ways, ranging from free intermixing to territorial exclusion. Situations in

which people of diverse cultural backgrounds are forced together by immigration
or territorial circumscription do sometimes lead to heightened signalling of iden-
tity (Barth, 1969; Blanton, 2015).
A second possible example of points as signalling media comes from the
Solutrean, an Upper Paleolithic culture produced around the time of the Last
Glacial Maximum (MIS 2). The Solutrean is confined to France and Iberia, and
is it well known for the elaboration of projectile points, especially (but not exclu-
sively) bifacial ones. It is also notable for the diversity of point forms, which range
from bifacial foliates to stemmed and tanged bifacial pieces to unifacial shouldered
points manufactured on blades. Some of this variation was traditionally thought to
be chronological (P. Smith, 1966). However, the chronological separation of types
is less clear than originally thought (Cascalheira & Bicho, 2015; Straus, 1986), and
much variation in Solutrean technology and artefact forms once thought to be
chronological actually represents quasi-synchronic behaviour. And much variation
in point forms is expressed geographically: for example, stemmed and notched
bifacial forms occur only in Iberia, and the distributions of particular forms are
constrained even within the peninsula (Cascalheira & Bicho, 2015; I. Schmidt,
2015a, 2015b) (Figure 5.12). Many researchers see variation in point forms and
other aspects of Solutrean technology as evidence for increasingly circumscribed
populations and adaptations to specific local conditions (I. Schmidt, 2015a; L. G.
Straus, 2015).
Certainly, some of the variation in Solutrean point forms could be functional,
though it remains to be shown how differences in point shape are linked to par-
ticular weapon types, game species or hunting strategies. However, it is equally
plausible that different point shapes also served as signals of identity or belonging.
The Solutrean certainly dates to a period when group identity might have become
especially salient. The LGM brought massive re-organization of the Eurasian land-
scape, rendering large parts of the continental interior and uplands inhospitable
if not uninhabitable, while at the same time exposing large expanses of coastal
newgenrtpdf
FIGURE 5.12 Distributionsof different forms of Solutrean point within three parts of the Iberian peninsula. The frequencies
and modal types vary strongly among regions (from Schmidt, 2015, Figure 13.2).
lowlands. Inevitably human populations would have re-organized themselves on

the landscape. Once again, dynamic situations of population movement and terri-
torial re-organization create exactly the kind of situation in which people might
choose to emphasize affiliation and identity through material symbols.
In searching for added symbolic value in artefacts the first recourse is to look
to obvious decorative elements or unusual forms. However, another feature of
stone tools that may carry information is the raw material itself. The colours,
reflectance, and other features of knappable stone can be visually striking, and
at various times and places people conferred symbolic importance or value to
certain special raw materials. The seeming obsession with obsidian in certain
periods may reflect symbolic rather than functional valuation, and this prob-
ably applies to other “special” materials as well (see Brumm, 2010; Dillian, 2002;
Goring-Morris & Belfer-Cohen, 2001; Taçon, 1991). As always, the challenge is
to identify materials treated as though they were “special.” Preferential inclusion
of specific raw materials in burials or caches is one clue, as is their use to make
unusual artefacts. For much of the Paleolithic, however, such contextual infor-
mation is scarce to non-existent. Similarly, speculations about colour symbolism
seem to be just that in the absence of information about the use of colour in
other contexts. The simple observation that people took disproportionate interest
in particular raw materials is not very compelling evidence for symbolic valu-
ation either, unless we know a great deal about the performance characteristics
of alternative raw materials and their distributions relative to habitual routes of
movement on the landscape (e.g. see the exchange between Gould and Binford
on “righteous rocks,” (L. Binford & Stone, 1985; R. Gould & Saggers, 1985).
What looks like an inferior stone may turn out to have beneficial properties, and
what seems to be an out-of-the-way source may actually be right on a least-cost
path to somewhere important (Wilson, 2007b).
On the other hand, symbolic value in lithic raw materials may not always
be linked to outstanding quality or unusual appearance. Some things may have
value simply because they come from somewhere else. As discussed in the pre-
vious chapter, hunter-gatherers can have extensive social networks, which they
may exploit during times of local shortage (Apicella et al., 2012; Whallon, 2006;
Wiessner, 1977, 1982). The relationships which constitute those networks are
often maintained through the exchange of goods, sometimes quite prosaic things.
Archaeologists now routinely use movement of certain kinds of material culture to
model the structure of social networks in prehistory (Fitzhugh et al., 2011; Mills
et al., 2013). Expansion of raw material movement, in terms of both scale and
quantity, during the late Pleistocene in sub-Saharan Africa and Europe (discussed in
the previous chapter) may reflect participation of raw material or finished artefacts
in forming and establishing broad social networks (Ambrose, 2012; Aubry et al.,
2012; Brooks et al., 2018). In this case exotic artefacts can be said to carry infor-
mation, specifically about their origins. The information in the artefact would not
come from any intrinsic property, but from the person or group who provided it.
Distinguishing patterns of artefact displacement associated with network mainten-

ance from strictly economic trade, and from direct procurement, is no simple task.
But it could certainly be worth the effort in terms of better understanding social
relations in the late Pleistocene.
The cases discussed above show how stone artefacts could have played a role
in information transmission during the Upper Pleistocene. Still, the best and most
abundant evidence for signalling and information transfer though material culture
in the Upper Pleistocene lies in technologies specifically devoted to information
transmission, that is art and ornamentation. The informational nature of portable
and cave art or personal ornamentation is undeniable, even if the messages them-
selves remain obscure. It is beyond the scope of this book (and the competence of
the author) to do justice to the phenomenon of Paleolithic art. Portable art, par-
ietal art and body decoration are well-represented in various culture complexes
in Eurasia after 45 ka (e.g. Clottes, 1996; Conard, 2003; d, Errico et al., 2003;
González-Sainz et al., 2013; J. Hahn, 1972; Pike et al., 2012; Taborin, 1992; Stiner
et al., 2013;Vanhaeren, 2006; R. White, 1992, 2007). While it has been known for
decades that the Neanderthals used a range of pigments, recent findings suggest that
late Neanderthals in Europe began to experiment with both personal ornaments
and parietal art after around 60 ka (e.g. Hoffmann et al., 2018; Marshack, 1996;
Peresani et al., 2011; Romandini et al., 2014). Stone tools, and implement technolo-
gies more generally, seem to have played relatively small roles in the burgeoning
world of communication and information transfer during the last part of the Upper
Pleistocene. The information-carrying potential of stone artefacts was diminished
even more by the widespread adoption of composite technologies involving micro-
lithic inserts after around 25 ka. Tiny stone inserts lack both the visibility and the
flexibility of form required of any conduit for information. The larger and more
elaborate composite tools of which the microliths were parts would have been
much more effective canvases for expressing things such as group affiliation, indi-
vidual capacity or status. Sadly, we very seldom have an opportunity to study a
composite artefact in its entirety.
In a series of influential papers, A. Close (1978, 2002) discussed evidence for
subtle variation in microlithic technologies from late Upper Pleistocene North
Africa. She identified a series of attributes, including the side of the bladelet chosen
for backing, which had no conceivable functional implications but which showed
clear spatial patterning. Close concluded that this kind of micro-stylistic variation
must represent “passive” or isochrestic technological style, and should map onto
different learning traditions or what now might be called communities of prac-
tice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). However, these artefacts would be indexes rather than
symbols. Tiny backed bladelets have none of the attributes that would make them
effective media for broadcasting identity to strangers, or to anyone else more than
a metre away from the artefact. This is not to say that territorial and social bound-
aries were unimportant in late Pleistocene North Africa. Some late Pleistocene
North African populations used body modification, more specifically excision of
the central incisors (Humphrey & Bocaege, 2008) as a signal. The point is that
years BP
10,000
20,000 elaborately decorated tools/display pieces
mobile and parietal art widespread, locally common

added symbolic value to utilitarian artefacts
50,000
100,000 artefacts as tokens? (exotic raw materials)

earliest beads
pigments ubiquitous
500,000 earliest use of pigments
1,000,000 handaxes as signals?
1,500,000
3,500,000 earliest stone tools
FIGURE 5.13 Summary of developments in signalling and symbolic content of artefacts.
Epipaleolithic groups interested in marking group or individual identities simply

chose the most visible means of expressing them.
5.5 Summary: Trends in artefacts as information

The findings discussed in this chapter are summarized in Figure 5.13. For the first
million years or more, there is no clear indication that hominins used stone artefacts,
or indeed other forms of material culture, as media for intentionally conveying
information, although there are claims to the contrary. The appearance of large,
extensively prepared cleavers and handaxes beginning around 1.7 my marked

an expanded potential for materializing various sorts of information in artefacts.
Whether and how early Pleistocene hominins might have exploited this potential
remains controversial. Phenomena such as “excessive” size and symmetry, as well as
regional variation in handaxe morphology, have been identified as possible as evi-
dence for signalling of individual quality and shared identity, but all of these claims
are ambiguous to one degree or another.
Much clearer evidence for signalling with material culture appeared ca. 500 ka
in Africa, somewhat later in Eurasia, with the first evidence for ochre use. The ubi-
quity of pigments increased through the Middle and Upper Pleistocene. Sometime
before 100 ka discrete objects, beads, were added to the repertoire of signalling
technologies in southwest Asia and North Africa. In Europe late Neanderthals
may have employed raptor feathers and talons rather than beads for decorating
bodies and clothing (Peresani et al., 2011; Romandini et al., 2014). Ornamented
objects and containers are associated with specific kinds of late Middle Stone Age
assemblages in South Africa. Yet, whether for lack of interest or lack of evidence,
we have no clear indications that Middle and early Upper Pleistocene hominins
regularly recruited stone tools as signalling media. Part of the explanation for this
may relate to the nature of the messages themselves: information about identity
is more effectively conveyed in things that are highly visible and attached to an
individual’s body.
As has been widely noted, the use of material culture as a medium for conveying
information expanded markedly in Eurasia after 45 ka with the onset of the
Upper Paleolithic. It is worth emphasizing that, with the exception of figurative
representation, many of the media used by Upper Paleolithic humans were not
new. Pigments and beads had been used for a long time: late Pleistocene Homo
sapiens just made greater use of them, sometimes. Figurative representation is a
derived trait of the Upper Paleolithic, especially in southwestern Europe, but it was
much less widespread than pigments and ornaments as far as we know. Many of
the earliest examples do not involve artefacts with practical functions—like beads
and pigments, the ivory sculptures and paintings of the early Aurignacian in Europe
seem to have been used solely for conveying information. Clear evidence for
added symbolic value in more prosaic organic and stone artefacts is confined to the
“middle” and late Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian, Solutrean, Magdalenian) in cen-
tral and southern Europe. There are suggestive cases of weapon armatures (points)
being used as markers of group and individual identity in the early and later Upper
Paleolithic, but by and large these functions seem to have been relegated to other
forms of material culture with greater visibility and potential for added symbolic
value. Increased presence of distinctive, exotic raw materials such as obsidian in
some late Middle and early Upper Pleistocene assemblages may indicate a different
use of artefacts as symbols. In these cases, the exotic stones may have been tokens
of broad social networks, indications not so much of who you were as of who
you knew.
6
IDENTIFYING DESIGN
6.1 What is design?

The proposition that people make a series of explicit decisions while producing an
artefact that will determine its final form should not be controversial. But the topic
takes on new layers of significance for research on human evolution. Researchers
studying recent periods feel safe in assuming that designs existed. They are typically
concerned with the spatial and temporal distributions of different artefact designs
and their significance as evidence for cultural transmission and descent, as indicators
of identity or as tokens of far-flung social networks. Paleoanthropolgists cannot, or
at least they should not, be confident that artefacts have always been designed.They
often ask more fundamental questions: how do stone tools manifest evidence for
design, if at all, and what does this tell us about cognition and the changing place of
artefacts in hominin adaptations?
Here I use the term “design” to refer simply to characteristics conferred to
artefacts by their makers as a matter of choice: some have called this “imposed
form.” In order to talk about design, we need to clarify what constitutes evidence of
imposed form. Morphological redundancy alone is not enough. To cite an obvious
example, most flakes produced by hard-hammer percussion have distinct rounded
swellings at one end: we call these bulbs of percussion. Bulbs of percussion are
byproducts of the way isotropic stone fractures under direct application of force.
People do not produce bulbs intentionally and, if they are using hard stone hammers,
they cannot easily prevent them from forming. One could cite other highly redun-
dant aspects of flake morphology that derive exclusively from the properties of raw
materials. Consequently, we have to specify that design is morphological redun-
dancy imposed by tool-makers’ choices. It follows that in order to understand what
choices ancient artisans made, we need to understand what choices were and were
not open to them. Knappers using hard stone hammers do not have the option of
146 Identifying design
FIGURE 6.1 An example of emergent design: metal cast of the intricate underground

chamber and passage system constructed by the Florida harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex
badius (photo by Charles F. Badland, courtesy of Walter R. Tschinkel).
choosing to make flakes with flat ventral surfaces or with exterior platform angles
greater than 90 degrees—the stone just won’t permit it. The more we know about
the mechanical limitations of lithic technology, the more we stand to learn about
the choices that Paleolithic tool-makers made and the ones they avoided.
Archaeological views on design are neatly summarized by the quote attributed
to Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo: “I saw the angel in the marble and
carved until I set him free.” A common conception of design that archaeologists
share is of Michelangelo, or any other artisan, possessing a mental image of the
thing he or she wants to create, and taking necessary steps to realize that image.
However, we also know that other sorts of action can impose form in the natural
world. Beautiful, regular and intricate objects can be created by organisms that
have no sense at all of the larger design. Some ants and termites create remark-
ably elaborate and seemingly well-designed structures above or below the ground
(Figure 6.1).They certainly impose form within the earth. But nobody would argue
that any single individual ant or termite ever knows the “master plan”. Instead these
Identifying design 147
elaborate forms emerge from the interactions of many organisms following simple
decision rules (see examples in Turner, 2009). Ants and termites create beautiful and
complicated structures through simple, contextual choices such as “carry a grain of
sand out from the mouth of the tunnel until the slope changes, then drop it.” From
the repeated application of simple decision rules, a more complex and intricately
functional structure emerges.
For many of our technologies, including lithic manufacture, a great deal can
follow as a cascade from a single initial decision. If one chooses to make long,
narrow flakes from an elongated nodule, the range of options available is imme-
diately constrained: one must find or establish an initial ridge, create a striking
platform with an acceptable angle, and so forth. There is still a substantial degree of
latitude in how those goals will be met, many ways to create a ridge and establish a
platform. But a significant part of the potential design space has been rendered off
limits with a single initial choice. And each of these steps or decision nodes will have
an effect on the form of the final product, intended or not. For example, Levallois
flakes typically possess facetted butts and platform angles approaching 90 degrees. It
is unlikely that the artisans that produced them intended these features to be part
of the final product. Instead, they were likely looking to make the largest flattest
sharp-edged flakes possible out of the nodules available to them (Brantingham &
Kuhn, 2001; Eren & Lycett, 2012; Pelcin, 1997). The morphology of the platform
remnant on the flakes is a byproduct of procedures the artisans followed to get what
they wanted.
Parenthetically, because of the contingent structure of lithic technology, much
of what we would call expertise is manifest in how the knapper responds to unex-
pected contingencies (Herzlinger, Wynn, & Goren-Inbar, 2017; Pelegrin, 1990;
Rossano, 2003). Studying the ways people coped with errors or hidden flaws in the
raw material may tell you a lot more about what they intended to produce and how
much they understood about it than just studying a selection of “final products.”
One could argue that termite mounds are not designed in the same way as
human-made artefacts because no single termite ever understood the complete
process and final outcome. But are human technologies really so different? A great
deal of traditional (and contemporary) technological practice is effectively received
knowledge. Most individuals know what works but not necessarily why it works
or how much better it works than the alternatives: they choose to do things a cer-
tain way because that’s what they know. Expert potters and master cooks know
what produces a successful dish (in both senses of the term) and how to cope when
things go awry, but their knowledge is essentially a series of recipes for action and
reaction. In the great majority of cases no individual craftsperson created this vast
body of knowledge. Instead, it accumulated over centuries through the trial and
error experiences of countless individuals. Clearly a potter or a chef has much
greater control over the process of production and an infinitely clearer idea of its
outcome than does a termite. Nonetheless the products that they all make emerge,
in a very real sense, from a series of actions informed largely by received informa-
tion. In the case of ants and termites that information is received mainly through
genetics as well as through interaction with other individuals. In the case of humans
most of the information is culturally transmitted. The influence of individuals no
longer living is expressed through the mechanism of “cumulative culture” that has
evolved, apparently uniquely, in the human lineage (Aoki, Wakano, & Lehmann,
2012; Tennie et al., 2016; Tennie, Call, & Tomasello, 2009; Tomasello, 1999).
The larger point of this discussion is that there are many ways to characterize
“design.” It can exist whole-cloth in the mind of the artisan, as did (supposedly)
Michelangelo’s angel. But it can also emerge from the interaction of many inde-
pendent acts, or from inherited recipes for action that lead to predictable outcomes.
Likewise, an artisan may have a precise goal in mind and set out to achieve it, or they
could have a much broader notion of an acceptable outcome, letting the manufacture
process unfold from a few initial decisions.All of these are different sorts of design, and
all of them have different implications for how we understand human technological,
social and cognitive evolution. Limiting ourselves to a single definition –that of the
holographic model in the sculptor’s mind –limits what we can understand of the
evolution of hominin technologies and the cognitive apparatus that supported them.
6.2 Identifying design
How ought we identify design, wherever it resides and however it is instantiated?
Since the discipline’s beginnings, archaeologists have proven themselves to be very
good at recognizing regularities in the forms of artefacts and at developing systems
of classification to describe the regularities as they see in them. Classifications of
artefact form have been the mainstays of Paleolithic stone-tool studies for more
than a century, and ideas about artefact design and imposed form in the Paleolithic
are deeply entangled with typology and systematics.
Scholars of the Paleolithic have developed myriad systems for classifying stone
artefacts (e.g. Bordes, 1961; Hours, 1974; Laplace, 1972; Sonneville-Bordes and
Perrot, 1953; Tixier, 1963). Many of these are meant to apply to a limited time
period or region but some are more widely used. Probably the best-known are
François Bordes’ system for classifying Lower and Middle Paleolithic artefacts
(Bordes, 1961b) and Denise de Sonneville-Bordes’ and Jean Perrot’s typology for
the European Upper Paleolithic (Sonneville-Bordes and Perrot, 1953). These two
systems have also been the focus of a great deal of discussion and debate, particularly
on the part of Anglophone scholars
The details of Bordes’ and de Sonneville-Bordes’ systems of artefact classifica-
tion are different. The numbers of types differ and the classes are quite distinct and
mainly non-overlapping. But the basic structures are similar. Neither is a typology
in the sense of being a system for creating types. Instead, both are simply lists of
classes, further organized into larger taxonomic groupings. Artefacts are assigned
to different classes based on a number of morphological criteria: plan-view shape,
especially of the (presumed) working edge but sometimes of the entire piece; the
type of retouch or secondary modification; the position of retouch; and, sometimes,
the kind of blank used to make the tool (Levallois flake, blade, etc.). However, these
general rules are not applied equally and universally. Consequently, individual classes
vary in the degree of specificity. Some combinations of attributes are exhaustive. In
F. Bordes’ system, single, double, and transverse scrapers are subdivided into types
according to the shape(s) of all retouched edges. But while there are different classes
of double-edged scraper for each possible combination of edge shapes, convergent
scrapers that also have two edges are only classified according to one edge shape.
For classes such as inversely retouched scrapers or denticulates, no distinction is
made at all among different shapes of edge. The type of blank matters in just a few
cases (retouched Levallois points are a distinct class but retouched Levallois flakes
are not). The system also contains a few types that are found only in certain geo-
graphic regions: leaf points which are characteristic of the central and southern
European Mousterian, and tanged pieces common the North African Aterian.
M. O’Brien and R.L. Lyman make an important distinction between extensional
and intensional typological systems (O’Brien & Lee Lyman, 2002). Most systems
for classification in wide use today, including those used in Paleolithic studies, are
extensional. They were created based on scholars’ knowledge of artefacts from a
particular period. The classes are designed to summarize and subdivide variability
as understood at a particular moment in time. Sometimes the classes were created
to emphasize variation in time and space to aid in assigning assemblages to time
horizons or regional “cultures.” Sometimes, as in the F. Bordes system, the classes
are more exclusively morphological. However, the important thing is that the
creators of the system based the artefact classes on their perceptions of variability
expressed in the artefacts themselves, not based on systematic combinations of
attributes or on prior notions of what physical properties of artefacts ought to be
important.
The prehistorians that created the extensional typologies we use today were
extraordinarily knowledgeable and perceptive. They “knew the data” of the time
better than anyone else did. But there are two general problems with extensional
typologies. First, they are inevitably created based on limited information. As new
data accumulate the number of apparent classes, and their usefulness, may change.
What turn out to be common artefact forms may not be accommodated easily in
any existing class, while other forms, common in the original samples, may be less
important than scholars originally thought. More importantly, extensional typolo-
gies lack explicit rationales for creating classes. Traditional extensional typologies
subdivide the world according to “what works.” They emphasize variability along
certain axes, such as time and space, without any explicit justification of why things
ought to vary in that way.Their usefulness can only be evaluated based on how well
they continue to express spatial and temporal variation. Because the rationale for
why they work is cloudy at best, it is difficult to fix them when they stop working.
In the case of F. Bordes’ Lower and Middle Paleolithic typology the situation
is even more problematic. Bordes was explicitly not interested in temporal vari-
ation within the Middle Paleolithic: in fact, he was quite sceptical of any claim for
trends in such variation. To a small degree his typological system expresses regional
variation, but it was not built around this. Instead, he was apparently interested in
simply capturing what he saw as the range of basic design criteria used by Middle
Paleolithic hominins across Eurasia and North Africa for shaping their retouched
tools. And we simply have no way to evaluate how well the system does that.
It is also important to recall that typological systems are descriptions of form,
not design. It is legitimate to ask whether a particular group of Paleolithic hominins
intentionally produced artefacts to fit pre-existing templates or conventions. But
we must not confuse design as a general phenomenon with (specific) systems for
describing artefacts. Past humans could well have made artefacts to specific standards,
but these standards might equally well be different from the classes we use to sub-
divide artefact form. Paleolithic artefact typologies typically classify things based on
the entire plan-view form of the artefact, its overall shape or some approximation of
it, usually characterized in terms of the axis of percussion (for flake or blade tools).
Yet tool-makers might have been interested in only part of the shape, say having
a working edge serviceable for a particular task attached to a larger piece of stone,
suitable for holding in the hand or inserting into a handle.They may not have cared
at all whether the tool was thick or thin, made on a flake or blade, or whether the
retouch was on a lateral edge or the end of the flake. Making a tool with a service-
able working edge and a usable handle or hafting element is a kind of design, and it
is one that traditional typologies may miss entirely.
The failings of received categories is well illustrated by ongoing controversies
over hafted “points” or weapon tips beginning in the later Middle Pleistocene
(Figure 6.2). A whole suite of artefact forms, from leaf-shaped bifacial objects to tri-
angular flakes with and without retouch, are termed “points” in widely-used systems
of typological nomenclature. The originators of those systems often claimed that
the name was nothing more than a descriptive term and was not meant to imply an
artefact’s function.Yet in the case of Bordes’ own Middle and Lower Paleolithic typ-
ology this was clearly not the case. So-called “Mousterian points” and convergent
scrapers are often identical in plan-view shape, and they were distinguished based
on whether they appeared suitable for hafting as a functional spear point.
The ambiguity of the category of “point” in the Middle and Lower Paleolithic
typology led some researchers, including me, to be sceptical of the existence of
hafted points in the Mousterian and earlier periods. These “points” just did not
behave the same way as more obvious projectile tips from more recent periods
(Holdaway, 1989). As discussed in Chapter 3, however, a whole range of evidence
has come to light in the past 25 years, from systematic studies of impact fractures
to detailed analyses of hafting wear and mastic residues, which shows fairly con-
clusively that at least some pointed things were systematically hafted and used as
tips of weapons as far back as 500 ka. Some researchers remain sceptical that all
things classified as “points” were designed to be used as the business ends of pro-
jectile weapons (Dibble et al., 2016), and they have a right to be. It is still not
clear, for example, that impact damage or hafting traces on Middle and Lower
Paleolithic artefacts are as ubiquitous as we would expect for dedicated, single-
purpose artefacts. On the other hand, continued scepticism about one category
of artefact does not mean that Middle or Upper Pleistocene tool-makers did
FIGURE 6.2 Itlooks like a point, it quacks like a point, but is it a point? Typological
Mousterian points (b) and retouched Levallois points (a, c, d) from early Mousterian
layers at Tabun Cave, A. Jelinek excavations. Artefacts like these were sometimes
used as weapon tips but many specimens show use-wear evidence of other functions
(drawing by L. Addington). Scale bar = 5 cm.
not intentionally haft artefacts as spear tips. It is likely that the category “point”
as defined by recent archaeologists only partially overlaps with the designs that
Pleistocene artisans found acceptable. A substantial proportion of pointed things in
Lower and Middle Paleolithic assemblages were neither used as spear tips nor were
they intended to be used in this manner. By that same token, things that do not look
to us like points were sometimes used that way (Dinnis et al., 2009). In fact, ethno-
graphic studies show just how poorly archaeologists’ conventions of classifications
fit with tool-makers’ own understandings of what they are trying to accomplish
(J. P. White, 1967; J. P. White & Thomas, 1972). This is not to say that the classes
are invalid means of partitioning variation in artefact form. They simply may not
represent what we think they do.
Finding things that appear designed is easy. Showing that they were designed is
not. Artefact form is massively equifinal—a great many factors can lead to things
having particular shapes, from reduction to consistent fracture tendencies of cer-
tain raw materials. If we are truly interested in discovering designs as evidence
of intentionality and planning on the part of hominins, we need to set the bar
high for recognizing what constitutes “imposed form.” It is not enough to simply
assert that such redundant and (apparently) well-controlled form could come only
from purposive action by hominins. This is exactly the gambit used by advocates of
“intelligent design” to argue that the beauty and intricacy of living organisms could
not possibly have been the result of “random” evolutionary processes. Many factors
outside the realm of hominin intentionality, ranging from the fracture mechanics
of vitreous materials to the conventions used to classify artefacts, may lead to mor-
phological redundancy in a class of artefacts (Kuhn, 2010).
6.3 Design in four dimensions

Archaeologists who research lithic technology most commonly equate arte-
fact design with the shapes of the things we collect from archaeological contexts.
Certainly this is one good place to look for it, and archaeologists seem to be
successful in using two-or three-dimensional shape criteria to define redundant
artefact forms across many periods. But the shape achieved by an artefact at the
time of discard is not always the same as the shape its maker intended it to have.
Stone tools have life histories, long or short. These life histories often involved
resharpening dulled edges or reshaping broken elements. In an influential set of
papers, the late H. Dibble (e.g. Dibble, 1987, 1995) and colleagues have mounted
a series of convincing arguments as to how many of the classes in Middle and
Upper Paleolithic typologies could represent reduction variants of one another,
progressive stages in the life histories of single tools. The original papers proposed
that many of the 20+ varieties of sidescraper identified in F. Bordes’ Middle and
Lower Paleolithic typology could simply represent artefacts discarded at different
points along one of two reduction continua. Both began as “simple” single-edged
sidescrapers. In one trajectory, artefacts were transformed first into double-edged
sidescrapers. With progressive use and renewal, they became convergent scrapers or
points. The most extensively reduced pieces ended up as “limaces.” The other tra-
jectory involved changes in the angle of a single edge, which developed gradually
from an orientation parallel to the axis of percussion to one that is oblique to it
(Figure 6.3). Similar schemes proposed for handaxes (Iovita & McPherron, 2011;
Mcpherron, 2003), notches and denticulates (Holdaway, Mcpherron & Roth, 1996),
some Upper Paleolithic tool forms (Hiscock, 1996; Holdaway, 1991), and Holocene
projectile points from the U.S. Great Basin (Flenniken & Wilke, 1989) have been
met with greater or lesser degrees of acceptance or scepticism.
Dibble’s reduction argument has had an undeniable impact on Paleolithic
archaeology. It has received its share of critique and some lithic analysts remain
sceptical about the influence of life history on artefact form, though their numbers
are declining. Still, it has made researchers more cautious in equating the forms of
archaeological specimens with the intended products of prehistoric artisans. It has
even prompted some researchers to give up looking for evidence of imposed form
in retouched tools entirely. These days discussions of intended form or design in
the Paleolithic are more likely to focus on reduction processes rather than arte-
fact forms. It has even encouraged a few scholars to declare that the search for
intended form is fruitless, or at least so fraught with uncertainty that it ought to be
abandoned (Dibble et al., 2016).
FIGURE 6.3 Alternative
trajectories for reduction of Mousterian scrapers proposed by
H. Dibble (1987, 1995). (Redrawn by M.C. Stiner after Dibble, 1995, Figure 9.)
Artefact life histories play an important role in determining both the forms
of the lithic specimens archaeologists recover and the structure of archaeological
assemblages: it is a phenomenon that has engaged my own interest since I entered
the field. Still I think it is premature to declare notions of artefact design dead and
buried. First, most so-called reduction models focus on transformations of categories
as defined by existing typological systems.The work of Dibble and colleagues really
casts doubt on the significance of the artefact classes that made up widely-used
systems of classification. If we accept that there are many ways to describe variation
in the shapes of stone tools systematically, and that Bordes only came up with one
of them, then all we really know is that Bordes’ system is a poor measure of artefact
design. There may be better ways of describing variation in the shapes of artefacts
that tell us more about the kinds of things Lower and Middle Paleolithic knappers
really wanted to make.
An even more important implication of the reduction argument is that we may
be using too few dimensions to describe artefact designs. Typically, archaeologists
describe artefacts and define classes based on the two-dimensional (plan-view)
shape of the entire piece. Sometimes a third spatial dimension or some specific
attributes or retouch are incorporated. This “whole-artefact plan-view” perspec-
tive fits contemporary ideas of industrial design, but it is not necessarily appro-
priate for stone tools. First, as J.P. White pointed out decades ago, people may not
care about the overall shape of the tool so much as the shapes of a few parts, such
as the angle and morphology of the working edge (J. P. White, 1967; J. P. White
& Thomas, 1972). I return to this issue below. Second, and more generally, these
definitions are effectively static. We conceive of design as being independent of
life history. But past knappers must have known that at least some of the tools
they made or some of the flakes they selected to carry with them would stay in
use for a long time. To be effective they would need to be able to stand up to
repair and resharpening. In other words, artefact designs might have extended
into the fourth dimension –time. If this is true, then regular changes in the shapes
of tools would be evidence of a kind of intentional design rather than evidence
against it.
Artefacts designed to change shape and maintain their utility are abundant in
the industrial world, although perhaps less so today than in earlier times. The best
example is the venerable wooden pencil. Typical hexagonal wooden pencils come
off the production line around 19 cm long, with one squared-off end. But they
were never intended to stay that way. To be made useful the square tip needs to be
modified into a conical point, a shape that is maintained as the object is used and
renewed. Over time the pencil is shortened progressively until it can no longer
be held comfortably in the hand, at which point it is typically tossed into a kit-
chen drawer and forgotten. So where is the intended “design” of the pencil? Is
it the unusable square-ended stick that leaves the factory? Is it one of the modi-
fied, sharpened stages in the artefact’s life history, and if so, which one? I would
argue that the true design is four dimensional, that it incorporates the original
raw product and its anticipated later life stages (see also Shott & Ballenger, 2007).
Contrast this with a mechanical pencil, an artefact designed around a single, stable
form. Changes in the shape and structure of a mechanical pencil usually have a det-
rimental effect on its utility.
Other examples of modern and recent implements designed to change shape
and maintain their utility as they gradually wear out include large chef ’s knives,
axes, “snap-off ” box-cutters, and welding rods. The lithic record arguably contains
even more clear examples, due perhaps to the reductive nature of flaked stone
technologies. Some kinds of lithic cores are shaped to one degree or another, so as
to retain their utility as they are used and renewed. Methods for producing blades
and bladelets from highly shape-controlled cores seem quite analogous to pencils,
in that minor adjustments to one end permit users to extend the utility for a long
time (e.g. Bleed, 2002; Goring-Morris & Davidzon, 2006).
We can also find obvious instances of shaped lithic tools that seem to have been
intended to remain useful as they wore out. This feature is most clearly expressed
in specialized techniques for modifying or renewing edges. A classic example
can be found in Dalton points, a late Paleoindian/early Archaic artefact form
distributed widely across the southern and southwestern United States. Dalton
points began life as large, parallel-sided lanceolate bifacial points with concave
thinned or fluted bases. But many Dalton bifaces show very obvious traces of
resharpening.This is due in part to a distinctive form of bevelled retouch, but also
to the fact that they seem to have been reworked while in the haft, so that the
protruding blade changed shape while the basal elements did not. Over their use-
lives the blades of Dalton points could be transformed into progressively shorter
and more triangular shapes, culminating in concave-edged forms that resemble
hafted drills (Figure 6.4). Closer to the central topic of this book, artefacts
called “tongatis” from the ‘post-Howiesons Poort’ MSA levels at Sibbudu Cave
(Conard, Porraz, & Wadley, 2012) (Figure 6.5) appear to show a very stereotyp-
ical pattern of resharpening, focused on convergent edges at the distal ends of
flakes. Because the medial and basal portions of the tools were unmodified while
the working parts changed after repeated use and refurbishment, they give the
impression of wide morphological variation and unstandardized design. Yet as
the authors state (p. 186) “We schematically view these tools as functioning like
FIGURE 6.4 Schematic illustration of progressive reduction in Dalton points from the

southern United States (from Ballenger, 2000, Figure 9).
FIGURE 6.5 Schematicillustration of reduction of “Tongatis” from Sibbudu Cave,

South Africa (from Conard, Porraz, & Wadley, 2012, Figure 5).
box-cutters with symmetrical two-edged, triangular working edges.” In other

words, they hypothesize that these are tools designed to allow overall shapes to
change while preserving their functional properties. Ficron handaxes, typical of
the late Middle Pleistocene in England, are characterized by wide bases, narrow
“blades” and concave lateral edges (Figure 6.6). Of course there is debate as to
whether the concave-edged form was the intended design or the outcome of
repeated use and resharpening (Bridgland et al., 2006; Shipton & Clarkson, 2015;
Wenban-Smith, 2004). However, such a pattern of resharpening is comparatively
unusual and distinctive enough to be identified as a derived sort of tactic for
keeping artefacts useful over time.
6.4 Design ≠ function ≠ design

There is a long history in archaeology of equating form and function, design with
use. This is sometimes implicit in the names given to specific classes of artefact. As
much as we might be warned against it, all of us tend to presume that scrapers were
used to scrape things and points were used to stab things. The relationship between
form and function came more to the forefront with the Binfords’ “functional argu-
ment” (S. Binford & L.R. Binford, 1966), which was founded on an assumption
that many different classes of artefact in the Bordes typology were actually used in
different tasks.
FIGURE 6.6 Ficron handaxe of flint from East Sussex, England. Does the distinctive
form of these artefacts reflect imposition of design standards or is it the outcome of
a specific strategy of resharpening? (Burnett, L. [2009] SUSS-AF6EC6: A palaeolithic
handaxe, web page available at: https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/
251959.) Scale bar = 5 cm.
Early applications of use-wear analysis in Paleolithic studies quite often set out
to test these sorts of inferences, asking “what were scrapers (or burins, or points,
or denticulates) really used for?” These attempts to test form/function correlations
were one of the first fundamental contributions of lithic microwear analysis to
research on human evolution and the Paleolithic. Two consistent themes running
through early studies were that (1) most individual artefacts and artefact classes
had multiple functions, and (2) dominant functions were not always what we
expected based on the name given to a class of things (Anderson-Gerfaud, 1990;

Barton, Olszewski, & Coinman, 1996; Beyries, 1987, 1988; Beyries & Plisson, 1998;
Hardy, Bolus, & Conard, 2008; Odell, 1981). Burins, for instance, were assigned
the name of a modern engraving tool because they have chisel-shaped parts, and
most archaeologists assumed that they were used to cut or carve hard materials.
Subsequent use-wear studies showed that burins could be used on a variety of
materials, including soft ones such as hide. These studies also showed that the
chisel-shaped part was not always the working edge of the tool, that sometimes the
obtuse or right-angled lateral edges of the burin scars were actually used to carve
hard materials (Barton, Olszewski, & Coinman, 1996). Quina “scrapers” were shown
to have served to modify a wide range of materials (hard, soft, rigid and resilient)
using a variety of actions (cutting and scraping): they are not strictly, or even pre-
dominantly, hide scrapers as the name and form might suggest (Bourguignon, 1997;
Lemorini et al., 2016; Hardy, 2004). And of course, questions of whether and how
often “points” served as points remain topics of debate. It is my impression that the
only widespread artefact class with a restricted range of functions are endscrapers,
which seem consistently have been used to scrape hides (Jensen, 1988), though of
course there are exceptions to even this generalization.
The lack of strong and consistent associations between form and function in
pre-defined artefact classes would again call into question the utility of the notion
of artefact design. Because stone tools were clearly not intended for a single kind of
function, the argument goes, they are not actually designed. Accepting the general
validity of the use-wear studies, however, it is premature and counter-productive to
reject the notion of design based on determinations of the ways tools were used.
First, just because we have not discovered many functionally specific artefact types
does not mean they did not exist. Here again, it is entirely possible that our typ-
ologies simply miss the important functional morphological distinctions, and that
unrecognized formal classes of artefact, or more likely, specific attributes such as
edge angle or shape, were preferred for particular applications. These functional
classes might cross category boundaries in existing typologies or they might be a
subset of a particular type.
Second, questions of connections between form and function really implicate
the specificity of design, not its existence. Artefacts can be and in fact often are
expected to serve many purposes. But not all of these functions are necessarily
expressed equally clearly in their design. Some intended functions may place more
stringent limitations on form than others and these will be the ones most obviously
reflected in artefact design. Other functions, though part of the normal use of a
tool, are less formally demanding and therefore less clearly expressed. A projectile
point, for example, needs to be of a certain shape and size in order to do its job as
the penetrating part of a spear or arrow. The same point can also serve as a knife to
cut meat or a pick to dig a splinter out of one’s foot. However, even if the makers
were aware of these other uses they would not have needed to adjust the size and
shape of the point itself –the same properties that made it a useful projectile point
would make it well suited for cutting meat or extracting a splinter.
We can add to this the fact that the first generation of use-wear studies looked
mainly at the most recent uses of an artefact, the way it was employed just prior
to discard. The final use may not be typical of the artefact’s entire use life, and may
in fact be quite atypical. If I use a screwdriver to pry open the lid on a paint can
it is no less a screwdriver than it was before. If the blade bent when prying open a
particularly stubborn can lid, it will no longer be useful for its original purpose and
I will probably discard it.Yet the actions that prompted me to toss the screwdriver
in the trash, and that will be most evident on the discarded tool, were hardly typical
of its intended or actual uses over most of its functional lifespan.
6.5 Are procedures also designs?

Beginning in the late 1980s, the study of châines opératoires ascended to become the
dominant methodology in continental European lithic studies, and it has assumed
an increasingly important role in guiding lithic studies globally. Other authors are
much more qualified to take on the history of and rationale for studying châines
opératoires (Audouze, 2002; Dobres, 1999; Lemonnier, 1986; Pelegrin, 1990; Sellet,
1993; Shott, 2003; Soressi & Geneste, 2011) and I will not discuss that here. Central
to the concept of a châine opératoire, and what is least controversial about it, is the
proposition that technology as a cultural phenomenon is best understood as a time-
transgressive process, encompassing the full suite of behaviours associated with
an artefact’s entire life history, beginning with the procurement of raw materials,
passing through stages of manufacture, use and refurbishment, and finishing with
the object’s abandonment.
In practice, the study of Paleolithic châines opératoires has been heavily oriented
toward one link in the châine, the methods of artefact manufacture, both débitage
(flake production) and façonnage (shaping). A good deal less attention has been paid
to earlier (material procurement) and later (use, refurbishment and abandonment)
stages of an artefact’s life history. Methodologically, continental research on the
châine opératoire has been explicitly non-quantitative and pluralistic. Methods of
blank production or artefact shaping are studied using three main approaches, dia-
critical “reading” of archaeological specimens, refitting studies, and experimental
replication. The first makes no pretence at being anything other than subjective
and non-replicable. Experimental knapping studies are more replicable but there
is a good deal of disagreement about their generalizability (Eren et al., 2016; Lin,
Režek, & Dibble, 2018). Of the three approaches, only refitting can be considered
truly replicable. However, it can be applied to only a small proportion of assemblages
and may be biased toward certain parts of production sequences or certain kinds of
artefact life histories.
Several criticisms have been levelled at the contemporary state of research on
Paleolithic châines opératoires. One concerns its practitioners’ avoidance of quan-
titative methods of any kind. Combined with a tendency toward individualistic
graphic approaches to illustrating findings, the bias against quantification makes
it very difficult to compare results from different researchers. It is often unclear
whether the châines opératoires from two sites are the same or different, and if the
latter, how different they really are. Although there is skepticism on the part of
some researchers about the utility of attribute-and metric-based approaches for
distinguishing the products of different methods of blank production, studies have
shown that it can be done (Scerri, 2013b; Tostevin, 2013).
Another point of criticism of the châine opératoire approach concerns the ten-
dency toward rigidity and over-formalization by many of its practitioners (Bar-
Yosef & Van Peer, 2009). A central tenet of the original châine opératoire approach
is that the production and use of artefacts is a dynamic phenomenon. It is guided
by certain culturally-specific principles but there is a high degree of contingency
as well. Any production system is full of decision junctures where artisans must
change their approach based on unexpected occurrences or changes in their
needs or the constraints on their actions (Pelegrin, 1990; Shott, Lindly, & Clark,
2011). People may start off with a specific plan, but things don’t always end up as
intended. Similarly, cultural transmission is never perfect, and the “descendants” of
a single teacher or model may actually vary in practices and techniques. In trying
to put observed technological behaviour into a few predetermined categories –
named reduction systems –researchers disguise a range of important behavioural
information (Bar-Yosef & Van Peer, 2009). Moreover, there is a tendency among
some researchers to force findings to correspond with inherited chronological or
typological units, to describe the blank production methods of the Denticulate
Mousterian, for example. Effectively this practice perpetuates the inadequacies of
the very approaches to understanding ancient cultures which the châine opératoire
approach was supposed to circumvent (G. Monnier & Missal, 2014).
These criticisms notwithstanding, the concept of châines opératoires, and the
attendant focus on artefact production and use as processes have given us a much
richer and more nuanced understanding of Paleolithic lithic technology and
associated behaviours. It is highly unlikely that every variant of Levallois or discoid
technology described is really an independent method, or that all of the methods
identified by archaeologists correspond one-to-one with the understandings of
prehistoric artisans. Still, the approach has given us a lot more to think about, and
a great deal more evidence (albeit rather difficult to compare) to help guide our
thinking.
If we accept that Pleistocene hominins arrived at a range of different methods
for producing flakes and blades, and that current approaches to analysis, whether
attribute-based or more impressionistic, capture some of the real variation among
methods, the larger question is to what extent we can consider described châines
opératoires designs. Or to put it another way, what were the design choices of
ancient knappers which led to what we call discoid or Levallois or laminar reduc-
tion systems? Were the sequential procedures planned out well in advance, and did
artisans follow a recipe for action intended to lead them to the ideal product, or
were the choices simpler and the plans for action much more skeletal?
Here again one can find major differences of opinion in the literature. On one
side many advocates of the châine opératoire approach seem to believe that they
are able to understand recipes for action, mental templates for the correct way to
proceed in making a particular kind of tool blank or flake. On the other side are
extreme sceptics, who believe that the châines opératoires described are partly or
wholly the post hoc constructions of archaeological observers. This is reminiscent to
some degree of the debate between Ford and Spaulding in the mid-1950s over the
“reality” of archaeological artefact types (Ford, 1954; Spaulding, 1953, 1954).
In my view there is a productive middle ground.The real question is not whether
procedures for making blanks and shaping tools were designed. It is not controver-
sial to assert that the hominins that made and used stone tools had some intention
in producing artefacts, that some forms served their purposes better than others. It
is similarly uncontroversial that even early human ancestors had some received or
personally-acquired knowledge about how stone fractured, and that this made it
possible for them to exercise choice at different intervals in the châine opératoire.The
important questions should be about what choices were made, and where in the
process decisions about artefact design took place. Lithic technology is reductive
and highly constrained by the mechanics of fracture. As a consequence, the manu-
facture of stone tools is highly sensitive to initial conditions. Striking even a single
flake off a core guides what one can do subsequently (e.g. Moore, 2011).The farther
along one gets in the reduction process the narrower the constraints become.
We can use Levallois technology as an example here because it is so well studied.
According to Boëda’s (1986) widely-adopted definition (Figure 6.7), variants of the
Levallois method share a number of features which define the geometry of the core:
1. The exploitation of the core is organized in terms of two separate flaking surfaces
which meet in a plane;
2. The two surfaces are hierarchically organized; Levallois products and byproducts
are detached from one surface: the other is used mostly for the preparation of
striking platforms;
3. The primary Levallois surface is characterized by lateral and distal convexities
which help determine the shapes of the pieces struck from it;
4. The Levallois flakes and allied byproducts are detached with sub-parallel orien-
tation relative to the plane of intersection of the two core surfaces;
5. The size, shape, and angle of the striking platform is adjusted, usually through
retouch, producing faceted butts on products.
At first glance this might seem like a fairly arbitrary set of procedures, a set of
actions linked only by a culturally-specific sequence of choices by the knapper. But
thinking about the process in terms of initial conditions changes that view. Imagine
the goal is to make a large, flat flake with plenty of sharp edge, something for
which Levallois technology is well known. With these initial conditions, the range
of options changes markedly.
If one wants to make the largest flakes possible it is necessary to detach them
from a broad core face: striking flakes from a short or narrow face would produce
correspondingly short or narrow flakes. And to be successful, the face from which
FIGURE 6.7 Schematic illustration of the geometry of a Levallois core, showing the two
hierarchically organized faces, the plane of intersection, and the progressive removal
of flakes by “peeling them” off the core’s upper face (redrawn by M. C. Stiner from
Inizan et al., 1999, Figure 22).
flakes are struck must be convex both parallel to and perpendicular to the axis of
percussion: you cannot reliably strike a large flake from a flat or concave surface.
Experiments have shown that the best way to control flake size is by adjusting the
angle between the striking platform and the dorsal surface of the flake (Dibble &
Režek, 2009; Lin et al., 2013; Pelcin, 1997). But unless one is lucky enough to have
a natural platform with just the right angle and surface configuration, it is neces-
sary to adjust the platform angle. The most direct means of adjusting the angle and
shape of a striking platform is by removing small flakes from it. Of course, this is
only possible if the core is relatively flat: if the core were thick (i.e. columnar), then
it would be impossible to shape the platform by striking down along its surface.
Hence to remove large, flat flakes from one surface, a core ought to be relatively
broad but thin, with two sub-parallel convex faces, and the platforms angles must
be adjusted constantly. In other words, the main features of Levallois geometry—the
two core surfaces, the shape of the main face of flake removal, the preparation of
platforms—can be seen to follow from a single initial decision, to make a large,
flat, sharp-edged flake. Of course, there is room for variation in how the faces are
prepared and Levallois flakes removed, which is probably where much of the subtle
design variation exists, and where we are most likely to find evidence of historical
continuities between populations.
I have focused on Levallois production because it is widely studied and because
Boëda’s definition makes such a good starting point. But it requires no great feat of
imagination to see how similar principles could apply to the structure of discoid
core exploitation or the production of prismatic blades, or even in the manufac-
ture of flakes from “rotating platform cores.” For example, there are only certain
strategies available to establish the system of ridges on a core face necessary to
produce a series of blades. Once these are established there are only a few options
for removing a series of blades or for correcting errors. There is design, in the sense
of choices made in the reduction process, but it is not necessarily expressed in the
entire châine opératoire. The challenge, as always, is in establishing which elements of
the process are free to vary and which are constrained or predetermined by prior
decisions.
In considering the nature of systems of débitage as designs one must also face
the question of end-products and byproducts. Quite often reduction methods are
identified in terms of what are presumed to be the chief end-products. Hence,
researchers refer to Levallois flake, blade, and point production, to pressure blade
manufacture, and so on. A number of researchers have pointed out the difficulty of
distinguishing systematically and objectively between byproducts and end-products
(Dibble et al., 2016; Sandgathe, 2004). It is not sufficient to identify the largest or the
most distinctive, or the last piece struck form the core, as the true aim of the pro-
cess. Hominins typically selected larger pieces for retouch, at least when tools were
hand-held (Lin, 2017), but they used smaller ones as well. Use-wear studies have
shown repeatedly that what is often written-off as waste or debris frequently shows
signs of having been used (e.g. see references in Dibble and Mcpherron, 2006; Lin
et al., 2013). The difficulty of determining what knappers “really wanted” has led
some to argue for abandoning the notion of end-products altogether, and to think
about artefact manufacture through the much simpler lens of the “smash and select”
model first proposed by J.P. White based on his ethnoarchaeological work in New
Guinea (e.g. J.P. White & Thomas, 1972). What this means is that the important
decision juncture in making flake tools would be choosing the best blanks from
what is available after a knapping event, or scattered on the surface of the site, rather
than making particular kinds of blanks on purpose (Dibble et al., 2016).
The “smash and select” model is certainly relevant to Paleolithic studies.
Workshop sites from a range of periods typically show large masses or
concentrations of flaking debris, products of one or more knapping events (e.g.
Clark, 2015; Marks & Volkman, 1983). Inevitably a small number of artefacts have
been removed from these concentrations, showing us which pieces the knappers,
or subsequent visitors, selected and carried off for use or further modification.
The distinction between product and byproduct is also vague and analytically
intractable. It is curious to claim that the late Middle Paleolithic knappers at
Tor Faraj in Jordan (Demidenko & Usik, 2003), Boker Tachtit in Israel (Marks
& Volkman, 1983), or Korolevo I 2B (Demidenko & Usik, 1995) in the Ukraine
only intended to produce the things we call Levallois points, and that they were
completely uninterested in the large blades and other products that came off the
core prior to the removal of a point.
At the same time, we must also recognize that the ethnoarchaeological
observations refer to a very limited number of cases. The system of flaking
described by J. P. White was quite unsystematic, basically uncontrolled smashing of
quartz pebbles. Paleolithic tool-makers regularly engaged in knapping procedures
that produced different kinds of flakes and blades in different quantities, and this
involved a degree of choice. Regardless of how one views the châines opératoires
reconstructed by archaeologists, it is abundantly clear that Paleolithic sites across the
world contain evidence of systematic reduction systems that consistently produced
certain kinds of elements, be they chunky triangular flakes, elongated blades or
Levallois points. Hominins were clearly aiming to make different kinds of things,
even if we don’t know exactly what they were after.
Instead of worrying about what ancient people wanted, it would make sense to
focus more on what they actually did with the things they made. Examining fre-
quencies and patterns of retouch and reduction is one means to this end. It has the
advantage of being easier and there is a great deal of legacy data available. On the
other hand, it is well-understood that not everything that was used was retouched.
Systematic use-wear studies targeting a range of materials –“end-products” as well
as “byproducts”—are becoming more common. Refitting is also very helpful in this
regard, although it can only be applied to a small number of assemblages.
The case of early Middle Paleolithic Levallois production at Tabun Cave is illus-
trative (Shimelmitz & Kuhn, 2017; Shimelmitz & Kuhn, 2013). Assemblages from
unit IX of Jelinek’s excavations during the early 1970s correspond roughly with
the “D” layers from Garrod’s earlier studies of Tabun. Typically, artefact production
in these layers is described as being focused on Levallois blades and points. There is
a greater emphasis on Levallois methods at Tabun than at other contemporaneous
sites, where non-Levallois blade production is often better represented. However,
while the technology is described in terms of its most striking Levallois products,
the methods of core exploitation yielded a whole range of blank types, including
naturally backed flakes, “non-Levallois blades,” core-trimming pieces such as eclats
débordants, and of course cortical pieces. These other blank forms are typically
categorized as byproducts from making the Levallois elements.Yet all of them were
regularly transformed by retouch, sometimes with frequencies approaching those of
the Levallois blanks. The most interesting characteristics of this particular approach
to making blanks is it produces many large blanks with a range of functional
properties from a single core. Focusing exclusively on presumed Levallois products

obscures this important feature.
6.6 Raw material as a design choice

Design choices are not just about size and shape. In fact, every manufacture process
begins with a crucial set of decisions surrounding the selection of appropriate raw
materials. The choice of raw materials is crucial to many modern technological
systems: the search for and incorporation of ever lighter and stronger materials has
been a key element in the evolution of airplane designs, for example (Committee
on Aeronautical Technologies, 1992; Soutis, 2005; Standridge, 2014). This is no less
true of early lithic technology. Even the earliest tool-makers exercised the option of
using some kinds of rock and ignoring others.The choices they made were as much
a part of the design of the products as were basal notches or serrated edges. For
simple lithic technologies in which the main implements were unmodified flakes,
design decisions may be reflected mainly in raw material selection (Marwick, 2008).
Raw material choices can influence products and processes of lithic technology
in different ways. Certain rocks may be extraordinarily workable. Others may have
useful functional properties such as fracture toughness or resistance to abrasion, or
they may have especially attractive esthetic characteristics. Many relevant prop-
erties of different rock types are accessible through experimentation (e,g., Braun
et al., 2009; Doelman,Webb, & Domanski, 2001; Domanski,Webb, & Boland, 1994;
Goldman-Neuman & Hovers, 2009; Lerner et al., 2007). Still, for most researchers it
seems that a good raw material is like “hard core” pornography to United Supreme
Court Justice Potter Stewart, who said:
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I under-
stand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core porn-
ography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But
I know it when I see it.
Most lithic analysts would agree on what constitutes good or bad raw materials,
at least they assume so. But there is a great deal to be done in documenting sys-
tematically how the physical characteristics of different kinds of rock affect both
their workability as well as the ways tools made from them perform in different
tasks. Much discussion of raw material quality focuses on lithological properties of
specific rocks. However, as L. Wilson observes (Wilson, 2007b), outcrop-specific
characteristics such as clast size, ease of extraction, and accessibility may figure into
humans’ perceptions of the desirability of particular rock types.
Aesthetically salient properties are less easy to identify a priori. They are mostly
apparent where people made a special effort to obtain particular types of stone over
and above what seems justified by their utilitarian qualities.The widespread interest
in obsidian as a raw material beginning with the Neolithic in southwest Asia
(e.g. Delerue, 2007; Renfrew, Dixon, & Cann, 1966; Tykot, 2002), and somewhat
later during the coalescence of agricultural villages in the American Southwest

(Shackley, 2005), seems to have been as much due to the unique visual and textural
characteristics of volcanic glass as to obsidian’s inherent workability or the sharp
edges it produces. Interestingly, earlier hunter-gatherers used obsidian when it was
close at hand but made no special effort to obtain it. This disproportionate interest
in obsidian seems to appear earlier, however, in Africa (Ambrose, 2012) and the
southern Caucasus (Adler et al., 2014; Doronicheva, Kulkova, & Shackley, 2013;
Moncel et al., 2015), showing that the material’s special appeal was not limited to
farmers.
Far more attention has been placed on the negative consequences of certain
lithic raw materials than on their positive features. “Low quality” stone, usually
no more explicitly defined than high-quality stone, is widely seen as something
that constrains tool-makers’ design options. With certain kinds of rock, the argu-
ment goes, it is nearly impossible to carry out some procedures or produce some
kinds of forms. The evidence is mainly associational: poor-quality stone is often
associated with simple unelaborated reduction processes and unrefined tool forms
(Andrefsky, 1994).The scarcity of suitable raw materials may be invoked to account
for large-scale patterns in the distribution of artefacts and technological procedures.
For instance, scholars once argued that Early Pleistocene hominins in East Asia or
Central Europe did not (usually) make bifacial handaxes because they lacked the
appropriate kinds of stones to do it. This proposition is now difficult to support
(Dennell, 2016; Sherwood et al., 2017; P. Zhang, Huang, & Wang, 2010).
Some raw material properties are clearly impossible to work around. Not even
the most skilled knappers can make artefacts bigger than the largest nodules they
can lay their hands on. Coarse-g rained raw materials, in which fractures propagate
around the grains rather than through them, limit the sizes and shapes of products.
Materials that are full of flaws and cracks normally cannot be successfully turned
into large or delicate implements. At the same time, we are often surprised by what
prehistoric tool-makers could do with unpromising rocks. Clovis knappers could
produce beautiful points on just about anything with conchoidal fracture p roperties.
Paleolithic artisans normally sought out fine-g rained rocks such as flint when they
were executing Levallois reduction, but they were fully capable of producing per-
fectly acceptable Levallois products on quartzite, basalt, and a range of less workable
materials (Eixea, Villaverde, & Zilhão, 2016; Hilbert et al., 2016). The makers of
pressure micro-blades in northeast Asia typically selected very fine-g rained jasper
or obsidian for this very exacting kind of reduction, but when necessary they could
make use of sub-optimal substitutes (Kato, 2017).
The fact that certain kinds of manufacture processes and products are usually
but not always associated with high-quality stone is significant. The connections
between technological options and raw materials are probabilistic.They are products
of design decisions rather than indications of absolute constraints. Upper Paleolithic
tool-makers preferred fine- g rained, homogeneous flint for making blades, but
they were able to do acceptable work with quartzite or vein quartz when neces-
sary. Conversely, we should reconsider the associations between simple reduction
processes or artefact forms and “low quality” raw material. Having only vein quartz
to work with probably does limit what a knapper can accomplish in terms of tool
form. On the other hand, people may sometimes have chosen this material for
making simple flake tools because it produced the very sharp or very durable edges
they needed. The hardness and angularity of the raw material would have had an
effect similar to retouch in producing desirable features.
So why do some raw materials appear to limit technological options, even
when we know the constraint is not absolute? Here again it is helpful to think
about design choices. Presumably knappers opt for more elaborate, skill-intensive
techniques because the products have certain desirable properties: otherwise, why
bother? Prismatic blade manufacture using indirect percussion or pressure, for
example, produces long, parallel-sided blanks. These blades maximize the amount
of cutting edge on a single blank compared to less elongate flakes. They can also
easily be sectioned into standardized sizes and shapes for hafting.Vitreous, isotropic
stones permit a high level of control over blank size and shape, so that the desir-
able properties (length, thinness, regularity) can be maximized. One can still make
blades from grainier, heterogeneous rocks but they will not be so thin, so long or
so regular, especially if it becomes necessary to shift to hard hammer percussion.
Whatever advantages prismatic blade manufacture offered are attenuated, if not
eliminated, by sub-optimal raw materials. At a certain point there is really nothing
to be gained by taking the time and effort to shape a blade core: the results will be
little different than what could be obtained from a simpler flake core.
For the purposes of illustration, the discussion of raw material constraints on
reduction processes has been presented as a matter of individual decisions. However,
it can easily be extended to general tendencies that emerge from many indi-
vidual decisions. Intractable “low quality” raw materials can reduce the advantages
provided by some elaborate procedures of manufacture. They can also make it
more difficult –if not impossible –to produce certain artefact forms. A group of
people occupying an environment where such raw materials are abundant, and
where better stone is hard to come by, will tend to choose the technological
options that give them the best return for the least effort.They could try and make
blades or thin bifaces from the grainy igneous rocks they find around them, but
the extra effort involved is simply not rewarded by the functional advantages of the
products, if those advantages are also diminished by the raw materials’ intractability.
People will instead either find a way to procure appropriate stone from some-
where else (also at a cost), or they will find a more suitable way to get the blanks
and working edges they need from the rocks available around them. Sometimes
they will take both roads. Over time the knowledge of how to execute particu-
larly elaborate procedures may even disappear if not practiced often enough. What
I want to emphasize here is that it is not necessarily the case that the rocks available
in a particular region prevented people from making bifacial handaxes, Levallois
flakes, or thin blades like their neighbours. Rather, over time the nature of raw
materials may have encouraged them to find other, less costly and more practical
ways to make what they needed.
6.7 Sources of constraint on artefact form

Choices about making artifacts are almost always cultural—people make decisions
about just about every aspect of tool making based on what they have previ-
ously learned. And a great deal of human learning takes place in a social matrix.
However, technological choices are also informed and guided by external forces. It
is easiest to think about the effects of these internal and external forces as a series
of constraints on artifact design, factors that limit feasible designs for artefacts or
procedures.
We can divide constraints on artefact morphology into three groups:
• Production constraints come from properties of materials. Hardness,

toughness, resilience, and the ways materials fracture, melt, or harden affect the
ways they can be shaped, and the array of forms they can assume.
• Functional constraints arise from the performance of the artefact in its
intended function(s). There are two general functional realms.
• Mechanical functions help people gain a physical advantage in the
material world. Constraints arise from the physical, chemical or energetic
characteristics of the materials involved in the activity and the dynamics of
the actions of a tool operating on the object material.
• Symbolic functions transmit information about the maker or user of the
artefact or the activity in which it is used. Constraints on symbolic function-
ality emerge mainly from the criteria used to assign meaning to messages
and the value that people assign to the messages encoded in things. There
are of course perceptual limitations as well—messages need to be registered
by the sensory organs in order to be received and evaluated.
These different sorts of constraint vary widely in their strengths, dynamism and
causal directionality (Table 6.1).
Production constraints are essentially static within a particular class of technology.
People have comparatively little influence in the ways isotropic stone fractures, the
smelting temperature of metal ores, or the heat output of particular fuels. It may
be possible to modify some constraints by manipulating the materials (e.g. by using
fluxes that cause materials to melt at lower temperatures or by heat-treating stone
before flaking it) but these effects are comparatively limited in pre-industrial tech-
nologies. These physical and chemical constraints are effectively unchanging over
TABLE 6.1 The nature of external and internal constraints on design choices
Source of constraints Strength Mutability Causal directionality
Production/mechanical High Low Linear

Functional/mechanical Variable Low Linear
Functional/symbolic Variable High Non-linear
human experiential time frames and they are the same everywhere in the world.
And the causality flows only one way—physics has an effect on people but people
cannot (currently) affect physics.
Constraints arising out of practical functions are slightly more variable than
the ones coming from material properties. The physical properties necessary for
an effective hide-scraper, awl or water storage jar vary little over time and space.
However, the strength of the constraints is influenced to a certain degree by human
decision-making. People can choose which activities to conduct and how effi-
ciently they care to conduct them. There are usually alternative, culturally dictated
solutions to particular problems. However, within a single activity or material class,
the practical constraints on artefact morphology arise from physical and chemical
properties and are relatively static. And here again, people have very little influ-
ence on the fundamental physical properties of materials or the dynamics of inter-
action between them, so causality flows in one direction, from physical properties
to human decisions.
Constraints arising out of symbolic functions are very different. They can be
very strong, at least locally. For example, once people agree that a certain graphic
character represents a particular sound or meaning there is a great deal of pressure
to conform, corresponding to a very strong sort of stabilizing selection. However,
there are few absolute constraints on the particular form the character takes: any
figure can, in principle, represent any sound or meaning. Forms are free to vary
widely and to change as quickly as people can reach a new equilibrium (consensus).
This produces a great potential for dynamism.
Symbolic constraints on artefact form also have a different causal structure
than do practical or mechanical constraints. The effectiveness and salience of
symbols are entirely dependent on human action. The utility of symbols is largely
a function of their past uses: symbols conjured up out of thin air seldom have
much resonance. For this reason, the effectiveness of a particular design choice
in the symbolic realm may also depend on the number of people who have
already made that choice. Some situations favour extreme conformism, whereas
others favour novelty and originality. The effectiveness of a particular form of
hammer for driving nails is independent of the number of people already using
that sort of hammer, but the usefulness of a symbol most certainly is influenced
by its frequency. And this is a very important distinction. Production and func-
tional constraints act in a linear way on artefact designs. Symbol-based systems
are potentially non-linear. Choices made at one point in time affect the future
dynamics of the system.
Based on the principles outlined above we can make some broad predictions about
patterns of variation across time and space related to different kinds of constraints.
1. High levels of constraint from mechanical factors will limit variation in artefact
form globally. With stone artefacts, for instance, limits on the fracture of vit-
reous stones result in frequent homoplasies, re-invention of methods of artefact
manufacture (bifaces, blades) as well as recurrence of specific forms.
2. Functional limitations on artefact morphology will be similarly consistent

and globally effective. On the other hand, depending on the application, the
strength of constraints on morphology may vary, so there may be much more
formal variation within particular classes. There may also be alternative means
of achieving similar ends. But once these are established, they tend to be per-
sistent due to entrenchment, entropy, or uneven design spaces. So we expect
local persistence through time in basic forms. The scale of geographic vari-
ation will vary according to external constraints. For example, because certain
features are needed to cut wood effectively, the designs of axes for tree-felling
are comparatively similar across the world. In contrast designs for fishing gear
may vary regionally according to the kinds of fish available and the situations
where they can be caught.
3. Symbolic constraints can be very strong—they can and often do result in high
levels of standardization. However, they are much more mutable and dynamic,
meaning that forms can change relatively quickly. Moreover, non-linearity can
force the system into chaotic or runaway behaviour. So we expect local redun-
dancy but high levels temporal and spatial variation.
The broader significance of this is that we expect different patterns of diver-

sification and change over time according to the domains that influence design
choices. Artefacts or features of artefacts that reflect manufacture constraints
will vary little over time and across space. Functional constraints can be simi-
larly unvarying: hammers and stone hidescrapers tend to look similar the world
over. But when a class of material culture enters the symbolic realm, the nature
of constraints on it change in a fundamental way. We can expect to see different
patterns of dynamism. In particular, the mutability of constraints and the intro-
duction of non-linear causal pathways make the system more prone to chaotic or
eccentric behaviour.
TABLE 6.2 Expected effects of external and internal constraints on design choices
Source of Rates of change Direction of Spatial variation

constraints selection
Production Very low Stabilizing Low

Functional/mechanical Low Stabilizing – possibly Low-moderate –
multi-modal depends on variation
in functional
constraints
Functional/symbolic Variable – Stabilizing or High
moderate-high unconstrained
directional
6.8 Trends in artefact design during the Paleolithic

It is difficult to find evidence at all of design or imposed form in the shapes of the
earliest stone tools. Early Oldowan (and/or pre-Oldowan) hominins living in Africa
before 2.0 my were largely content with the functional properties of unmodified
flakes. What they seem to have been after were pieces of stone with sharp edges,
large enough to hold securely in the hand, but not very large. The natural features
of flakes produced by hard-hammer percussion provided what they needed. In
the earliest assemblages tool-makers did not even bother to reshape tool edges—
retouch is rare or non-existent (Harmand et al., 2015; Roche, 1980; Semaw, 2000;
Stout et al., 2010). Any preference for particular kinds of edges or “handles” on
flakes would have been expressed at the level of blank selection, something we
know comparatively little about because it is difficult to study. Even choppers and
chopping tools, the iconic artefact forms of Oldowan or “Mode 1” technologies are
comparatively scarce prior to 2 my. For this reason, some researchers propose to call
these simple flake assemblages dating to before 2 my “pre-Oldowan” (Roche, 1989),
a proposition that has met some resistance (de la Torre, 2011; Semaw, 2000).
Despite the very obvious simplicity of the things they made, the first tool-
makers did in fact exercise choice. As discussed in Chapter 4, there is good evi-
dence for systematic selection of raw materials for knapping. Stout and colleagues
show that Gona hominins consistently chose types of rock with small grain-sizes
and few phenocrysts, features that would enhance their flakeability (Stout et al.,
2005). Avoidance of raw materials with inclusions or structural flaws that could
affect flaking success has been noted in other early assemblages (Goldman-Neuman
& Hovers, 2012; Harmand, 2007;Toth, 1982). Studies of raw material use at Kanjera
South (Braun, Plummer, Ditchfield et al., 2009) based on somewhat more direct
measures of quality, show that tool-makers were more biased toward toughness and
durability than fracture properties in choosing which rocks to flake.
We should not make too much of the differences in findings from Kanjera and
Gona. The degree of emphasis on particular attributes in raw material selection
would be affected by the varieties of stone available to hominins. If the array of
stones present showed a wide range of working properties but comparatively similar
knapping properties, we would expect to see more emphasis on selecting the most
durable materials. If the knapping properties were more variable, we might expect
to see greater evidence of selectivity in that domain. What these studies do show
is that the first tool-makers did exercise choices with respect to artefact design.
Evidence for “imposed form” may be scarce but even the first tool-makers made
simple decisions about the suitability of different kinds of stone.
Choosiness about raw materials continued through the Oldowan, and is in fact
amplified (Goldman-Neuman and Hovers, 2012: and references therein). At local-
ities such as Olduvai Gorge, where tool-makers had a variety of stones to choose
from, patterns of raw material selection are quite stark. Hominins consistently
selected fine-grained quartzite for making small flake tools and coarser-g rained
but tougher rocks for larger tools (Leakey, 1975: 482). Later assemblages, in par-
ticular those sometimes called “developed Oldowan,” show other evidence for
simple design choices impacting artefact morphology. Flake tools continued to be
the mainstay of Oldowan assemblages, but after 2 my hominids more frequently
adjusted the contours and angles of flake edges by retouch (de Lumley, Nioradzé, &
Barsky, 2005; Roche, 1989; de la Torre, 2011: 1034). In her pioneering monograph
on the assemblages from Olduvai Gorge, M.D. Leakey identified a series of arte-
fact classes among the retouched flake tools, assigning them names from established
European classification systems (graver, burin, endscraper, etc.; Leakey, 1971). Few
contemporary researchers maintain that these artefacts represent intentionally
produced artefact forms, much less functionally specific ones. However, the fact
that these early hominins did choose to adjust the contours of flake edges indicates
that they were interested in creating implements with specific working properties.
The later Oldowan also shows evidence for diversification of artefact design into
very broad functional classes (e.g. Carbonell et al., 2009). Most obviously, choppers
and chopping tools, cobbles with a series of flakes removed from one margin,
became more common. More than 30 years ago, N. Toth proposed that choppers
and chopping tools, perceived as tools by Leakey and others were actually cores,
and that the Oldowan tool-makers were mainly interested in producing flake tools
(Toth, 1982, 1985). Since then positions have shifted and it is now agreed that what
are called choppers and chopping tools can be either cores and implements (Schick
& Toth, 2006). Interestingly, Reti (2016) has shown that cores of quartzite, a type
of stone represented mainly as flake tools, are reduced in a way that maximizes effi-
ciency of use, whereas flakes of basalt from the same sites indicate much less com-
plete consumption of cores. Reti interprets that as a response to the relative scarcity
of different raw materials in pebble beds at Olduvai. An alternative interpretation is
that the basalt cores were not as fully reduced because many of them were utilized
as heavy-duty tools after just a few flakes had been removed.
I do not claim that what are called choppers and chopping tools were fully-
specified forms, or that the many morphological variants initially described
by Leakey and others (1971) were produced intentionally. The forms present in
Early Pleistocene archaeological assemblages were almost certainly the products
of “… a continuum of lithic reduction with the intent of producing sharp-edged
cutting and chopping tools.” (Schick & Toth, 2006: 4).Different forms were likely
determined mainly by the shapes of the cobbles on which the artefact was made.
Individual artefacts could have been either heavy-duty tools or sources of flakes.
They could even have been both at the same time: the rigid separation of cores
and tools is a construction of archaeologists, not necessarily a principle followed
by actual makers of stone tools (Kuhn, 2007). However, the presence of both core
tools and flake tools after 2.0 my indicates a fundamental kind of design bifurca-
tion according to artefact mass. The design choices might amount to nothing more
than selecting a pebble of one material for making a heavy-duty tool and a pebble
of another material for making flakes, but a choice it is, nonetheless. Even early
Oldowan tool-makers had a range of tactics available for making flakes which led
to different kinds of discarded byproducts (cores): sometimes, though not always,

they chose methods that led to the production of what we call choppers. It is worth
noting that what are clearly functionally distinct artefact forms, spheroids, also make
their appearance later on in the Lower Pleistocene (Semaw, Rogers, & Stout, 2009;
Willoughby, 1985) (Figure 6.8). Early researchers interpreted these impressively
rounded, battered stones in a number of ways, including as components in bolas
(reviewed by Walker, 2008). In all likelihood the forms of spheroids developed as
byproducts of some kind of repetitive action rather than as a result of intentional
production (Semaw et al., 2009). However they were used, these enigmatic stone
balls certainly did not serve the same functions as flake tools or choppers. The fact
that hominins selected particular kinds of rock for the activities which led to pro-
duction of spheroids reflects the same sort of basic design decisions as are manifest
in the flaked stone tools.
Simple design distinctions –heavy- duty tool versus light- duty flake tools,
cutting tools versus battered tools –continue to characterize assemblages from the
next 1.5 my or more. The oldest stone-tool assemblages from outside sub-Saharan
Africa and the Rift Valley, “trace fossils” of the first hominin geographic dispersals,
date to between 1.0 and 1.8 my (de Lumley, Nioradzé, & Barsky, 2005), though a
recent publication could push the earliest date back nearly 300,000 years (Z. Zhu
et al., 2018). The earliest early assemblages from Europe and Asia are structured
along the same lines as early Mode 1 stone-tool assemblages from East Africa. In
fact, many of them lack evidence for secondary retouch and distinctive artefacts
such as spheroids, making them most similar to the African early Oldowan or
FIGURE 6.8 Heavily battered semi-spheroid of quartz from Isimila, Tanzania (from

lithic teaching collection, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona). Scale
bar = 10 cm.
“pre-Oldowan.” Retouch became more common after 800 ka or so (Barsky et al.,

2013). There may have been a few minor innovations in methods for producing
flakes but that is about the extent of it (Carbonell et al., 2016).
Resemblances between these far-flung assemblages raise questions about the
mechanisms of cultural transmission could be responsible for the occurrence of
similar artefact forms and manufacture procedure over such a large area and span of
time. Tennie and colleagues (2016, 2017) propose that little or no cultural trans-
mission needs be involved. Hominins learning on their own to make sharp edges by
percussion would converge on something that looked very much like early Mode
1 or Oldowan technology as currently defined.Thus, the near global distribution of
Mode 1 technologies during the Lower Pleistocene would be a product of repeated
convergence, channelled by the fracture properties of stone, rather than cultural
continuity (Tennie et al., 2016, 2017).
The appearance of new forms of core tool or “Large Cutting Tools” (LCTs) is
conventionally thought to mark the decline of the Oldowan and the beginning of
the Acheulean or Mode 2 technologies in sub-Saharan Africa. Current evidence is
that these artefact forms were first made in various parts of East Africa by ca. 1.75
ma (Beyene et al., 2013; Diez-Martín et al., 2015; Lepre et al., 2011). The transi-
tion between Oldowan or developed Oldowan and earliest Acheulean seems to
be relatively gradual, and Oldowan assemblages without LCTs occur in the same
geological strata as early Acheulean assemblages (de la Torre, 2009; Torre, Mora,
& Martínez-Moreno, 2008). Some researchers interpret this as evidence for the
co-existence of distinct hominin populations, one making handaxes and one not
(Lepre et al., 2011). An alternative explanation is that artefacts such as handaxes and
cleavers were used in a specific range of tasks, and so were discarded at some but not
all sites (Beyene et al., 2013: 1588; Semaw et al., 2009).
Handaxes were produced in one form or another for more than 1.5 my. And
by 500 ka hominins were making handaxes and allied artefact forms from South
Africa to the British Isles and from Atlantic Iberia to China. For decades it was
believed that handaxes were never part of Lower Paleolithic assemblages east of
India (Movius, 1948; Schick, 1994). Findings over the past 20 years have shown
that assemblages with large bifacial artefacts, produced by shaping nodules or large
flakes, were also produced in China and Korea during the Middle Pleistocene
(Dennell, 2009; Huang et al., 2012; H. Li, Kuman, & Li, 2015; H. Li, Li, & Kuman,
2014; H. Li, Li, Kuman et al., 2014; Moncel et al., 2018b; Norton et al., 2006;
Yamei et al., 2000). LCTs may not be as common or widely distributed in East
Asia as in Europe or Africa, but they are nonetheless present. And it is important to
remember that in parts of Europe such as Central Europe and the Balkans, Lower
and Middle Pleistocene assemblages seldom if ever contain handaxes (Svoboda,
1987, 1989; Tourloukis, 2010). Some argue that this semi-global distribution of
Mode 2 technologies represents a single widespread cultural mega-tradition, the
consequence of rapid hominin dispersal (Dennell, 2016; Lycett, 2009; Santonja &
Villa, 2006) whereas others argue that shared design characteristics and techniques
could also have occurred as a result of convergence in independent centres of
innovation (Gallotti, 2016; Lycett & Bae, 2010; Moncel et al., 2018b; W. Wang
et al., 2012).
While we recognize artefacts from across the globe as handaxes, in fact evidence
for overall morphological design of the earliest Mode 2 LCTs is little more com-
pelling than in the Oldowan. So-called developed Oldowan assemblages contained
elongated pointed choppers, trimmed on two faces that M. D. Leakey referred
to as “proto-bifaces.” The first bifacial LCTs assigned to the Acheulean do not
show much more evidence of imposed form (Figure 6.9). They are longer and
more clearly pointed, but not necessarily more regular. There is very limited plan-
view or cross-sectional symmetry. And importantly, the early LCTs were prepared
by bifacial marginal trimming rather than true bifacial thinning (Beyene et al.,
FIGURE 6.9 Early bifaces (a, b) and protobifaces (c, d); a, b, site EF-HR, Olduvai Gorge;
c, d site HWK East, Olduvai Gorge (from Leakey, 1971, Figure 50, no. 2, Figure 51,
no. 2, Figure 65, no. 2, Figure 66, no. 2).
FIGURE 6.10 Three views of large, trihedral Acheulean pick from Isimila, Tanzania

(from lithic teaching collection, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona). Scale
bar = 10 cm.
2013: 1589–1590). Thus, although the earliest handaxes were shaped by removing

flakes from both faces, the high level of shape control that bifacial thinning affords
was not yet in place.
On the other hand, the earliest Mode 2 assemblages do include two methods of
shape control that were not present earlier. One is the use of large flakes for blanks.
A high proportion of handaxes and cleavers in very early Mode 2 assemblages
were made on flakes (Beyene et al., 2013; Diez Martin et al., 2015; Gallotti et al.,
2010; Sharon, 2010; de la Torre, 2016; de la Torre & Mora, 2018; but see Lepre
et al., 2011). In contrast, flakes were seldom selected as blanks for large tools in
earlier assemblages. While they do not necessarily provide a high degree of control
over plan-view shape, flake blanks provide a proportionally greater length of sharp
edge than trimmed cobbles. The other novel method of shape control resulted in
the production of “picks” (Figure 6.10). While superficially resembling crooked
handaxes with narrow pointed ends, picks are differentiated by thick trihedral or
quadrihedral tips. This sort of thick angular tip looks like something to be avoided
in thinning a biface. However, makers of Early Pleistocene Mode 2 assemblages
seem to have intentionally produced them using a kind of “trihedral” shaping
(Beyene et al., 2013; Diez-Martín et al., 2015; Roche, 2000). I emphasize that there
is little evidence for overall size and shape standardization in the handaxes-on-flakes
or the picks. Tool-makers seem to have been aiming at making implements with
long sharp edges (handaxes, cleavers) or thick, robust points (picks). In other words,
evidence of design in the earliest LCTs seems to be mostly about reproducing basic
functional properties in one part of the implement only.
The development of large flake blanks and trihedral shaping are not the end of
design innovations after the Oldowan. Somewhat later, between 1.0 my and 0.8
my (Bayene et al., 2013), fully bifacial façonnage or bifacial thinning (Figure 6.11)
appeared in the African Acheulean, and soon after in large parts of Eurasia. This
method, which has been well described for the Early Pleistocene as well as later
periods, enables real refinement of LCTs. Bifacial thinning involves removing
long, flat flakes across >50% of the biface’s width, often using an organic or soft
stone percussor. It is a particularly effective way to control the cross-sectional
profiles of artefacts. Thickness contributes little to a large bifacial tool’s func-
tionality except mass: a moderately thin biface is just as good a cutting tool as a
thick one, perhaps better. Marginal trimming, as seen on choppers and the earliest
bifaces, causes width to decease relatively quickly with little or no reduction of
thickness. Bifacial thinning permits one to remove material from the centre of
the object piece with a minimal reduction of width, increasing portability but
maintaining overall size. The outcome of successful bifacial shaping is a compara-
tively thin but large artefact with acute edges, giving bifacially shaped pieces a
high ratio of utility to weight.
A number of authors (Isaac, 1976; Mellars, 1973) identify “imposed form,” that
is intentional design, as an important threshold in hominin evolution. Questions
of imposed form come to the fore in dealing with Early and Middle Pleistocene
industries with LCTs. Bifacial handaxes and cleavers are arguably the first artefacts
to be produced by hominins that are universally recognizable as artefacts. Their
size, symmetry, and overall shape appeals to people today. We can recognize the less
extensively shaped and more irregular implements of the Oldowan as artefacts, but
they are not the kinds of things most of us would look for if we needed to cut,
scrape or chop something. In contrast handaxes and cleavers look like tools one
could actually work with. Consequently, some authors consider the appearance of
LCTs to mark the dawn of design and imposed form (e.g. Isaac, 1976: 276).
There is no doubt that handaxes seem designed to us. But that does not mean
they were designed. More precisely, that does not mean that what observers today
perceive as design in a particular set of artefacts ever existed in the minds of the
artisans who produced those artefacts hundreds of thousands of years ago. The
simple fact that people produced bifacial, generally symmetrical and biconvex or
plano-convex artefacts repeatedly, and for long periods of time, indicates they had
some common aim. But whether that aim was to produce an amygdaloid or ficron
handaxe, or some other specific form, is a different issue. In fact, there are two big
questions about handaxe design. The first is what we make of the shared features
of handaxes from across the globe. The second is what we make of variation over
time and across space.
A great many scholars have remarked on the similarity of Acheulean artefacts
from across Africa and Eurasia (see Lycett & Gowlett, 2008). However, hardly
FIGURE 6.11 Two handaxes produced by different methods. The specimen on the left

shows extensive bifacial shaping and thinning. The specimen on the right is made on
a large flake and shows minimal marginal shaping (from lithic teaching collection,
School of Anthropology, University of Arizona). White bar = 10 cm.
anyone has actually measured it. Yes, handaxes from Africa and Europe often look
quite similar. But there is an enormous bias in our observations.Very few of us have
conducted detailed studies of assemblages from across Eurasia. For understandable
and practical reasons our impressions come from comparing the specimens we and
our colleagues choose to illustrate in publications. And why do we choose to illus-
trate particular artefacts? Sometimes because they show the unique contents of our
sites, but more often because they illustrate similarities with other known artefacts.
One of the few researchers who has systematically studied material from a large
part of the range of Mode 2 or Acheulean technologies is J. Gowlett. Gowlett and
colleagues have shown that there are commonalities in proportions of Acheulean
bifaces from across Europe and Africa (Crompton & Gowlett, 1993; Gowlett &
Crompton, 1994). They have also demonstrated that there is some degree of allom-
etry in handaxes: changes in proportions correlate with size (Gowlett, 2006, 2013).
Although he is sometimes seen as a staunch defender of handaxes as designed forms,
Gowlett does not hold with the idea that plan-view shape represents a mental tem-
plate. Instead, Gowlett argues in favour of reducing handaxe shapes to a series of
essential properties or “imperatives” shared by all forms, including a “glob butt” (for
prehension), “forward extension” to keep the hand away from the working end, and
“support for the edge” (the body of the handaxe) (Gowlett, 2006). One could argue
for adding to or subtracting from Gowlett’s list of five handaxe “imperatives,” but
the exercise is an admirable attempt to separate the discussion of design from the
restricted field of named shapes. E. Boëda and others have made a rather similar prop-
osition, albeit applied to all sharp-edged stone tools. They advocate thinking about
implements as a series of “techno-functional modules” (unités techno-fonctionnelles).
Minimally, a hand-held artefact includes a transformative (working) module and a
prehensive module (the handle or hafting element), An “intermediate” or “recep-
tive” module connects the two (Boëda, 1986, 2001; Bonilauri, 2010; Soriano, 2000).
The treatment and orientations of these three elements together determine the
overall form of the artefact. However, the essential design criteria for each module
are not the same. The constraints on the form of the working edge are different,
and probably much narrower, than the constraints on the design of the prehensive
or intermediate sections of a tool, for example.
Figure 6.12 shows my interpretation of Gowlett’s and the “techno-functional”
perspectives about the overall design of handaxes, with apologies to all authors and
the artefacts themselves. The parts in clear focus are the imperatives or techno-
functional modules. The shaded areas are the less essential remainder of the
whole. The central point is that artisans certainly did exercise control over parts
of these implements. We can imagine multiple ways the body of a handaxe could
have been partitioned into the basic modules (e.g. Uthmeier, 2016). It might be
that the makers cared more about the pointed tip and a blunt butt opposite to it
(Figure 6.13): alternatively, they might have aimed at having one sharp margin
opposed by a dull one to hold on to (Figure 6.14). However, the overall plan view
or 3-D outlines typically identified in existing typological systems were not neces-
sarily important to Paleolithic makers.
FIGURE 6.12 Alternative views of handaxe design: center, conventional, whole-artefact

view; right & left, alternative perspectives based on hypothetical techno-functional
parts of the artefact. Areas in clear focus indicate portions of greatest interest to tool-
makers. In the specimen on the left the forms of the tip and wide butt are controlled
whereas the rest of the artefact is free to vary. In the specimen on the right, different
parts of the two margins are shaped to serve as cutting edges and handle, respectively,
but the rest of the artefact matters little for design. Original artefact is an obsidian
biface from Gölludağ, Turkey (drawing by Zerah Taşkıran).
Both Gowlett’s perspective and the techno-functional view force us to think

about design very differently from the conventional perspective. One can easily
imagine an artefact in which the working edge was highly standardized, but the
other parts were free to vary: many hand-held flake tools probably fit this general
description.Taking the unnecessarily restricted “whole-artefact plan view” concept
of design, these artefacts would appear to lack imposed form because the body
of the artefact was free to take a wide range of forms. However, the shape of the
working edge might be very constrained, showing very specific design choices.
Given White’s observations of New Guinea knappers more than 40 years ago (J.
P. White, 1967; J. P. White & Thomas, 1972) this should really come as no surprise.
But it has not been fully integrated into archaeological thought, at least in the
Anglophone world.
Symmetry is another general feature of handaxes that has received special
attention (Lycett, 2008; Wynn, 1995). As discussed in the previous chapter, claims
of “excessive” or unnecessary symmetry have been cited as evidence that handaxes
were signals of knapper skill or quality, or as expressions of an aesthetic sense. Lycett
demonstrates that global variation in handaxe symmetry does not fit a neutral
model, and suggests that the feature is under some kind of functional or “aesthetic”
selection (2008: 2645). An important but little-explored question about the phe-
nomenon of symmetry is the degree to which symmetry follows from the tech-
nology of production. Bifacial shaping lends itself to production of more-or-less
FIGURE 6.13 Pointed handaxe from bed 73, unit 11 (Acheulo-Yabrudian), Tabun Cave,
A. Jelinek excavations, with schematic diagram of important features. A good deal
more attention was placed on shaping the tip of this specimen than on any other part.
The butt, the part hypothetically used as a handle, is largely unmodified (drawing by
L. Addington). Scale bar = 10 cm.
symmetrical artefacts. Perfect symmetry is of course difficult to achieve, and levels

of lateral symmetry vary within any assemblage of bifacially shaped pieces. But it
takes special effort to create strongly asymmetrical pieces by bifacial shaping alone.
In other words, the design space for bifacially fashioned artefacts may be relatively
FIGURE 6.14 Backed handaxe from bed 75, unit 11 (Acheulo-Yabrudian), Tabun Cave,
A. Jelinek excavations, with schematic diagram of important features. One edge of this
specimen is very sharp, with flat retouch on one face. The other edge was made blunt
by a combination of steep inverse retouch and residual cortex. It would appear that
the blunt edge was reserved as a handle, whereas the sharp edge was utilized. The rest
of the artefact is only cursorily-shaped (drawing by L. Addington). Scale bar = 10 cm.
FIGURE 6.15 Symmetrical and asymmetrical cleavers on flakes. Specimen on left from

Isimila, Tanzania. Specimen on right from unknown locality in Mozambique (from
lithic teaching collection, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona). Scale
bar = 10 cm.
constrained and we do not know how much of that space is actually occupied by
the variation in Pleistocene handaxes (cf. Moore, 2011). It is also worth noting
that symmetry was not a universal feature of handaxes and associated artefacts.
Early tool-makers could and did chose to produce asymmetric as well as symmetric
things. Artefacts called cleavers, especially those made on flake blanks, are quite
often distinctly asymmetrical (Figure 6.15).
Criteria used to identify and “type” artefacts must also be considered in discussing
evidence of Paleolithic artefact design. Not every pointed or bifacially worked arte-
fact is called a handaxe (or a cleaver or a pick). Extremely irregular or asymmetrical
artefacts may be assigned to a different category, whether specific (flake knives or
bifacial scrapers) or non-specific (varia, atypical bifaces). In other words, we may
constrain the apparent degree of shape variation in artefacts simply by the way we
assign them to classes (Dibble, 1989).
Arguments about design in LCTs consider variability as well as consistency.
One inevitable outcome of their vast geographic distribution is that handaxes from
different places do not always look exactly alike. As discussed in the previous section,
local or regional variation in the forms of LCTs has led some experts to conclude
that these represent independent design traditions or early traces of ethnic signal-
ling, emblems of group membership.The implication is that handaxe shape must be
a kind of design convention, passed on among members of single cultural lineage.
However, there are other potential explanations for regional variation in handaxe
form. Several researchers emphasize the role of resharpening in determining the
forms of discarded bifaces (Emery, 2010; Iovita & McPherron, 2011; McPherron,
2000) although others are not convinced that it plays a very strong role (Shipton
& Clarkson, 2015). Thus, some regional variation could reflect differences in raw
material availability or other factors that affect artefact life histories. Other authors
have made strong arguments that variation in raw material properties –from the
shapes of typical nodules to the graininess of the rock –may play a large role in
determining why Mode 2 bifaces from different places look different (Emery, 2010;
McNabb & Cole, 2015; Villa, 1981, 1991; M. J. White, 1998). I admit that while
raw material effects are a reasonable explanation for variation in the forms of early
Paleolithic tools, they can be too convenient a fall-back. Results from at least one
experimental study cast doubt on blanket assumptions about the importance of raw
material in determining handaxe shape (Eren et al., 2014).
Demographic conditions in the Pleistocene may have amplified some forces
affecting variation in artefact forms. In many places early hominin populations
were relatively small and fragmented. Such situations are fertile ground for random
factors—bottlenecks, founder effects and drift—to act on variation that is not
under strong selection. Random error in replicating target forms among isolated
populations could in turn have led to some of the regional variation in handaxe
shape. Models of stochastic variation at Paleolithic time scales are potentially test-
able (Lycett, 2008; Lycett et al., 2016) but there has been comparatively little
work on the topic for early time ranges. However, one study of global variation
in handaxe morphology supports a model of “serial founder effect,” one form of
random sorting (Lycett & von Cramon-Taubadel, 2008).
Variation is perceptible over time as well as space in LCTs. At the broadest
level of resolution, it has been observed that in many regions handaxes increase in
“refinement” or quality of execution over time (Hodgson, 2015). Early examples
are thick and blocky with irregular edges, whereas later ones are thinner and more
symmetrical with smooth edges. Observations are often more qualitative than
quantitative although there have been some more systematic tests (Beyene et al.,
2013; Saragusti et al., 1998). Such trends are not necessarily indicative of chan-
ging design criteria: they could simply indicate that skills and knowhow accrued
gradually over time, or they could reflect increasing manual dexterity or cog-
nitive acuity (Hodgson, 2015). Moreover, increases in symmetry are not global.
There seems to be no directional change over time in levels of symmetry in British
Lower Paleolithic handaxes (J. Cole, 2015). Trends may actually be reversed in the
later Middle Pleistocene. A long sequence of rich Acheulean layers at the site of
Nadaouiyeh Aïn Askar in Syria shows a gradual decline in symmetry, refinement and
regularity in handaxes between 550 ka and 325 ka (Jagher, 2016). Marked increases
in handaxe symmetry and outline regularity between the Lower and early Middle
Pleistocene in the Levant are subsequently reversed in the more recent Middle
Pleistocene assemblages from Tabun Cave (Saragusti et al., 1998).
Questions about design in the Lower and Middle Pleistocene are not confined
to bifacially shaped tools: they also surround the LCTs made on large flakes. Sharon
(Sharon, 2009, 2010) discusses the development and elaboration of the “giant-core”
technologies in great depth. Here, much of the form comes from the ways cores
were prepared. Over time, methods used for producing large flakes became more
clearly defined and more refined. By the Middle Pleistocene a range of specialized
techniques for producing handaxes and especially cleavers had appeared in Africa,
including Victoria West, Kombewa, and Tavelbala Tachengit. Some, such the
Tavelbala Tachengit method (Figure 6.16) are quite elaborate, entailing extensive
preparation of the core, whereas others, such as Kombewa, involve fewer steps (see
Chapter 8). And of course, handaxes and cleavers were also made on cobbles as
well as generic large flakes. The development of the more elaborate prepared-core
methods for producing handaxe and cleaver blanks has been nominated as evi-
dence for “predetermination,” a kind of design strategy in which the shape of the
final product is achieved mainly through shaping of the core, rather than through
trimming or shaping of blanks.This approach is manifest in small flake cores as well.
Predetermined flake production supposedly reaches its apogee with later Levallois
technology, and some researchers refer to these early large-flake technologies as
“proto-Levallois.”
FIGURE 6.16 Schematic diagram of Tabelbala-Tachengit technique for manufacturing

cleaver flakes, found in North African Acheulean (redrawn by M. C. Stiner after
Tixier, 1956).
Unfortunately the term “predetermination” is fraught with the same ambiguity

as the notion of design. All lithic technological procedures involve some degree of
predetermination. Even the least skilled and forward-thinking knapper has some
expectations about the properties of a flake produced by striking a core in a certain
place. Hominins using a comparatively simple discoid method could at least predict
that they would produce a lot of medium-sized, triangular flakes. Reduction tech-
nologies that involve more extensive shaping of the core hold the potential for con-
trolling many attributes of the products. Still, we do not know which features the
knappers were most interested in controlling, and how well they controlled them.
The Kombewa method allows one to make biconvex flakes, and that’s about it.
Methods such as Victoria West or Tavelbala Tachengit also produce flakes with steep
“backs” suitable as a handle. However, we cannot claim with any confidence that
Acheulean knappers planned on getting anything more than large, sharp or pointed
flakes with a blunt edge to hold onto. A good deal of the rest could have developed
as a limited range of socially-acquired knowledge of knapping techniques, which
were brought to bear on achieving this end.
On the other hand, the focus on large flakes as blanks for LCTs in the Acheulean
does help answer the question of whether the artefacts in question were tools
or cores. Shaping of large bifacial implements produces lots of thin, sharp-edged
flakes that are potentially useful as tools or tool blanks (Kelly, 1988). Later people
sometimes made systematic use of biface thinning flakes (Claud, 2015; Hoffman,
1992; Jennings, Pevny, & Dickens, 2010; Monigal, 2004; Surovell, 2009; Wilke,
Flenniken, & Ozbun, 1991) and there is no reason Acheulean hominins should not
have. Consequently, it has been claimed that we cannot be sure whether handaxes
were actually tools or simply residual cores. However, this argument really applied
to bifacially shaped pieces made on cobbles. LCTs made on large flakes typically
show limited secondary modification (Figure 6.17), normally just some marginal
trimming. These artefacts would have been nearly useless as sources of flakes or
tool blanks. We are safe in assuming that handaxes and cleavers made on flakes were
used mainly as implements. However, we are less certain that handaxes made on
large cobbles, which often occur in the same assemblages, functioned as tools, cores,
or both.
True bifacial shaping may also have been the first evidence of a design fea-
ture addressing the fourth dimension, time. As the Dalton example shows, a
well-shaped bifacial implement can be resharpened repeatedly without losing its
desirable functional properties. Although direct evidence of transport of Early and
Middle Pleistocene bifacial tools is scarce, convincing cases have been made that
resharpening was a regular part of the life histories of some Acheulean and later
bifaces (Iovita & McPherron, 2011; McPherron, 2003; McPherron, 2000). It is also
striking that resharpening, when it occurred, was often quite systematic, and that
patterns in renewal of edges varied among assemblages or time periods (Iovita,
2014; Iovita & McPherron, 2011). Sometimes tool-makers were concerned only
with resharpening the tip or one edge but sometimes they seem to have been
interested in conserving overall shape. In other words, the ways artefacts were
FIGURE 6.17 Handaxe on large obsidian flake, Level 6'AM, Kaletepe Deresi 3 site,
Turkey. Scale bar = 5 cm.
renewed was the product of specific technological choices, even if their final forms
were not. These studies focus on the Mode 2 assemblages from Europe and the
Levant dating to after 500 ka. We know less about resharpening in the earlier
Pleistocene of Africa.
In arguing that bifacially shaped handaxes reflect a design that increased the dur-
ability and potential for resharpening of artefacts, I do not make any claims about
the cognitive capacities of the artisans who made them. It may well be that indi-
vidual Early and Middle Pleistocene tool-makers thought strategically about the
tool shapes that would best serve their needs over long periods and select the ones
that provided the greatest benefits. It is equally possible that some lucky knapper hit
on a good solution at some point and that some sort of performance-biased social
transmission took care of the rest (e.g. Hiscock, 2014; Lycett, 2010). It is even pos-
sible, though very unlikely in my view, that the behavioural blueprints which led to
the production of Mode 2 LCTs were transmitted genetically, rather than through
social channels (Corbey et al., 2016). However, what is important is that after 1 my
or so, tool-makers repeatedly produced a group of potentially renewable and long-
lived artefacts, whereas earlier hominins did not.
In the end it seems inescapable there is clear evidence for design in the Lower and
Middle Pleistocene assemblages with LCTs. However, that design is not necessarily
captured in the spectrum of handaxe shape classes identified in standard typological
systems, or even well represented by complete handaxes and cleavers. The artisans
that produced these artefacts had some goals in mind –they wanted implements of
a certain size and mass with a few basic functional features, at the very least a sharp
cutting edge or point and a convenient place to grasp the tool. The artisans also
sometimes had very particular ways to rejuvenate these working elements once they
broke or became dull. When applied to specific sorts of raw material package these
basic design criteria typically result in a limited array of specific forms. Whether
they were intentionally making “ficrons” or “amygdaloid” handaxes, whether they
imposed super-symmetry on their products, is much less clear.
LCTs continued to be made until around 40 ka in many parts of Eurasia, and as
time went on their roles in hominin adaptations expanded and diversified. In some
contexts handaxes were more specialized tools, while in others their uses seem to
have become diverse (e.g. Soressi & Hayes, 2003). Somewhat later there is also good
evidence for emergence of specialized systems for maintaining edge morphology
in bifacial pieces (Iovita, 2014; Krukowski, 1939; Uthmeier, 2016). However, as
discussed in prior chapters, beginning around 500 ka hominins across Africa and
Eurasia began to emphasize manufacture and shaping of small flake tools to a much
greater degree than before. Consequently, this discussion of artefact design also
shifts to the production and maintenance of these smaller artefacts.
Just as the big, impressive LCTs receive the lion’s share of attention in any dis-
cussion of Mode 2 lithic technologies, certain methods for producing blanks feature
prominently in discussions of early flake-tool assemblages. Levallois technology is
the obvious poster child for complex flake production. However, beginning around
500–400 ka an obvious diversification of methods for producing blanks occurred in
western Eurasia and Africa. The details of this phenomenon are discussed in greater
detail in Chapters 4 and 7. Here it is sufficient to note that this Middle Pleistocene
“technological radiation” (Chazan, 2016) is signalled by the appearance of a range
of methods which produce blanks with different properties, from narrow delicate
blades to large flat sharp-edged flakes to thick short blanks with wedge-shaped
cross sections.The practice of systematically producing blanks with certain desirable
properties was not new. Arguably it goes back to the origins of stone tools, but it
is undeniably manifest in the large-flake/g iant-core production systems from the
Early Pleistocene, particularly in the more elaborate ones.What is novel is that these
kinds of approaches seemed to have been filling niches for making small, hand-held
tools with different functional characteristics.
Middle Pleistocene Acheulean, Yabrudian and Amudian assemblages from the
Near East, discussed in Chapter 4, embody many of the novel features that begin
to appear around 400 ka in Africa and western Eurasia. Individual assemblages nor-
mally include heavy scrapers with Quina retouch and less common small deli-
cate blade tools (Figure 6.18), as well as bifacially worked handaxes. The different
approaches to blank production found in these mid-Middle-Pleistocene Acheulo-
Yabrudian assemblages provide some clues about the design criteria of the hominins
who produced them. Approaches to blade production are relatively homogeneous,
although the methods were adapted to local raw materials (Shimelmitz, Barkai
FIGURE 6.18 Typical
large scrapers (1–3) and delicate blade tools (4–8) from Yabrudian
and Amudian assemblages at Tabun Cave, A. Jelinek excavations (n. 1 drawn by
Avraham Ronen; nos. 2–8 drawn by L. Addington). Scale bar = 5 cm.
et al., 2016). The main target in producing these blades seems to have been a long,
sharp edge on at least one margin. Blade tools also seem to have been made mostly
for local use and quick discard. They were retouched, often to blunt one edge as a
form of backing, but seldom show evidence of resharpening. The slender Amudian
blades would have little potential for refurbishment, and indeed they often seem
to have been discarded once the cutting edge dulled. Retouch seems as much
devoted to making them easier to hold as it is to adjusting the morphology the
working edge.
Scraper forms, and the methods used to produce the blanks for them, are more
variable. However, scrapers were commonly made on thick, partly cortical flake
blanks. An important criterion in blank production/selection was the presence
of one blunt margin. In almost every example, the longest and most extensively
retouched edge is opposed by a blunt edge formed by a cortical back, the edge
of the core, or even the flake platform (R. Shimelmitz et al., 2014; Zaidner &
Weinstein-Evron, 2016). Through the process of blank production, blank selec-
tion, and retouch, Yabrudian and Amudian scrapers were thus designed (1) to be
held securely in the hand due to the blunt back opposite the edge, and (2) cap-
able of sustaining heavy use and edge renewal. Although there is again much vari-
ation, scrapers tend to show signs of extensive retouch, rejuvenation, and recycling.
Specimens with two, three, or even four retouched edges are common, and some
reduced to a point at which it would be virtually impossible to renew the edge
again. By any measure, many Yabrudian scrapers had long and diverse use-lives.
The combined patterns of blank selection and use for heavy scrapers and light-
duty blade tools suggest that Middle Pleistocene hominins were responding to
future contingencies as well as immediate needs, that the design of these artefacts
extended to the fourth dimension. On the other hand, while Acheulo-Yabrudian
tool-makers clearly made consistent choices about the forms of the scrapers, these
choices are not expressed in overall shape. Because they were made on flakes with
a range of shapes, and because their life histories varied, the shapes of the discarded
implements are varied. Consequently, if we view Acheulo-Yabrudian scrapers from
the conventional perspective there is little sign of overall design. The blade tools
look a good deal more standardized, but this is because the definition is restricted
to a particularly homogeneous group of blank forms.
Similar patterns of procedural and life history– related design diversity are
expressed in other regions at this same time period.The remarkable level of techno-
logical diversity –including bifaces, blades, Levallois and thick, Yabrudian-like
scrapers –found in a single, relatively constrained layer at the Nor Geghi 1 site in
Armenia (Adler et al., 2014) would seem to be another example although it remains
a regionally unique case for the time being. In southern Europe bifacial shaping
continued to be common through the Middle Pleistocene, and some assemblages
dating to as late as MIS 6 are called Acheulean (Moncel et al., 2018a; Moncel, 2001).
However, “pre-Mousterian” and early Mousterian assemblages in France dating to
the second half of the Middle Pleistocene also show evidence for multiple techniques
of flake production alongside bifacial shaping (Baena Preysler et al., 2017; Moncel,
2005; Moncel & Combier, 1992; Santonja et al., 2014). In Africa, as in Europe,
classic Mode 2 assemblages with LCTs continued to be produced until at least
250 ka but researchers in both East (Tryon & McBrearty, 2002; Tryon, McBrearty,
& Texier, 2005) and South Africa (Wilkins, 2013; Wilkins & Chazan, 2012) have
documented a distinct increase in the elaboration and diversity of methods for pro-
ducing flake and blade blanks, starting between 500 ka and 450 ka. We don’t know
so much about variation in the life histories of tools made on different sorts of
blank: typically, retouch on flake tools from sub-Saharan Africa is not as extensive
and as well-developed as it is on their European counterparts. Still, the potential
for diverse life histories exists in these diversified products. On the other hand, this
trend does not appear to characterize East Asia. In China, assemblages of small flake
tools (in the north) and core tools (in the south), carry through from the Lower
Pleistocene into the Upper Pleistocene (Gao, 2013; Norton, Gao, & Feng, 2009).
The implications of this extraordinary continuity (or stasis), depending on one’s
perspective), will be examined in the final chapter.
It is important to note that the Middle Pleistocene assemblages discussed here
may represent hundreds of years of accumulated debris. We cannot assume that
everything that occurs together archaeologically in the same package of sediment
was actively used by the same people at the same time. On the other hand, the fact
that these same associations recur repeatedly in long, coarse-g rained stratigraphic
sequences demonstrates that the associations are not the consequence of unique or
transient events. These same strategies were being practiced in the same area for a
long time, and we can assume that they were employed by the same populations, if
not by the same individuals, in response to different needs and exigencies.
The diversity in flake production and shaping systems that first emerged in the
mid-Middle Pleistocene continued and even expanded through the late Middle and
early Upper Pleistocene. The co-existence of multiple ways of making tool blanks
and shaping implements remains a central theme in the later Middle Paleolithic
(Kuhn, 2013) and is integral to systems of raw material management (see previous
chapter). Some of the basic approaches to débitage continued to evolve. The most
widespread and earliest form of Levallois method to appear was the “preferen-
tial” variant, in which a single large flake removes most of the core’s upper sur-
face: other variants, including specialized point production and “recurrent” flake
and blade manufacture (Figure 6.19), seem to have developed later (Boëda et al.,
2013; Shimelmitz & Kuhn, 2017b).
Other indicators of artefact design became more salient at the end of the Middle
Pleistocene and especially in the Upper Pleistocene. One of the most obvious is
modification related to hafting. While the first evidence of hafting dates to much
earlier (see Chapter 3), specialized forms of hafting modification become more
common and more diverse after MIS 6. These include tangs in the North African
Aterian, intentional thinning of artefact bases (Garrod, 1951; Liagre et al., 2006)
and of course the production of small, thin bifacially shaped artefacts called foliates
or leaf points. It should be noted that systematic hafting modification was not ubi-
quitous in late Middle or early Upper Pleistocene assemblages, and at least some
artefacts identified as projectiles based on use-wear or impact damage may have no
clear hafting modification (e.g.Villa & Lenoir, 2009).
Some approaches to hafting are more widespread than others. The practice of
chipping out narrow tangs on the bases of stone tools is found all across northern
Africa beginning in MIS 6, but it is absent from other parts of Africa as well as all
of Eurasia. In contrast, thinned bifacial leaf points of one form or another occur
in late Pleistocene assemblages across the greater part of Africa as well as parts of
Eurasia. Bifacial points are typical of the Stillbay in South Africa (e.g. Högberg &
Larsson, 2011;Villa et al., 2009) and the Aterian in North Africa (R. N. E. Barton,
et al., 2009; Bouzouggar et al., 2002; Caton-Thompson, 1946). Small pointed
bifacial artefacts are also characteristic of Upper Pleistocene Mousterian industries
from parts of Central Europe (Bosinski, 1967; Conard, Bolus et al., 2012) and the
Balkans (Kozłowski, 1992; Runnels, 1988). Of course, the category “bifacial point”
can encompass a vast range of artefact morphologies, from highly redundant and
apparently designed forms to comparatively unstandardized artefacts.
The different approaches to modifying the prehensive part of the tool for hafting
are associated with contrasting treatments of the other parts of the artefacts. As
discussed in Chapter 3, Aterian knappers put tangs on everything from unretouched
flakes to endscrapers to points. The working parts of the tanged artefacts were
newgenrtpdf
FIGURE 6.19 Schematic illustration of uni-and bidirectional laminar Levallois production (from Julien, 1992).
intentionally shaped, but to a much wider array of ends. The comparative redun-
dancy of tangs probably reflects the need to fit the tools into a limited range of hafts.
Globally, the forms of bifacial points seem to be less variable and the different parts
of the tools more coordinated. Bifacial artefacts from the late Middle and Upper
Pleistocene tend to be laterally as well as longitudinally symmetrical, with at least
one pointed end. Thus it would appear that bifacial artefacts are more standardized,
and show more overall shape control, than other classes of early hafted tool. However,
as discussed above, we need to take into account the nature of bifacial shaping
as a technological process, which lends itself to production of quasi-symmetrical
artefacts. Bifacial artefacts from all time periods across the world are elongated and
commonly amygdaloid or bipointed (e.g. Figure 3.9). This seems to be a path of
least resistance, a so-called basin of attraction. We should be open to the possibility
that Stillbay or Aterian points or German Middle Paleolithic “blattsptizen” followed
specific templates for controlling overall shape, but more evidence is needed. The
use of pressure flaking and heat treatment (Högberg & Lombard, 2016; Mourre
et al., 2010) are certainly clues that late Pleistocene Stillbay knappers in South
Africa took special pains to shape artefacts to fairly fine tolerances. Pressure flaking
is not noted on small bifaces from North Africa and Europe, though bifaces from
Central Europe dating to this period show a range of shaping and resharpening
methods (Uthmeier, 2016). However, we should not assume that the South African
examples are more carefully made or more clearly designed just because they were
the products of Homo sapiens.
The backed geometric segments of the Howiesons Poort assemblages are
another class of artefact often cited as evidence for standardization and “whole-
artefact design” (Barham, 2002; Igreja & Porraz, 2013) (Figure 6.20). In fact, this
widely-held view is largely impressionistic. Only a few studies of technical or mor-
phological standardization in HP segments have been published. What emerges
from this research is that some of these artefacts follow tighter design standards than
others (Wadley & Mohapi, 2008). In any event a large part of the morphology of
HP segments, and the differential levels of standardization, relate to alternative strat-
egies of hafting them for a range of functional applications (Igreja & Porraz, 2013;
Lombard & Wadley, 2016; Wadley & Mohapi, 2008).
I first raised the possibility of design in four dimensions, purposive manufacture
of artefacts to stand up to long periods of use, renewal and transformation, with the
emergence of bifacially shaped LCTs in the Lower Pleistocene. However, 4D design
becomes much better expressed toward the end of the Middle Pleistocene and during
the Upper Pleistocene. Krukowoski’s “Pradnik cycle,” a strategy of shaping bifacial
knives which includes a distinctive tactic for edge renewal (Krukowski, 1939), is one
of the best examples, but there are others. Several researchers have modelled reduc-
tion of small bifacial tools from central European Middle Paleolithic assemblages,
arguing for fairly stereotypical patterns of reduction (Iovita, 2008, 2014; Serwatka,
2015). Iovita makes a similar argument about the diversity of shapes of the “business
ends” of Aterian tanged artefacts. Even the two major trajectories of Mousterian
scraper reduction identified by Dibble (1987, 1995) could be interpreted as alternative
FIGURE 6.20 Rangeof geometric segments from Howiesons Poort levels at Klasies

River Mouth, South Africa (from Wurz, 1999, Figure 5).
designs of systems for maintaining tool usefulness. These strategies began with the
selection of tool blanks, or of methods for producing the blanks, that facilitated
different ways of orienting and maintaining edges over time. Evidence for this sort of
design is most common in Europe and North Africa, places where artefacts tend to
show more retouch and have more complex and longer life histories.
“Ramification” (Bourguignon et al., 2004; Mathias, 2016; Rios-Garaizar et al.,
2015) was discussed in Chapter 4, but it is worth revisiting here. The concept of
ramification, first used to describe Quina Mousterian assemblages from Southwest
France (Bourguignon, 1997), refers to specific and systematic modifications to
artefacts which fundamentally alter the artefact’s function and utility.Typically, these
modifications occur late in the artefact’s use life. In extreme examples, large Quina
scrapers served as cores for detachment of flakes that were in turn retouched into
tools, and even used as cores themselves. It may be most strongly expressed in
the Quina Mousterian, but ramification can be argued to be typical of Middle
Paleolithic assemblages from Eurasia. It may extend as far back as 300–400 ka
(Agam, Marder, & Barkai, 2015; Parush et al., 2015; Shimelmitz, 2015) although it
is perhaps not so strongly expressed in earlier cases.
The question which arises in the context of the present discussion is whether
ramification should be considered an element of artefact in design. Evidence suggests
that the phenomenon of ramification was not a rigid sequence of steps but the out-
come of a series of contingent and contextually sensitive choices about how to treat
artefacts. It is a manifestation of flexibility at a group level, not an overall plan in
the mind of every tool user. Individuals went out equipped with the knowledge of
how to rework artefacts on hand into a variety of necessary forms. Whether they
applied this knowledge really depended on the changing technical demands of the
foraging system. Whether or not archaeologists perceive the results as an example
of ramification depends on how often people chose certain options. Certain tactics
are more commonly associated with some blank forms. This makes mechanical
sense: thin, flat Levallois flakes present different options for reworking than do thick
cortical Quina blanks. Although there is a statistical association between blank form
and mode of reworking, the two are independent: blanks were not always reworked
into new forms, and sometimes a particular technique was applied to other types of
blanks (Bourguignon, Faivre, & Turq, 2004:45).
Reworking and repurposing artefacts certainly could imply elements of anticipa-
tion. Some artefact or blank forms lend themselves to reworking more than others.
Thin blades, for example, can easily be reworked on one or both ends, but cannot
be exploited as cores, except for making small bladelet-sized blanks (e.g. Zwyns
et al., 2012). Importantly, potential for transformation is negatively correlated with
portability: comparatively small blanks provide optimal edge/weight ratios (Kuhn,
1994; Surovell, 2009). If people chose to make large blanks and carry them around
(Roth & Dibble, 1998) it was not because they were trying to maximize cutting
edge-to-weight (Lin et al., 2013). Instead, they may have been anticipating the
need to turn their scrapers into cores or other kinds of artefacts. As in the case of
handaxes, the design in this system may have little to do with whole-artefact form
so much as potential to fill particular successive roles.
I should also emphasize that ramified systems of artefact repurposing do not
necessarily imply design for durability. They might also occur where people were
unable to plan around certain contingencies, either because they lacked the cogni-
tive wherewithal or because some needs just cannot be predicted. Such situations
may be apparent where tactics for extending the useful lives of artefacts were not
well matched with the blanks on hand, where people were forced to make extrava-
gantly sub-optimal choices. To cite an example from the American Paleolithic,
the use of bipolar technique to extract flakes from Paleoindian bifaces (Goodyear,
1993; Shott, 1989a) may be an example of (modern) humans forced to cope with
unforeseen needs. Under normal circumstances it makes little economic sense to
turn costly, elaborate bifacial points into flake cores. Paleoindian points were not
designed to become bipolar cores, but it could happen under the right (or wrong)
circumstances.
To this point, most of the evidence for artefact design discussed has referred to
specific parts of artefacts.There is good evidence for systematic and redundant modi-
fication of working edges and prehensive parts as far back as the Lower Pleistocene.
Elements of design related to hafting become increasingly common toward the end
of the Middle Pleistocene. And intentional production of artefacts in anticipation of
long life histories seems to have emerged in the Middle Pleistocene as well.Yet little
if any of this corresponds with the conventional view of “whole-artefact plan view
design.” Shape control is specific and limited, and the various parts of the artefacts
may not be coordinated into a single whole.
This situation may well have changed around 50 ka. It is often stated that Upper
Paleolithic Eurasian artefact assemblages –and, by extension, LSA assemblages from
Africa –show greater variety of specific designs than Middle and Lower Paleolithic
assemblages. This view can be traced back to early work of P. Mellars, who claimed
that “imposed form” or arbitrary design was more clearly expressed in the Upper
Paleolithic than in earlier periods (Mellars, 1973, 1996a; R. White, 1982). The idea
seems to have become nearly axiomatic in discussions of the Upper Paleolithic (Bar-
Yosef, 2002) although attempts to test it empirically have produced both negative
(Marks, Hietala, & Williams, 2001) and positive (G.F. Monnier & McNulty, 2010)
results. Part of the ambiguity concerns the lack of a shared definition of design or
imposed form. From the perspectives adopted in this chapter there is limited evi-
dence for increased “whole-artefact design” in some artefact classes. However, at
least some of what has been accepted as evidence for specific designs are actually
products of archaeological systematics and changes in blank form.
The ambiguity begins with typological systems. Just the way that things are
named confers the impression of greater diversity in the Upper Paleolithic. The
most widely-used system for classifying Upper Paleolithic tools in Europe was
developed by de Sonneville-Bordes and Perrot (Sonneville-Bordes & Perrot,
1953), although Laplace’s system is used in some places (Laplace, 1972). In the
eastern Mediterranean F. Hours’s typologies (Hours, 1974) are the common lan-
guage for classifying retouched artefacts from Upper, Epipaleolithic and “tran-
sitional” assemblages. F. Bordes’ system has 61 types for small tools, although a
dozen or so refer to pseudo-artefacts. De Sonneville-Bordes and Perrot list 91
distinct Upper Paleolithic tool forms, while Laplace’s and Hours’s lists are even
longer. Definitions of artefact classes also vary across time periods. Bordes’ Middle
Paleolithic typology contains 24 or so classes of sidescraper, but only two types of
burin and endscraper. In contrast, F. Hours’ (1974) typology for the Upper and
Epipaleolithic of Lebanon contains 30 classes of burin and 35 types of endscraper,
but only one kind of sidescraper. Because of these differences in numbers of
classes, no comparison of Middle and Upper Paleolithic artefact diversity based
on these typological systems ever begins on a level playing field (e.g. Grayson &
Cole, 1998). Beyond differences in sheer numbers of classes, the Middle and Upper
Paleolithic typological systems were created using different principles. Laplace’s
rationale for constructing his “typologie analytique” is explicit, but in the others
the structural principles are implicit. So, for example in F. Bordes’ system, artefacts
with straight, convex, and concave edges are all sidescrapers. However, in Upper
Paleolithic typologies “end of blade tools” are placed in different classes based
on edge profile: if the retouched edge of a piece is convex and transverse to the
long axis of the piece it is an endscraper, but if the edge is straight or concave, or
obliquely-oriented, it is a truncation. Likewise, a blade with retouch along one or
both margins is simply another sidescraper in the Middle and Lower Paleolithic
typology, but it is a “retouched blade,” distinct from sidescrapers, in the Upper
Paleolithic systems.
Impressions of the formal diversity of LSA and Upper Paleolithic artefacts may
also be inflated by incorporating many specimens that are not retouched tools at
all. Most notably, there has been a near-180-degree turnabout in interpretation of
carenated and nosed scrapers in the Aurignacian. Once classified as implements,
these are now widely seen as bladelet cores (Lucas, 1997; Nowak & Wolski, 2015;
Straus et al., 2016; Tsanova et al., 2012). In part the change in understanding has
been a function of improved field methods. Once fine screen meshes and water
sieving came into widespread use in Paleolithic excavations researchers realized that
very small bladelets were much more abundant than previously thought. Likewise,
certain artefacts once classified as burins are now considered sources of spalls or
bladelets rather than working edges (Zwyns et al., 2012b).
Just as in earlier periods, apparent diversity of Upper Paleolithic artefact forms
can also be considered in light of artefact life histories. Artefacts such as backed
bladelets had short and redundant use-lives, but larger artefacts could be and were
renewed and even radically reshaped. It has been shown through refitting and
metric studies that Upper Paleolithic blanks could support a series of different edge
types sequentially (Hiscock, 1996; Holdaway, 1991). More generally, different classes
of burin such as dihedral burins or burins on truncation are probably best viewed
as alternative strategies for resharpening or edge rejuvenation. Rather than being
functionally different sorts of edges, these are simply different ways of setting up a
series of burin removals. They are designs for resharpening but not for the forms of
whole artefacts.
The widespread adoption of blade and bladelet technologies also confers at least
the appearance of greater morphological redundancy on Upper Paleolithic and
Late Stone Age tools. Because they are elongated, different parts of a blade have
contrasting potentials for exerting force. Leverage allows one to apply the greatest
force through the end of a blade, as the narrowness of the blade serves to concen-
trate that force on a small area. It is difficult to exert much force perpendicular to
the lateral margins of a blade. Not surprisingly, people using blade blanks tend to
put different kinds of edges on different parts of blanks, leading to the appearance
of clearer differentiation of artefact classes. In contrast, a serviceable working edge
may be located almost anywhere on the perimeter of a short, broad flake, so the
positions and shapes of used or modified edges are free to vary.This more consistent
location of functionally distinct retouched edges on blade blanks may lead to the
kind of morphometric standardization observed in studies based on overall shape
(G. F. Monnier & McNulty, 2010).
Despite all these caveats, I would argue that the appearance of more overall arte-
fact design in the late Pleistocene is not entirely a matter of classification systems
and blank forms. Some artefacts in LSA and Upper Paleolithic seem to fit the
criteria for “whole-artefact” designs. Few would disagree that the wide array of
bifacial and unifacial point forms in Solutrean assemblages, discussed in the previous
chapter, reflect their makers’ ideas about the shapes that artefacts ought to have.
These artefacts are very completely shaped, with retouch extending over one or
both faces and around most or all of the perimeter. Little of the final form reflects
the original blank. In addition to being locally redundant, these artefact forms
show distinct variation in form across time and space, something we expect of
artefact styles. Researchers also routinely refer to microlithic artefacts, from simple
retouched bladelets to fully geometric pieces, as standardized designs. While these
pieces are small and uniform in size, the actual level of morphological standardiza-
tion has not been assessed. To the extent that they were used in groups to create
composite edges or barbs, size, and shape standardization would have been highly
advantageous. However, the formal standardization of most other LSA and Upper
Paleolithic artefact classes is more restricted.
Upper Paleolithic assemblages do seem to show greater diversity in retouched
edges, or, in the language of the techno-functional approach, more diverse treatment
of the transformative part of the tool. Burins may be much more elaborate and
diverse than in earlier periods. As for the prehensive part of the artefact, the prac-
tice of backing, steep retouch on one or both margins of a blade to strengthen it
or prepare it for hafting, appeared sporadically in the early MSA (Barham, 2002)
and the Middle Paleolithic (Conard & Adler, 1997). However, it became a near-
ubiquitous practice in the Late Stone Age and Upper Paleolithic. Other kinds of
hafting modification in the LSA and UP, stems and basal thinning, can be traced to
much earlier periods.
In sum, one can make a case for more imposed form or arbitrary design in
Upper Paleolithic stone tools but with important caveats. There does seem to be a
greater diversity of edge types and hafting modifications after 40–50 ka in Eurasia.
And the wholesale move to blade blanks limited the options for placing edges on
blanks. However, the diversity captured in the commonly-used systems for classi-
fying artefacts may well include reduction variants, different reduction strategies, or
even things that were not implements at all.
In fact, best evidence for “whole-artefact” design in the Upper Paleolithic does
not come from stone tools at all. Artefacts of osseous raw materials (bone and antler)
can be more completely shaped and show greater consideration to the morphology
of all parts of the artefact than does just about any stone tool (Bar-Yosef, 2002;
R. White, 1982). In part this may be a function of the raw materials themselves,
which both permit and require different approaches to shaping. Of course, not all
osseous tools are extensively designed: many awls for example are nothing more
than a slender bone splinter, left more-or-less natural except for the tapering at the
working end. And artefact life history plays a role in final forms as well, as is clearly
evident in any large assemblage of bone or antler points. But a range of osseous
artefacts, from split-based bone points in the early Aurignacian to Magdalenian
barbed harpoons, appear to show a high level of shape standardization in all elem-
ents, from the haft to the tip (Figure 6.21). Of course, items used primarily for
FIGURE 6.21 A truly standardized artefact form: unilaterally-barbed Magdalenian antler

points or harpoons from the site of La Vache, France (from Langley, 2014, Figure 9).
signalling, such as ornaments, portable art and wall paintings and engraving, are
by definition standardized. The nature and degree of design standardization and
the degree to which it is imposed, as opposed to borrowed from natural forms,
vary from case to case. But design standardization is crucial to effective signalling.
Of course, the richest field for design variation in Paleolithic artefacts is largely
inaccessible to us. Composite tools, assembled from multiple parts of different raw
materials, are the pinnacle of Paleolithic implement engineering.We can only guess
at the full elaboration and specificity of the designs. Except in extraordinary cases
all we see of these multi-part artefacts are a few isolated components.
6.9 Summary: Trends in artefact design

The evidence discussed in this chapter and summarized in Figure 6.22 describes
a gradual, dimensional expansion of artefact design strategies over the last 2.5 my
of the Paleolithic. The trajectory of change is not marked by a simple absence of
design from early artefacts and its appearance (suddenly or gradually) later in pre-
history. Instead, what we see is an increase in the number of dimensions within
which design choices were exercised.
The earliest Plio-Pleistocene stone tools appear very morphologically and tech-
nically unstandardized and show little evidence of overall formal design. Preferred
shapes of flakes or types of edge seem to have been obtained by selection rather
than through primary or secondary shaping. At the same time, systematic use of
raw materials with specific properties suggests that even very early tool-makers
years BP
10,000
20,000 complex composite tools
formalized design in osseous technology
50,000
formalized artefact designs?
100,000
systematic design for hafting
design for reduction (Pradnik cycle, Yabrudian)

diversified design in blank production, composite tools
500,000
Overall shape control, design for reworking (bifacial shaping,

prepared cores)
1,000,000
1,500,000
design by blank selection (LCTs)
multiple functions/designs
2,500,000 systematic selection of raw materials, flake shapes(?)
FIGURE 6.22 Summary of developments in design of artefacts and production methods.
had certain working properties in mind. Starting around 2 my, there seems to have
been a diversification in functional roles for stone implements to include small
tools, heavy-duty cutting tools, and percussors.These functions are reflected in basic
design dimensions such as the size of the implement and the form of its “business
end.” Large cutting tools (LCTs) became more common and more elaborated over
the next million years. Between 1 my and 800 ka, methods for achieving greater
flake control, including bifacial façonnage and prepared-core methods, were applied
to large cutting tools in Africa and Eurasia. Some large artefacts may also have been
intended for long periods of use and repeated renewal. Still, following Gowlett
and the “techno-functional” school, artefact design was probably confined to par-
ticular parts of artefacts. Early and Middle Pleistocene tool-makers were certainly
interested in the shapes of working edges and prehensive parts of LCTs, but prob-
ably much less concerned with the overall shapes of artefacts.
Similar design principles carry over into the later Middle Pleistocene. However,
they were applied increasingly to small flake tools rather than large artefacts such
as handaxes and cleavers. The proliferation of alternative methods for producing
small blanks indexes a clear preference for certain functional properties relating
to edge morphology, prehensive properties and/or potential for resharpening. The
increasing frequency of hafting over the late Middle and Upper Pleistocene is also
reflected in the appearance of a range of designs for the prehensive parts of artefacts.
The same period also sees evidence of systematic designs in the form of specialized
techniques for resharpening or renewing artefacts. The appearance of the Upper
Paleolithic and Late Stone Age after 50 ka has been widely heralded as marking
a fluorescence of imposed form and artefact design. In fact, a good part of this
impression may be due to the nature of Upper Paleolithic typologies and wide-
spread adoption of elongated blade and bladelet blanks. Nonetheless, there is some
evidence for increased specificity and redundancy in the designs of some artefacts,
principally bone and antler tools but also a range of flaked stone implements. The
increasing importance of composite tools also points to more elaborate and perhaps
more rigid design of multi-part artefacts which, unfortunately, seldom survive for
us to study in their entireties.
7
DIVERSITY
7.1 Diversity at different scales

Evolutionary thinking is fundamentally about diversity. At its most basic level,
Darwinian evolution is the production and elimination of diversity. Micro-evolution
is manifest as fluctuating frequencies of genes or phenotypes within populations.
Macro-evolution is the production of new forms, varieties, or taxa. These same
scalar distinctions map onto the study of behavioural evolution in archaeology.
Variability within assemblages, cultures, or time periods can be seen as the product
of micro-evolutionary processes. Macro-evolution is manifest in prolonged direc-
tional change, in the generation of novel behaviours, adaptations, and combinations
or assemblages of traits, and in the disappearance of old ones.
As fundamental as diversity is, or ought to be, Paleolithic researchers have a diffi-
cult time grappling with it. Normative thinking and the legacy of unilineal progres-
sive evolution suppress our appreciation of diversity. In theory, typologies are tools
for studying variation, specifically variation in the frequencies of different artefact
classes. However, most typological thinking ignores variation within classes, focusing
exclusively on modal or idealized forms. While we are accustomed to this sort of
rigid categorization in the forms of shaped tools, it creeps into other domains of
lithic studies as well. Some studies of chaînes opératoires have also become highly
normative, ignoring important variation in order to fit observations into a limited
number of modalities of blank production (Bar-Yosef & Van Peer, 2009).
Other social and intellectual forces can also alter the apparent diversity of types
or cultures. The simplest way to measure variation in material culture ought to
be to count the number of named cultural units in a particular range of time and
area, as Foley and colleagues have done (I. F. Collard & Foley, 2002; Foley & Lahr,
2011). However, diverse descriptive traditions and naming conventions may create
whole suites of different units (cultures, complexes, traditions or industries) out of
Diversity 203
what is basically a homogeneous substratum, or vice versa. Biologists have been

very aware of this for a century or more (Ereshefsky, 1997). They adhere to an
outmoded Linnean nomenclature mainly because it is the one system everyone
understands and can agree to use. The history of archaeology in many countries
is marked by similar attempts –some more successful than others –to standardize
how people defined types and what they called them. A prime example from
North America is McKern’s Midwestern taxonomic method (A. K. Fisher, 1997;
Lyman & O’Brien, 2003; McKern, 1939). Creating terminological standardization
in Paleolithic archaeology is a different order of problem simply because the field
is international in scope. Telling the story of human evolution in central Africa
or western Europe or southeast Asia, let alone the whole world, involves inte-
grating information produced by scholars from many different countries, coming
from diverse intellectual traditions, and often speaking different languages. Names,
naming conventions, and even the propensity to “lump” or “split” in defining
types or cultures can differ on either side of national borders or from one school
of thought to the next.
A set of late Pleistocene assemblages distributed across northern Europe, from
Wales to Poland illustrates the difficulties of constructing taxonomic systems
across borders. These assemblages share distinctive large leaf-shaped points made
on very large blades, among other characteristics. Chronologically and strati-
graphically they all fall squarely at the boundary between the Middle and Upper
Paleolithic.Yet despite the similarities in artefact forms and chronology these indus-
tries were known by three different names: Lincombian in England, Wales and
the Netherlands and Belgium, and both Ranisian and Jerzmanowician in Central
Europe. Only after a synthetic study of materials from several countries (Flas, 2011)
were these three “cultures” united into a single entity with the prize-winning name
of “Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician,” which is fortunately shortened to LRJ.
Before Flas’ work there would have been three different entities to contend with,
and the already impressive diversity of the early Upper Paleolithic in Europe would
have been inflated even more.
The upshot of these historical circumstances is that our understanding of diver-
sity in Paleolithic material culture at large and small scales is mostly anecdotal
and impressionistic. Ironically, two of the most quantifiable dimensions of lithic
assemblages, the number of distinct classes of artefact or procedure, and the frequen-
cies of representatives of each class, cannot safely be synthesized for the purposes of
large-scale comparisons. Only in very restricted circumstances, when we know the
criteria for classifying and naming things are identical or equivalent, can one simply
count types or named cultural variants.
Whether approached quantitatively or qualitatively, the significance of diver-
sity varies according to the size of the entity under consideration. Biologists and
others regularly consider diversity expressed at different scales, and some of the
general principles are instructive. Following Whittaker (R. H. Whittaker, 1972; R. J.
Whittaker, Willis, & Field, 2001), biologists often discuss alpha, beta, and gamma
diversity. Alpha diversity refers to the number of species represented within the
204 Diversity
smallest area under consideration, i.e. within a patch, a sampling unit, or a par-
ticular habitat type. Gamma diversity refers to the number of species represented
in the largest area under consideration, a community, an ecosystem or a major
geographic division. Alpha and gamma diversity are typically assessed either by
counting the number of different classes present (sometimes called sample richness),
or using measures such as the Shannon-Wiener index or Simpson’s index, which
are composites of class richness and evenness of representation. Beta diversity is
another sort of phenomenon: it consists of the summed or average differences
among all of the small (alpha) units within the larger (gamma) area.
Contrasts in the levels of α, β and γ diversity are informative of the ways species
are distributed across an environment, and ultimately about the ecological and
evolutionary forces that shaped their distributions. Consider for example two
ecosystems, each of which contains 20 species of tree. In one the alpha diversity is
high and beta diversity is low: individual sample units contain many species of tree
but there are few differences among the various sample units. In the other, alpha
diversity is low but beta diversity is high: individual sample patches contain few
species and patches tend to be quite different from one another.The first ecosystem
would be one in which factors that affect species diversity-ecological conditions
and ease of species recruitment–are fairly permissive, allowing for high local diver-
sity, but also quite homogeneous across the entire area. The second is one in which
conditions of life in the local patches are strongly differentiated and/or the patches
are isolated from one another and the outside world.
The factors which influence the diversity of lithic artefact classes or the number
of procedures used in stone tool manufacture are quite different from the ones
that influence the number of tree species found in a patch of forest. Nonetheless,
the consideration of diversity at multiple scales is informative about the processes
behind the production and redistribution of variation. As with the distribution of
species, we can expect that the diversity in lithic technology ought to be influenced
by different forces depending on the scale at which it is analyzed.
Alpha diversity in stone artefacts can be considered equivalent to within assem-
blage diversity (Figure 7.1). Roughly speaking it should be a measure of the number
of different kinds of events that led to the discard of distinctive and differentiable
lithic products or debris. Sampling effects obviously play a major role in deter-
mining inter-assemblage diversity. The larger the collection of things being studied,
the more diverse it is likely to be (Meltzer, Leonard, & Stratton, 1992; Rhode, 1988;
Shott, 1989b). Sample size most strongly affects diversity when it is measured as
simple richness, but it also influences the composite measures. For the purposes
of comparison this simply means that we need to attend to the number of cases
grouped in each of the units compared and avoid directly contrasting samples that
contain radically different numbers of cases. For example, the fact that more varieties
of Upper Paleolithic artefact assemblage have been identified in a single département
in southwestern France than in the whole of Anatolia is of little consequence when
we recognize that hundreds of French Upper Paleolithic sites have been systematic-
ally studied while fewer than a half-dozen sites of similar age have been investigated
Diversity 205
FIGURE 7.1 Schematic illustration of alpha diversity. “Assemblage” A has lower alpha

diversity, or a smaller number of classes, than “assemblage” B.
in all of Asian Turkey (Kuhn, 2002; Özçelik, 2011). The less we know about the
Paleolithic prehistory of an area the more homogeneous it seems, but we should
take care not to confound our ignorance with simplicity of past dynamics.
The mere spatial extent of a sample unit (an excavation or survey area) can also
affect alpha diversity independently of numerical sample size.To the extent that the
tasks people conducted were spatially segregated, horizontally extensive excavations
are likely to sample more kinds of activities than restricted ones.The temporal grain
or resolution of an assemblage, the amount of time over which it accumulated, also
ought to influence artefact diversity independently of sample size. Few Paleolithic
assemblages represent single components or single events. The larger number of
occupational events sampled by a particular assemblage the greater the range of
processes and activities likely to be represented. Assemblages that formed over cen-
turies or millennia may even sample intervals of rapid culture change and innov-
ation, leading to the appearance of even greater alpha diversity.
A more behaviourally significant influence on alpha diversity in lithic assemblages
is the nature of the occupation. Mobile people can stage their activities differentially
across the landscape. The wide range of economic activities carried out at a home
base is likely to generate more kinds of debris than the limited range of activities
that take place at a more specialized locale such as a hunting station or a stone
quarry. The duration of occupations ought to have an effect on diversity for related
reasons. Regardless of why people originally came to a place or what the dominant
activity was, the longer people stay there the more likely it is that they will find it
necessary to conduct other activities. A few individuals might visit a flint source to
collect raw material, produce blanks or core rough outs, or to just to retool. If they
remain in that place more than a day or two, however, they will probably also need
to do things such as forage and prepare food, and as a consequence will generate a
different array of debris than they would if they were only quarrying and processing
stone. Building on this premise, archaeologists often use the number of distinct
206 Diversity
artefact classes represented in an assemblage to diagnose “site function” (Andrefsky,

2005: ch. 8).
The archaeological analogy to beta diversity is variation among assemblages
within a particular region and time period (Figure 7.2). Archaeologists have devoted
substantial time and energy to describing and interpreting inter-assemblage vari-
ation. Some well-known discussions of the topic that concern the Paleolithic spe-
cifically are the famous “Bordes-Binford debates” (L. Binford, 1973; S. Binford &
L. Binford, 1966;Bordes, 1961a; Bordes & de Sonneville-Bordes, 1970 (L. Binford,
1973; S. Binford & L. Binford, 1966).While the debate continues to resonate among
some scholars, thinking has moved on considerably.
A widely discussed factor contributing to beta diversity in Paleolithic assemblages
is the organization of hunter-gatherer subsistence and land-use systems. In an enor-
mously influential series of papers, L. R. Binford proposed that hunter-gatherer
FIGURE 7.2 Schematic illustration of beta diversity. The upper pair of “assemblages”

show lower beta diversity, more similar ranges of classes, than the lower pair of
“assemblages.”
Diversity 207
land-use systems formed a spectrum in the distribution of activities across the land-
scape (L. Binford, 1976, 1980). At one extreme were people (termed foragers) who
moved their base camps very frequently, situating them as close as possible to key
subsistence resources. Since foragers tended to exploit resources in short day trips
radiating out from residential bases, they created a limited variety of “site types” and
assemblages, mainly base camps and specialized resource procurement localities. At
the other end of the spectrum were people (so-called collectors) who shifted their
bases of operation less often, choosing instead to exploit diverse resource patches
through longer logistical forays.The “collector” strategy results in a greater range of
sites and assemblage types, including temporary camps and way-stations, specialized
activity sites, as well as staging areas for resource transport. The forager-collector
continuum has proven to be a very useful dimension for characterizing hunter-
gatherer foraging systems even in the remote past, and researchers have elaborated
on it or suggested amendments or improvements. The more important implica-
tion for the current discussion is the realization that the ways Paleolithic peoples
organized their activities in time and space ought to have had a significant impact
on the beta diversity of the artefact assemblages they left behind.
One of the factors that most strongly affects the organization of settlement
and subsistence among recent foragers is the biotic differentiation of habitats. If
resources are distributed homogeneously across landscapes, or if their distribution
is patchy but local patches are similar in content, then the best strategy is to simply
move camp from place to place, exploit what is available locally, and move on. But
if resources are patchily distributed and patches differ from one another, a better
strategy is to situate base camps in a few strategic places and to collect resources
in logistical forays. Resource distributions in time and space are in turn strongly
influenced by environmental factors such as temperature and rainfall (e.g. Grove,
2009; Hamilton et al., 2007a; Kelly, 2013; Kelly, 1992).
The geological environment has a complex influence on lithic assemblage diver-
sity. If stone is unevenly plentiful or if the quality varies from place to place, we can
expect that assemblages will also differ from one another. How they differ, and the
extent to which they differ, will be a function of the strategies people used to cope
with the varying quality and availability of this crucial resource. Some strategies
may amplify raw material effects, some may essentially negate them (see Chapter 4).
The temporal resolution of assemblages can also have a strong effect on the
nature of inter-site or inter-assemblage variation (e.g. Davies, Holdaway, & Fanning,
2015; Fanning et al., 2009; Fanning, Holdaway, & Rhodes, 2008; Wales, Holdaway,
& Fanning, 2008). The duration of assemblage formation, the amount of time
over which individual assemblages accumulated, will have opposite effects on beta
diversity and alpha diversity. Long periods of accumulation reduce beta diversity. If
people engaged in a range of activities over the course of a year, assemblages that
sampled relatively brief intervals of time and small numbers of events would differ
substantially from one another. In a group of assemblages that all accumulated over
decades, each one would instead contain the detritus of something close to the full
range of activities, which would tend to make them more similar to one another.
208 Diversity
Thus, regardless of any other variables, a region in which most Paleolithic localities
were single-component, open-air occurrences ought to manifest more beta diver-
sity than in a region where the Paleolithic was documented mainly in deep cave
sequences with comparatively poor temporal resolution.
Gamma diversity, diversity measured at the largest spatial scale, would be mani-
fest as the number of distinct activities and procedures represented by stone artefacts
across a region (Figure 7.3). This is not a scale at which archaeologists typically
think: we are more accustomed to working with smaller units such as single
assemblages or groups of assemblages. However, we do sometimes work at this scale
when we compare, for example the late Middle Pleistocene records of China and
Europe, or the archaeological evidence of the Last Glacial Maximum across the
globe. So it is worth considering gamma diversity at least in the abstract.
If alpha diversity in stone artefacts is proportional to the number of different
kinds of events leading to the discard of distinctive lithic products or debris
FIGURE 7.3 Schematic illustration of gamma diversity. “Region” A has lower gamma

diversity, or a smaller overall number of artefact classes, than “region” B.
Diversity 209
contained within an assemblage, then gamma diversity would be equivalent to the

number of different kinds of events leading to the discard of distinctive material
products within a large region. The most obvious influences on this number would
be the number of sites studied and the total temporal range they represent. Looking
beyond these basic sample-size effects, gamma diversity could inform us about
more interesting phenomena.
One such phenomenon is the structure of populations within the region (Foley
& Lahr, 2011; Scerri et al., 2018). If regional populations are well connected, if
information flows freely among them, two results could occur. We might expect
particularly advantageous technological solutions to spread very quickly across an
area, supplanting less favoured ones. This would serve to reduce overall diversity
in characteristics under strong cultural or natural selection. However, the opposite
could be true of neutral traits.The sheer number of neutral traits in existence ought
to scale with effective population size, which is strongly influenced by levels of
between-and within-group integration.
What might promote connectedness or isolation in populations across a
region or other large area? One factor is the cognitive capacities of the hominins
themselves. There is no question that modes and effectiveness of communica-
tion have changed radically since our divergence from the pongid line some six
or seven million years ago. How and when human symbolic language appeared,
and what the intermediate forms of communication were like, remain hotly
debated (Chazan et al., 1995; Christiansen & Kirby, 2003; Corballis, 2002;
d’Errico et al., 2003; S. E. Fisher & Marcus, 2006; Henshilwood & Marean, 2003;
Hewes et al., 1973; Klein & Edgar, 2002; Lieberman, 2002; Mithen, 2005; Stout
& Chaminade, 2012). Nonetheless, it is easy to imagine how the cultural con-
nectivity among groups within a region could have changed as hominin com-
munication gradually evolved from gestural communication about immediate
states to full symbolic language. Of course, language can isolate as well as unite
(Premo & Hublin, 2009).
Gamma diversity would also be affected by fluctuations in overall population
size, especially where neutral traits are concerned. Population sizes fluctuated rad-
ically in different parts of the world during the Pleistocene. In areas close to the
margins of hominin survival, such as the northern reaches of the temperate zones
(north Asia and northern Europe) and certain low-latitude arid regions (the Sahara
and Syro-Arabian deserts), fluctuation in global temperature and moisture regimes
periodically made hominin survival difficult if not impossible. Populations in the
most marginal environments would have had two possible responses: to retreat to
places where conditions were better, known as refugia, or to die off. Both possibil-
ities would serve to decrease gamma diversity in succeeding periods as small initial
numbers of colonists emerged to repopulate these areas. However, other places,
such as tropical and subtropical Asia and Africa, parts of the Indian subcontinent,
and the Mediterranean Levant enjoyed greater environmental stability throughout
the Pleistocene. They probably remained inhabitable, and inhabited, through even
the harshest glacial fluctuations. Hominin populations should have been more stable
210 Diversity
in these fortunate environments. The upshot would be greater cultural continuity

over time, with the same effects as population connectivity.
A third factor that can affect biological gamma diversity is the permeability
of the meta-region itself (Hubbell, 1997). Like new species, novel behaviours can
come from two sources. They can evolve locally, or they can diffuse or disperse
from adjoining areas. Biological diversity in isolated regions such as islands is often
lower than comparable-sized patches of continental landscapes because recruit-
ment of new species is difficult and slow. It is easy to see how the same forces
would apply to cultural variation. Peoples who were able to borrow, copy or steal
ideas from groups in adjoining areas would very likely have a richer cultural rep-
ertoire than people who were partially or wholly cut off from interactions with
“outsiders.”
If gamma diversity is equivalent to the number of different kinds of events leading
to the discard of distinctive lithic products or debris within a large region, then it
follows that certain intrinsic properties of the region itself could also influence
the variety of lithic artefacts and processes represented. One important factor is
topographic complexity. Features such as mountain ranges, canyons, and rivers pro-
mote taxonomic diversity in ecological communities (Badgley et al., 2017). Highly
complex terrain also promotes language diversity in humans (Axelsen & Manrubia,
2014; Hammarström, 2016) and it should have a similar effect on material culture.
Formation of culturally-differentiated geographical groups does not require com-
plete isolation: it can emerge from very slight tendencies for people to settle in one
place vs. another or to interact with one group of people over all others (Grauwin,
Goffette-Nagot, & Jensen, 2012; Schelling, 1971; J. Zhang, 2004). Patterns of vari-
ation in resource availability across space can also encourage groups to seek out or
cut off ties with one another. Kelly has described elegantly how stable, defensible
resources can promote strong territorial boundaries, whereas resources that fluc-
tuate asynchronously can encourage people to seek long-distance ties to buffer
them against local shortfalls (Kelly, 2013). Such long-distance ties could in turn
promote diffusion of culture traits over larger areas.
Variation in the nature and quality of lithic raw materials might certainly affect
the range of local responses, unless people were willing to take measures to move
stone over long distances in order to achieve certain ends. The diversity of habitat
types within a region could also influence the range of artefacts represented.To cite
an obvious example, we can expect to find a much more diverse foraging tech-
nology in places where people could exploit both aquatic and terrestrial habitats
than we would in places with only the terrestrial option.Whole ranges of tasks typ-
ically conducted with stone tools may be infrequent or even absent in certain envir-
onments. As discussed above, the relative scarcity of artefacts such as sidescrapers in
the MSA of sub-Saharan Africa (McBrearty & Brooks 2000: 496) may reflect the
relative (un)importance of skin clothing for survival in tropical climates. The avail-
ability of more abundant and less costly substitutes for stone as a raw material may
also reduce the number of tasks in which lithic artefacts were used, and hence the
number of specific tool forms made and discarded. It has long been speculated that
Diversity 211
the availability of bamboo and tropical hardwoods for some cutting and piercing
tasks is behind the apparent lack of variation in stone tools in tropical Asia. Rather
than being turned into knives and other formal implements, stone was simply used
to fashion durable and effective substitutes from bamboo or hard wood (Bar-Yosef
et al., 2012; Bar-Yosef & Wang, 2012; G. Pope, 1989).
7.2 What’s demography got to do with it?

For much of the history of our discipline, archaeologists attributed increases in
the complexity and diversity of artefacts made by Paleolithic hominins to one of
three things: (1) the gradual accumulation of knowledge; (2) changes in the abil-
ities of hominins to conceive of and create complex artefacts; and, (3) changes in
the conditions of life, which made it worthwhile to invest time in producing elab-
orate, and costly, tools and weapons. Explanations for what was perceived as a sharp
increase in technological complexity and diversity coinciding with the appearance
of anatomically modern Homo sapiens, first in Africa and later in Eurasia, reflect
these differences in interpretation. Many scholars argued that this uptick in the
variety of artefact forms and rates of turnover indicated a new level of cognitive
sophistication, that early modern humans had the kinds of intelligence and cultural
infrastructure needed to design and produce elaborate constructions, capacities that
earlier hominins lacked (e.g. Bar-Yosef, 2007; Hoffecker, 2005; Klein, 2009: 660–
672; Klein & Edgar, 2002). Other researchers questioned the extent of the changes
associated with the appearance of the Upper Paleolithic, asserting that the first ana-
tomically modern humans in Europe and Africa really didn’t do things all that dif-
ferently than their predecessors, and that the really important changes actually came
somewhat later, after around 25 ka, in response to the massive adaptive challenges
imposed by the Last Glacial Maximum (Straus, 1996, 2009).
In the early years of the 21st century, two very influential papers introduced
a new variable, demography, into the mix. The first was an article by J. Henrich,
which argued that very small population sizes could result in the loss of even
adaptively significant behaviours. Heinrich cited the reported impoverishment of
Tasmanian aboriginal material culture compared with that of the inhabitants of
the Australian mainland as a case in point. He bolstered his claims with a simple
mathematical model to demonstrate that such loss was indeed plausible (Henrich,
2004). Some years later, S. Shennan and colleagues used a modified version of
Henrich’s model to show how plausible increases in population size could explain
rapid increases in the diversity of artefact forms, such as had been argued to occur
after the appearance and dispersal of H. sapiens (Powell, Shennan, & Thomas, 2009;
Shennan, 2001; Steele & Shennan, 2009).
These original articles and a series of spin-off papers had a profound effect on
how Paleolithic archaeologists thought about the diversification or impoverishment
of material culture. Many researchers were dissatisfied with cognitive explanations
because they seemed too much of a deus ex machina. It was virtually impossible to
obtain evidence for early hominin cognition except from the artefacts themselves,
212 Diversity
meaning that there was no means of independently evaluating claims about cog-
nitive changes associated with new artefact forms. In contrast, population sizes can
be measured, at least in theory. The numbers are highly imprecise and subject to
innumerable biases and imponderable variables (Bocquet-Appel, 2008; Bocquet-
Appel et al., 2005; Bocquet-Appel & Masset, 1996; Monge & Mann, 2007). Still,
even if we couldn’t put a reliable number to them, we were safe in assuming that
populations had grown, a lot, over the course of the Pleistocene.
The “demographic argument” for changing diversity and complexity quickly
assumed a prominent role in discussions of Paleolithic technological evolu-
tion. Following Powell and colleagues, it made sense to attribute the flowering
of “modern human behaviour” during the late Middle Stone Age in Africa and
the early Upper Paleolithic in Eurasia to larger or rapidly expanding populations,
supported by novel forms of foraging and cooperation. The limited complexity of
Asian Early Paleolithic artefacts compared to western European ones, or of Middle
Paleolithic artefacts compared to Upper Paleolithic ones, were similarly explained
as a result of smaller populations (Lycett & Norton, 2010). In some respects, demo-
graphic explanations for culture change became as much a deus ex machina as cog-
nitive explanations.
Heinrich, Powell, Shennan, and colleagues had based their arguments mainly
on mathematical models. While the applications to real archaeological questions
were quite plausible, there was no test of whether the predictions would actually
hold up in a situation where both technological complexity and population size
could be estimated with any reliability. M. Collard and colleagues chose to test
the Heinrich and Powell models using ethnographic data. The diversity and com-
plexity of a subset of artefacts –those used in the food quest –were measured by
applying the approach developed by W. Oswalt (Oswalt, 1976) for studying the
material culture of ethnographically documented communities. Estimates of popu-
lation sizes for the ethnographic groups were obtained from ethnographic atlases
and other sources. The results, presented in an extensive series of papers, were very
consistent. Although population size was often correlated with diversity and com-
plexity of material culture, the strongest relationships by far were with environ-
mental factors, especially latitude and effective temperature (M. Collard et al., 2011,
2012, 2005; Vaesen et al., 2016). As had been suggested by Oswalt, Torrence, and
others (Bousman, 1993; I. F. Collard & Foley, 2002; Torrence, 1983, 2001), it looked
very much as if the complexity of hunter-gatherer subsistence toolkits had a great
deal to do with the riskiness and time stress of the subsistence activities themselves
and little to do with the sizes of populations. While Collard and colleagues are
careful not to dismiss population size entirely, they insist that the evidence points
to the environment and the nature of the food quest itself as the main drivers
of variation in artefact diversity and complexity among hunter-gatherers. These
findings are an important caution to indiscriminate applications of demographic
explanations for culture change. More importantly, they serve as a very useful frame
of reference for evaluating variation in artefact complexity at different periods and
in different contexts.
Diversity 213
If the papers by Collard and colleagues have not rung the death knell for models
that link artefact diversity and complexity to the sizes of ancient populations,
they have certainly eliminated them as default explanations. However, it is worth
looking more closely at the implications of the critical analyses. Their implications
for studies of the Paleolithic are not as clear as it might seem at first. For example,
the papers by Collard and colleagues address standing diversity and complexity, not
rates of turnover and innovation. Yet prior arguments focused more on rates of
change than on the number of artefact classes in use at any one time.
A more fundamental issue concerns how much of the variation in a given phe-
nomenon is due to selection (in this case cultural selection) and how much to
the sorts of random processes which might be affected by population size. This
question is hardly unique to archaeology –it is a fundamental issue in evolutionary
biology as well. Debates over the importance of selection and neutral processes in
biology came to a head decades ago with the controversies over Kimura’s neu-
tral theory (Kimura, 1968, 1983). However, it is not an all-or-nothing proposition.
Programmatic statements about the influence of selection vs neutral processes will
not get us anywhere. We have to assume that both selection and neutral (stochastic)
processes influence the frequencies of any character, whether biological or cultural
(Akey et al., 2004; Hu et al., 2006; Kreitman, 1996). The important question is how
strongly each set of factors affects specific characteristics in specific situations.
Just how much of the Paleolithic material record should we expect to have
been subject to strong environmental selection for functional efficiency? Collard
and colleagues have intentionally focused on artefacts used to collect food
resources, weapons and other implements that help people hunt animals. This is a
very reasonable decision: such artefacts are often well-described in ethnographies,
their complexity varies cross-culturally, and a number of cases had already been
documented by Oswalt. Moreover, researchers have emphasized the importance
of hunting weapons and projectiles in the ecological and demographic success of
Homo sapiens 50 ka (Beyin, 2011; Churchill & Rhodes, 2009; Shea & Sisk, 2010). In
making this choice, the researchers have tipped the scales in favour of one answer.
These artefacts are used to procure animals that are mobile, sometimes large, and
often elusive. Prey such as birds, fish, and aquatic mammals, move in substrates
from which humans are excluded. It makes sense that artefacts used to capture
these creatures would be subject to comparatively narrow functional constraints,
and that there could be a high payoff to making more elaborate and effective
versions. In other words, these are artefact types and dimensions of design with
high adaptive value, where we expect selective effects to be strong and neutral
processes to be weak.
In fact, Collard and colleagues have described an alternative scenario. They have
shown that demographic effects are more strongly expressed in the technologies
of subsistence farmers than hunter-gatherers (M. Collard et al., 2012). This con-
trast could indicate that the measures of subsistence risk used are not appropriate
for food producers. Alternatively, however, it might show that farmers have strat-
egies for coping with risk that do not involve making fancier tools: such strategies
214 Diversity
might involve constructing facilities for collecting and retaining water, situating
fields in particular micro-habitats, or adjusting planting schedules or crop rotations.
Because they do not involve implements these technologies are not included in
their measures of technological complexity. In other words, it may well be that
there are no strong adaptive incentives for subsistence farmers to increase the elab-
oration of their tools and weapons, so that neutral (demographic) effects are more
strongly expressed.
In evaluating the potential influence of selection and neutral forces on variation
in form and complexity of artefacts, we have to consider the kinds of technological
behaviours they represent, the contexts in which artefacts were made and used,
and the ways different sorts of forces are likely to have acted upon them. The evo-
lutionary success of Paleolithic hominins would have depended, to one degree or
another, on their being effective hunters, fishers, and collectors of plant foods. Some
of the artefacts they made and used increased their effectiveness in these pursuits.
Yet the Paleolithic record of technological behaviour is not precisely analogous to
the ethnographic record that Collard and colleagues used in their studies, and we
cannot assume that the balance between selection and neutral forces was the same
for Paleolithic artefact assemblages as a whole as it is for ethnographic foraging tools.
First there is a measurement issue. The archaeological record seldom yields com-
plete artefacts –generally all we have are some of the parts (see Chapter 3). Second,
and more important, only a small part of the documented variability in archaeo-
logical material culture involves artefacts used directly in the food quest. The bulk
of most Paleolithic artefact assemblages, at least in Eurasia, consists of tools used to
scrape, cut, engrave and carve a range of other materials: components of hunting
and fishing gear make up comparatively small portions of most assemblages of
artefacts. More recently Paleolithic prehistorians have put most of their efforts into
documenting strategies and procedures of artefact production (chaînes opératoires).
These are connected very indirectly with the pursuit of game. It would certainly
have been beneficial to scrape, cut and engrave more effectively, and to produce
artefacts more efficiently, but it is very likely that the pressures to optimize these
pursuits were lower, and the effects of neutral forces stronger, as a consequence. One
needs no better illustration than to look at the rather unimpressive toolkits that
Inuit peoples used to manufacture their extremely impressive array of hunting and
fishing gear (E. W. Nelson, 1983). The scrapers, carving knives and engraving tools
that arctic hunter-gatherers used are not nearly as elaborate or well-engineered as
the products they made with them.
In the end, neither adaptation nor population size is a sufficient explanation
for varying diversity or complexity in Paleolithic technologies. Depending on the
kinds of artefacts or procedures being considered and the context, we might expect
either selection or neutral forces to play a more prominent role. The best solu-
tion would be to devise theory to help in evaluating the relative contributions of
environment and demographic factors to diversity. In the absence of such theory,
the only option is to take each case on its own, evaluating the a priori likelihood of
strong functional, temporal or energetic constraints on artefact morphology.
Diversity 215
7.3 Global developments in diversity at different scales

during the Paleolithic
The discussion which follows is organized differently from previous chapters.
Individual sections are divided by time periods and broad meta-regions. This is
simply a response to the fact that the amount and character of the evidence varies
over time and across space. Obviously not all parts of the world contain evidence
dating to every period. The sheer quantity of data also increases moving forward
in time, so that it is both possible and necessary to treat smaller areas separately.
The discussion is organized into two broad spans of time, divided more-or-less
arbitrarily, and somewhat fuzzily, around 500 ka. For the early period I subdivide
sub-Saharan Africa from the rest of the world. Due to the vastly larger corpus of
information available for periods after 500 ka, it is possible to focus on smaller
regions in discussing developments in diversity: consequently, sub-Saharan Africa,
North Africa, western Eurasia (Europe and the Near East), and East Asia are treated
separately.
7.3.1 Diversity in sub-Saharan Africa, 2.5 my–500 ka

Any discussion of diversity in the earliest stone tool industries must recognize
the qualities of the archaeological record. First, the temporal resolution is typic-
ally poor. Many assemblages could have accumulated over decades or even longer,
meaning that alpha diversity reflects mainly the processes by which artefacts
accumulated: except in the case of refit sets, we don’t really know which objects are
behaviourally associated.This coarse temporal grain affects beta diversity even more.
Even in optimal cases, landscapes or beds can at best be constrained to intervals
of 10,000 years. Consequently, the individual sites within them do not represent
a settlement system in any realistic sense. They could have been occupied sim-
ultaneously but it is equally likely that they were created by groups existing at
tens of generations remove from one another. Higher levels of temporal resolution
have been reported from select localities (Potts et al., 1999) but even here “con-
temporaneity” means that two sites were created within the same 1,000-year (50-
generation) interval. And of course the geographic frame of the earliest Pliocene
and Pleistocene sites is rather limited. Prior to 1.8 my or so, all of the most reliable
archaeological evidence we have comes from southern and eastern Africa.This itself
is a vast area but of course the documented localities occupy much smaller parts of
it, centred on the Rift Valley and South Africa.
As of this writing there is but a single well-documented case of stone tools pre-
dating 2.6 my, and a single site is no basis for discussing diversity.The number of local-
ities post-dating 2.6 my is larger and provides a better foundation for considering
diversity. As discussed above, we expect assemblage diversity to increase as the
temporal span of assemblage formation increases. This is not a substantial problem
for the earliest archaeological materials from East Africa. Despite the often-coarse
temporal grain, alpha diversity is highly attenuated compared to later periods. All
216 Diversity
early Mode 1 or Oldowan assemblages contain three types of objects: cores, flakes,
and percussive implements. N. Toth’s proposal that early Oldowan choppers and
chopping tools were cores rather than implements (Toth, 1985) has become nearly
axiomatic today (e.g. various contributions to Hovers & Braun 2009; Reti 2016),
although there are dissenters (e.g. Hayden 2008). Once considered unimportant,
percussors in fact play an important role in early Mode 1 assemblages (Mora & de
la Torre, 2005; Torre & Mora, 2010). Still, as artefacts go, early Oldowan percussors
are not a diverse lot.
Alpha diversity increases over time in early Pleistocene Mode 1 assemblages
(e.g. Carbonell et al., 2009). Retouched flake tools, rare or absent in the earliest
sites, became more common after around 2.0 my (Roche, 2005; Roche et al.,
1999; de la Torre et al., 2003). Eventually definable forms of pounding/pounded
tool, such as spheroids and anvils, also made their appearance. As discussed above
(Chapter 4), later Oldowan choppers and chopping tools may more often have
functioned as implements. But both retouched flakes and the percussive artefacts
are best seen as refinements of long-established forms rather than as new classes
of artefact. Retouched flake tools were probably doing basically the same job as
unretouched flake tools, and well-shaped hammers were probably used in similar
ways to minimally shaped ones. L. Leakey’s proposition that spheroids were actually
bola stones would indicate an expansion in technological diversity, but this idea has
little acceptance today (Mora & de la Torre, 2005; Sahnouni, Schick, & Toth, 1997).
As Isaac noted, the low alpha diversity of early Pleistocene Mode 1 assemblages
inevitably leads to low beta and gamma diversity (Isaac 1976: 282) -one cannot
have major differences among assemblages if assemblages contain only a few classes
of thing. Nonetheless there is some variation among early Pleistocene Mode 1 sites.
Leakey (1971) observed that sites in Olduvai differed sharply in terms of the density
of accumulations and the presence and absence of bones. What remains uncer-
tain is how much of that variation is due simply to differing conditions of pres-
ervation and rates of sediment accumulation (e.g. Binford, 1987). On the other
hand, researchers have documented patterns of inter-assemblage variability in 2.5–
1.8 my old assemblages that cannot be due to geological factors alone. The most
widely discussed differences among assemblages relate to raw material exploitation.
Oldowan hominins responded to differential access to raw materials by moving
things around the landscape, meaning that the mixes of artefact forms and even
sizes of cores and flake tools covary in relatively predictable ways according to the
distance to the nearest raw material sources (e.g. Braun et al., 2009; Braun, Plummer
et al., 2008; Braun, Rogers et al., 2008; Braun & Harris, 2003; Harmand, 2009). In
some cases the types of stone available and the sizes and shapes of nodules may also
have influenced the nature of reduction trajectories, leading to different core and
flake forms (Braun, Plummer, Ditchfield et al., 2009).
The limited intra- assemblage (alpha) variation in early Mode 1 technolo-
gies is almost certainly a reflection of the limited array of needs that the artefacts
filled. Early Pleistocene hominins required sharp-edged artefacts to cut resistant
materials and heavy percussive tools to break things open. Carcass butchery and
Diversity 217
marrow extraction are often cited as the main jobs of stone tools in the Oldowan
assemblages but we should not ignore other possible functions, particularly given
limited evidence for carnivory associated with the earliest stone tools (pre-2.0 my)
(Braun & Hovers, 2009; Domínguez-Rodrigo, 2009). The similarities between
assemblages (beta diversity) from different sites likely reflect the limited range of
applications. If stone tools were used for just a few purposes, such as to gain access
to certain high-quality food packages, we are not likely to see much variation
among assemblages. Hominins made, used and deposited implements when these
specific needs presented themselves, and they probably didn’t produce stone tools
under other circumstances. Early Oldowan sites with stone tools may thus represent
only a small part of the hominins’ actual activities on Plio-Pleistocene landscapes.
Some recent work does suggest a different kind of beta diversity for some of
the earliest Mode 1 assemblages from East Africa. Stout and colleagues (Stout et al.,
2019, 2010) find that use of different techniques of flake production at Gona,
Ethiopia sorts among sites: some localities show mainly unidirectional flaking of
pebbles whereas others show bifacial or multi-directional flake removals. After
failing to identify any substantial differences in the economic characteristics of the
two approaches to débitage, the authors conclude that the preferences for one or
the other probably reflect simple, uncritical copying of procedures. They attribute
the limited beta diversity in the early Gona Mode 1 material to the kinds of cul-
tural transmission by copying that is observed among living non-human primates
(Stout et al., 2019).
Moving to an even broader scale (gamma diversity), researchers have identified
broad patterns of variation among major early Pleistocene localities in East Africa.
The most obvious of these relate to the kinds of stone available to toolmakers.
The material from Omo in Ethiopia is very different from lithic assemblages from
similar-aged sites in Kenya or Tanzania. Although it was once thought to represent
a “simple” early stage in tool making, the Omo material shows levels of skill and
technological sophistication on par with other contemporary assemblages (de la
Torre, 2004b).The restricted range of artefacts produced at Omo is almost certainly
due to the small pebbles of flint and quartzite that hominins had to work with, and
the scarcity of the big cobbles used in other places to produce larger chopper/cores,
discoids, and so on. More subtle differences in core reduction/flake production
among localities may also be due to the kinds of raw materials available in particular
spots (Braun, Plummer et al., 2008).
Other aspects of gamma diversity among Oldowan assemblages are more abstract
and less easily explained. As noted in Chapter 6, even 2.5 my ago hominins were
selective about the stones they used to make tools, but their preferences for spe-
cific raw material properties seem to vary (Braun, Plummer, Ferraro et al., 2009;
Goldman-Neuman & Hovers, 2012; Harmand, 2009; Stout et al., 2005). These
contrasts in raw material selectivity may be a function of the range of raw materials
available in different areas (see Chapter 4). More intriguingly, researchers have
argued for apparent differences in the quality and sophistication of flaking in quasi-
contemporaneous sites (Braun, Plummer, Ferraro et al., 2009; de la Torre, 2004
218 Diversity
Delagnes & Roche, 2005; Roche et al., 1999; Stout et al., 2010). It is important
to note that the claims for differences in the complexity of Oldowan technolo-
gies involve the length and number of distinct steps in the production process, not
distinct tool forms or other functionally relevant attributes: the knappers in these
various places were all achieving the same ends, making simple flakes by somewhat
different routes. Geographic differences in flaking patterns could represent simple
cultural differences, the products of drift-like processes and isolation by distance,
such as have been documented among chimpanzees and other behaviourally com-
plex animals (Laland & Hoppitt, 2003; A Whiten et al., 2001). However, given the
spatial and temporal scales involved we cannot rule out the possibility that vari-
ation among Oldowan assemblages maps onto biological variation. The consensus
view is that the earliest stone tools were produced by early members of the genus
Homo. However, few early Pleistocene assemblages preserve hominin fossils, and
sometimes the associated fossils are Australopithecines or Paranthropines, not Homo.
Moreover, the recent discoveries at Lomekwi 3, pre-dating the appearance of
Homo by a half-million years, demonstrate that hominins earlier than (or other
than) Homo at least occasionally flaked stone (Harmand et al., 2015).
Two major developments, both beginning around 1.7–1.8 my, have profound
importance for any discussion of diversity in hominin technological behaviours.
One is the first dispersals of hominin populations beyond Africa. This process
greatly expands the geographic scope of the discussion and strengthens the likely
influence of factors such as ecology and population isolation. The other is the
first appearance of bifacial handaxes, cleavers, and other LCTs. The introduction
of novel artefact forms and manufacture procedures immediately broadens the
scope of potential alpha diversity, and indirectly creates the potential for more
diversity at larger (beta and gamma) scales. It is important to emphasize that these
two developments are related only indirectly. Given that the earliest assemblages
from outside Africa lack handaxes and similar artefacts, we can be sure that novel
developments in lithic technology after 1.8 my did not potentiate geographic
expansion, and vice versa.
The appearance of so-called Mode 2 assemblage with more extensively shaped
large cutting tools in sub-Saharan Africa around 1.7 my marks an increase in the
alpha (intra-assemblage) diversity in hominin material culture. Objects such as
cleavers and picks represent new implement forms and shaping technologies, if not
new functions. Bifacial shaping and LCTs are clearly additions to the existing tech-
nical repertoires: they supplement but do not replace flake tools and core tools such
as choppers and spheroids in the assemblages. In fact, it would probably be more
accurate to describe the earliest examples as Mode 1/2 assemblages (cf. Shea 2013).
As discussed in prior chapters the big changes in technological procedures, such as
the introduction of bifacial shaping, post-date the appearance of new artefact forms
(Beyene et al., 2013; Roche et al., 1988; Roche & Texier, 1991). However, even
early Mode 2 assemblages show evidence for systematic production of large flakes
to be used as blanks for heavy-duty tools, something not typically part of Mode 1
assemblages. Picks, which represent a distinct shaping strategy and perhaps a distinct
Diversity 219
function, are also present in even the oldest assemblages with LCTs (Beyene et al.,
2013; Diez-Martín et al., 2015; Lepre et al., 2011).
As the diversity within early Mode 2 increases so does the diversity among them.
Landscape-scale studies of deposits post-dating 1.8 my are more common than
similar studies of earlier deposits, simply because more recent deposits are more
likely to be exposed over larger areas at or near the surface. Rogers and colleagues
(Braun, Rogers, et al., 2008; Rogers et al., 1994) show that the ranges of locations
where archaeological sites occur expand markedly after 1.7 my, suggesting hominins
were using and depositing artefacts in a wider array of contexts. Research at
Olorgesaile (Kenya) by Potts and colleagues has produced some of the most robust
findings. From the first reports (Potts, Behrensmeyer, and Ditchfield 1999) it is clear
that the various localities exposed in Upper Member 1, dated to between 0.74 my
and 0.992 my, vary widely in terms of density, artefact content, as well as faunal
associations. Assemblage variation at Olorgesaile is characterized by bimodality in
the frequencies of LCTs and small flake tools: some assemblages contain many
handaxes, some contain large numbers of small tools, but few have even numbers
of both. This speaks to spatial differentiation of activities as well as differing life his-
tories of LCTs and other artefacts (Isaac, 1977; Potts et al., 1999). A few locations
at Olorgesaile and Bed II Olduvai appear to have been used mainly as workshops
(Potts et al., 1999; Stiles, Hay, & O’Neil, 1974). The famous “Catwalk site,” known
for the massive accumulation of LCTs (Isaac, 1977), is another kind of accumu-
lation that has no precedent in earlier periods (or later periods, for that matter).
Similar landscape-scale patterns of variation in assemblage size and content within
the early Pleistocene have been documented in other areas inside and outside Africa
(Petraglia, Drake, & Alsharekh, 2010; de la Torre, 2009; de la Torre et al., 2014).
Broader patterns of landscape-scale variation in assemblage content and struc-
ture during the late Lower Pleistocene have been observed across Africa. In many
localities Mode 1 or “late Oldowan” assemblages are found in the same geological
beds as early Mode 2 assemblages (Chavaillon et al., 1979; Gowlett et al., 1981;
Gowlett 1988; de Heinzelin et al., 2000; de la Torre et al., 2003). Although abso-
lute contemporaneity cannot be assured it does seem very likely that assemblages
without handaxes continued to accumulate well after the first LCTs appeared on
scene. Whether the two were made by different groups or species of hominins
remains a matter of speculation.
Increases in both alpha and beta diversity in association with the appearance of
Mode 2 assemblages in all likelihood reflects functional factors. The appearance of
new artefact forms and further refinement of others is testament to a broadening
range of activities involving stone tools. The potential and actual functions of early
LCTs remain uncertain.They are very good for some things, especially heavy work
such as carving through thick hides (Galán & Domínguez-Rodrigo, 2014; P. R.
Jones, 1980; Machin et al., 2007), but they could be and were used for a range of
things from chopping wood (Domínguez-Rodrigo et al., 2001) to cutting plants
(Binneman & Beaumont, 1992) to digging. In all likelihood LCTs as a group were
multifunctional artefacts, filling different needs at different times. The increases
220 Diversity
in frequency of modification of flake tool edges by retouch after around 2.0 my,
suggests that hominins were seeking different functional properties of flake edges.
Any expansion of functions was probably accompanied by an expansion of the
range of contexts in which artefacts were used and discarded: more ways of using
tools mean using tools in more places on the landscape. Particular opportunities
to conduct activities were likely unevenly distributed across landscapes, appearing
and disappearing with different rhythms. An outcrop of good stone for making
handaxes was probably a fairly constant but unidimensional resource, whereas a
waterhole or copse of trees provided a wider range of resources which came and
went on a different schedule. As a consequence, what archaeologists perceive as dis-
tinct kinds of sites began to accumulate on Lower Pleistocene landscapes.
7.3.2 Diversity outside Africa, 1.8 my–500 ka

It is difficult to locate early sites in many geological environments.Without optimal
conditions of burial and re-exposure the likelihood of finding ephemeral scatters
of stones and bones from the early Pleistocene is very small. As a consequence of
geological constraints, evidence for the first hominin forays into Eurasia and even-
tually the rest of the world has emerged very slowly. Nonetheless, the past two
decades have witnessed a rapid convergence of strong evidence that hominins first
ventured out of sub-Saharan Africa starting around 2.0–1.8 my. The lynchpin site
was Dmanisi (Georgia), which is now securely dated to between 1.85 and 1.78 my
(Ferring et al., 2011). Similar ages have now been established for sites in Algeria
(Parés et al., 2014) and Syria (Le Tensorer et al., 2015), not quite as far away from
the sub-Saharan African homeland as the Caucasus mountains but still well outside
the southern Rift Valley. Slightly later, by 1.5 my or so, hominins had reached tem-
perate north-central China (Ao et al. , 2013; Keates, 2010; R. X. Zhu et al., 2004)
and other parts of Asia. Soon after there is a detectable hominin presence in Europe
(Carbonell et al., 2008) and by around 1.0–0.8 my a substantial number of well
dated sites with stone tools, vertebrate remains and occasionally hominin fossils are
known from across Eurasia. Claims for sites outside Africa dating to before 1.8 my
are not widely accepted, though some recent discoveries may change that, if dates
can be replicated (Z. Zhu et al., 2018).
Lower Pleistocene localities from outside the East African Rift are a far-flung and
scattered lot. Except for the Nihewan Basin in north-central China, Eurasian Lower
Pleistocene sites are usually isolates. Consequently, while it is possible to discuss
diversity at intra-assemblage and global scales there is little context for examining
diversity at intermediate (beta) scales. Surprisingly, even though they are scattered
across a large part of the Eurasian landmass, early Pleistocene sites are remarkably
homogeneous. Nearly every stone tool assemblage from Europe or Asia pre-dating
900 ka can be characterized as Mode 1. They are universally “simple” core and flake
assemblages, some with larger cores/core tools and some without them (Braun &
Hovers, 2009; Carbonell et al., 2009; Carbonell et al., 2010; de Lumley et al, 2009). In
the earliest assemblages secondary modification or retouch of flake tools is scarce or
Diversity 221
absent (Baena Preysler et al., 2010). As with the early Mode 1 industries of southern
and eastern Africa, the limited intra-assemblage variability (alpha diversity) leaves
little space for inter-assemblage differences (beta diversity). In the Nihewan Basin,
assemblages from the Lower and early Middle Pleistocene are similar, based on small
flakes (sometimes retouched) and cores. They differ mainly in terms of raw material
selection, the amount of retouch, and the use of specific flake production techniques
such as bipolar reduction (Guan et al., 2016;Yang, Hou,Yue et al., 2016)
The limited diversity and elaboration of early Pleistocene artefact assemblages
from Eurasia has led some to characterize them as “pre-Oldowan,” (de Lumley
et al., 2009; de Lumley, Nioradzé, & Barsky, 2005) comparing them to 2.5 my-old
assemblages from East Africa. I do not think the names Oldowan or pre-Oldowan
are especially helpful, but the terminology does highlight their extraordinary
homogeneity. It also raises an important and difficult question: how can we explain
resemblances among early Pleistocene stone artefacts scattered across such a vast
and varied region? One recourse is to postulate some sort of cultural phylogenetic
connection: artefacts look like each other because they are derived from the same
ancestral culture. While it is probably the case that all Lower Pleistocene Eurasian
hominin populations stemmed from a small number of ancestral groups which
dispersed out of Africa, and while it is certain that the first groups to merge carried
with them simple Mode 1 technology, this explanation is not entirely satisfactory.
The main problem is the lack of diversification. All early Pleistocene stone tool
technologies might have started in the same place 1.8 million years ago, but once
they were scattered over such a vast area we would expect diversification over the
next half-million years or so. This is what happened in Africa, but in Eurasia things
seem to have unfolded differently.
One alternative explanation for the continuing homogeneity of early techno-
logical behaviour across Eurasia is that the constant exchange of cultural information
among neighbouring groups prevented diversification. Given the size of the area in
question and the absence of any evidence for long-distance connections until much
later, the possibility of active homogenization through cultural exchange seems
exceedingly slim. More likely explanations involve demography and the learnability
of cultural variants. In all likelihood hominin populations in Eurasia during the
Lower Pleistocene were small, fragile, and isolated. These kinds of demographic
conditions could in fact inhibit diversification. High rates of local extinction within
a meta-population can inhibit random changes in cultural practices, reducing diver-
gence (diversity) among local populations (Premo & Kuhn, 2010). Another, related
explanation concerns what Tennie and colleagues call “latent solutions” (Tennie
et al., 2016, 2017), behaviours that “…do not require high-fidelity social learning
in order to increase in frequency in a population.” (Tennie et al., 2016: 121). They
are natural basins of attraction within the behavioural capacities of a species. We
could hypothesize that easily-(re)acquired knowledge about the mechanics of stone
fracture, combined with hominin biomechanics, would channel behaviour down
certain avenues. Because of these constraints hominin populations would converge
over and over on a limited set of solutions to producing flakes. Basic methods of
222 Diversity
flake production could even have been re-invented many times as local knowledge
was lost due to fluctuating group numbers.
There is a marked delay between the earliest appearance of Mode 2 technolo-
gies and their dispersal beyond sub-Saharan Africa. Currently the oldest handaxes
in North Africa, from Thomas Quarry (Casablanca, Morocco), are dated to ca.
1.0 ma (Raynal et al., 2004; Raynal et al., 2001). For decades, the site with the
oldest Mode 2 technologies or large cutting tools in Eurasia was thought to be
Ubeidiya, in the Jordan Valley, which dates to around 1.3 my (Bar-Yosef & Goren-
Inbar, 1993). However, the Jordan Valley is a northern extension of the African Rift,
not a great environmental or geographic departure from northeast Africa. More
recently, a 26Al/10Be burial date of ca. 1.5 my, with a minimum age of 1.07 my, has
been reported from the site of Attirampakkam in India (Pappu et al, 2011). At pre-
sent, the earliest securely dated layers with handaxes in temperate and subtropical
Eurasia date to around 700–800 ka, corresponding fortuitously with the beginning
of the Middle Pleistocene (Moncel et al., 2018a, 2018b, 2013; Yamei et al., 2000).
In western Eurasia, the earliest Middle Pleistocene Mode 2 assemblages belong to
the group of “large flake” or “giant core” Acheulean assemblages (Sharon, 2009,
2010). Bifacial thinning with soft-hammer percussion appeared later in Europe and
the Near East. The addition of new methods and artefact forms to the hominin
technological repertoire marks the first major change in alpha diversity in Eurasian
hominin material culture. If anything, Lower Pleistocene Mode 1 assemblages from
Eurasia were less diverse than their African counterparts, so the appearance of new
tools and techniques makes an even bigger impact on the appearance of diversity.
As in Africa, the appearance of LCTs in Eurasia did not mark a complete re-
organization of hominin technologies. Alongside the impressive and much-discussed
cleavers and handaxes, one still finds flake tools, a range of core forms, and of course
hammers. Simple core and flake technologies, without any well-made large cutting
tools, also continued to be produced well into the Middle Pleistocene. In northern
France and England, the best known of these assemblage types without LCTs is
the Clactonian. In southern Europe, assemblages with few or no handaxes may be
called Tayacian or Clactonian (Bietti & Castorina, 1992; Nicoud et al., 2016; Sharon
& Barsky, 2016). Assemblages with and without bifaces occur in roughly the same
ranges of geological beds, corresponding roughly with MIS 12–9 (Ashton, et al.,
1994; McNabb, 1996; M. J.White, 2000). M. J. White (2000) argues that assemblages
with and without handaxes in northern Europe alternate according to successive
glacial/interglacial cycles but that neither is definitively older than the other.
Over the past century or so, researchers have sought to explain the co-occurrence
of early Middle Pleistocene assemblages with and without bifaces across Europe as
an expression of coexisting cultural traditions, the result of functional variation, or
even as a consequence of staging in reduction process across the landscape (reviewed
by M. J. White, 2000). One obstacle to resolving this question is the overwhelming
analytical focus on bifacial tools. North American archaeologists are sometimes
criticized for being obsessed with bifaces, to the near exclusion of other aspects of
lithic technology. The same critique could be levelled at Paleolithic archaeologists
Diversity 223
studying the Lower Paleolithic. There have been few systematic comparisons of the
non-handaxe components of contemporaneous Mode 1 and Mode 2 assemblages
(but see Chazan, 2000). Consequently, we are effectively comparing apples and
“not-apples.” Because the definitions are not very clear, it is also difficult to know
how different assemblages assigned names such as “Tayacian” or “Clactonian” really
are. Until there are systematic comparative studies of the cores, flakes and other
artefacts, arguments about the nature of the relationships among them will go
unresolved.
For reasons ranging from geology to recent settlement history, fewer intact
Middle Pleistocene landscapes have been documented in Eurasia than in Africa.
Many open-air occurrences are either isolated or parts of large fluvial systems,
which have concentrated and re-worked artefacts. One of the few places where
researchers can examine beta diversity at a landscape scale is the extraordinary site
of Boxgrove in southern England (M. Pope, 2002; M. Pope et al., 2009; Rees, 2000;
M. B. Roberts & Parfitt, 1999; M. B. Roberts et al., 1997; G. M. Smith, 2013). The
Boxgrove locality preserves a series of littoral and near-littoral land surfaces formed
during a period centring on 500 ka, near the end of the period considered here.
The temporal resolution of some parts of the Boxgrove sequence is fine enough
to isolate debris from individual events. As such it provides insights into the fine-
scale dynamics that led to the accrual of more standard Paleolithic assemblages.
Results to date suggest that site formation dynamics were similar to what had been
hypothesized for the East African localities. Much of the variability among localities
relates to life histories of different artefact classes. Flake tools and reduction debris
typically had short use-lives and were discarded near the spot where they were
produced. Large bifacial tools followed longer and more diversified routes from
production to discard, and they seldom entered the record where they were made.
A diverse and varied archaeological record emerges from interactions between
these contrasting patterns of production, use and discard, on one hand, and shifts in
where resources could be encountered on the other (M. Pope, 2002).
Although the Early and Middle Pleistocene records of large parts of Eurasia
are poorly known, it is possible to discuss diversity at a global scale. Mode 1 and
Mode 2 assemblages co-occur across broad swaths of western Eurasia, but there
are areas where LCTs and bifacial shaping are essentially absent until the end of
the Middle Pleistocene. Much of central and southern Europe east of the Rhine
river, including the Balkans (Moncel et al., 2018a; Sharon & Barsky, 2016) was
effectively a “handaxe free zone.” Even later Middle Pleistocene assemblages from
sites such as Vértesszőlős (Hungary), Schöningen and Bilzingsleben (Germany) con-
sist exclusively of small cores and flake tools (Burdukiewicz, Ronen, & Chauhan,
2004; Serangeli & Conard, 2015; Svoboda, 1987, 1989).The fact that three handaxes
found at the Kokkinopolos locality in Greece even merited publication (Runnels
& van Andel, 1993; Tourloukis, 2009) attests to the scarcity of these artefacts in
the region: however, these particular specimens probably date to the end of the
Middle Pleistocene (Tourloukis, Karkanas, & Wallinga, 2015).The eastern boundary
of the zone without early bifacial technology in Europe seems to correspond with
224 Diversity
the Black Sea and Bosporus/Marmara seaway: assemblages with bifacial tools have
been documented across Anatolia (Asian Turkey) (Galanidou et al., 2016; Kuhn,
2002; Slimak et al., 2008; Taşkıran, 2008) but not in Thrace (European Turkey)
(Dinçer, 2016).
Mode 1 assemblages are also absent from some large areas. In reverse to the
situation in Central Europe and the Balkans, almost all early Middle Pleistocene
assemblages from the eastern Mediterranean Levant and arid areas of the Near East
have been classified as Acheulean (Bar-Yosef, 1994; Moncel et al., 2018a; Sharon &
Barsky, 2016). A single Mode 1 site, Bizat Ruhama, dates to a period of reversed
geo-magnetic polarity (Laukhin et al., 2001; Zaidner, Yeshurun, & Mallol, 2010),
which means that it probably predates the major expansion or diffusion of Mode 2
technologies into Eurasia. Likewise, almost all early Middle Pleistocene sites in South
Asia contain Mode 2 assemblages with handaxes and cleavers (Dennell 2009: 337).
Within western Eurasia a good deal of evidence suggests that the distributions
of raw materials with different working properties had a strong influence on the
character of Middle Pleistocene and later assemblages (Dibble, 1991). P. Villa (Villa,
1981) made a convincing case that contrasts in the apparent refinement of Mode
2 LCTs from southern and northern France were due to raw materials rather than
cultural differences.The high-quality flint that was plentiful in northern France and
England enabled hominins to craft nicely-finished, symmetrical bifaces, whereas
hominins with similar levels of skill could only make irregular, rougher-looking
handaxes using the igneous and metamorphic rocks available in the south. Perhaps
the clearest example of raw material effects is the so-called “Columbanien” industry
found in coastal Brittany (J.-L. Monnier, 1982; J.-L. Monnier & Molines, 1993).
These very primitive-looking chopper and flake assemblages are contemporaneous
with classic Mode 2 industries in adjoining regions of France and England. The
main reason for the apparent crudeness of the material from Brittany is the absence
of large nodules of flint in the region. The availability of only granular volcanic and
metamorphic stones forced Middle Pleistocene forced toolmakers to adjust their
manufacture and shaping techniques (see also Huett, 2008).
Raw material certainly does constrain the options of stone-knappers, but we
should be cautious lest it become an easy fall-back argument. In the absence of
other explanations, we can always nominate some feature of locally available stone
as the cause for differences or similarities among assemblages. Conclusions about
raw material effects on Paleolithic technologies are typically based on circum-
stantial evidence. We observe that the distribution of rocks with different proper-
ties correlates with particular characteristics of assemblages, and we infer that the
raw materials either constrained or potentiated certain technological options. But
detecting the association does not validate it. Few attempts have been made to val-
idate these inferences experimentally, and results from the experiments which have
been done do not always support post hoc associations (Eren et al., 2014; Lycett,
Schillinger et al., 2016).
The seeming discontinuity between archaeological patterning and experi-
mental effects highlight the nature of causality at an evolutionary time scale.
Diversity 225
Macro-evolutionary outcomes are consequences of many small micro-evolutionary

events. It may be possible to produce a symmetrical, well-shaped bifacial tool using
even the most unpromising of rocks. And of course it is always possible to make
rough and rudimentary implements from the best kinds of stone. But the associations
between artefact forms and raw materials that we observe at a regional scale do not
reflect what individuals could or could not do at any one moment in time. Instead,
they emerge from a great many individual decisions.These immediate, particularistic
and highly contextual decisions can develop into a robust general trend without raw
material actually preventing the knappers from achieving particular goals.
Of course, the best-known case of large-scale geographic variation in Lower
Paleolithic assemblages is the much-discussed “Movius line.” Some 70 years ago,
Harvard prehistorian Hallam Movius pointed out discontinuities in the distribu-
tion of the Acheulean across Eurasia (Movius, 1948), observing that Pleistocene
assemblages with handaxes were abundant as far east as India, but effectively absent
from China and the rest East Asia. A wide range of explanations have been offered
for this phenomenon, including (of course) a hypothetical scarcity of good stone for
making bifaces, the availability of alternative organic materials such as bamboo for
large cutting tools, and/or demographic instability (Lycett & Bae, 2010; Lycett &
Norton, 2010; G. Pope, 1989; Schick, 1994). At the same time, Middle Pleistocene
assemblages bearing handaxes and other LCT forms have been documented in the
Bose (Huang et al., 2012;Yamei et al., 2000) and Luonan Basins (Lu, Zhang et al.,
2011; Sun et al., 2014) and other localities in China (Dennell, 2016; Gao, 2013;
Moncel et al., 2018b; P. Zhang et al., 2010), as well as in Korea (Bae, Bae, & Kim,
2012; Norton et al., 2006). Handaxes and similar LCTs have also been reported from
southeast Asia and Indonesia (Brumm & Moore, 2012; Dennell, 2009), although to
this point none are in well dated contexts.
Despite these recent findings, the fact still remains that small-tool or flake and
chopper assemblages characterize the great majority of Early Paleolithic sites across
China and southeast Asia (Bar-Yosef & Wang 2012; Gao 2013). Consequently, the
question has shifted from “why are handaxes absent from East Asia” to “why are
handaxes scarce in East Asia, and why do they occur where they do?”The same range
of answers may be applied to the new question.The recognition of handaxes in East
Asian archaeological sites has also caused some researchers to consider whether cat-
egories such as “handaxe” or “LCT” might be too general to be useful. For example
handaxes from the Bose Basin appear technologically very different from African
or European ones, whereas artefacts from the Luonan Basin closely resemble their
western counterparts (Moncel et al., 2018b; Petraglia & Shipton, 2008).
Within East Asia there are other important axes of diversity in Lower and early
Middle Pleistocene artefact assemblages. Arguably the most obvious is the contrast
between north and south China. The earliest assemblages from southern China
are characterized by large numbers of pebble tools and large chopper/cores, with
relatively few small flake tools. In northern China early industries are dominated
by small flake tools made on blanks from “rotating platform” cores, with fewer
large core tools. Over time the array of reduction methods expanded to encompass
226 Diversity
bipolar and discoid techniques, especially in the north, but the same basic distinc-
tion persisted well into the Middle or even Upper Pleistocene (Dennell, 2009; Gao,
2013; Jia & Huang, 1985). Whether this persistent contrast is due to differences
in raw material availabilities, activities and tool functions, or persistent cultural
traditions remains a matter of debate and speculation (Dennell 2009:433).
7.3.3 Late Middle and Upper Pleistocene Diversity in sub-Saharan

Africa, 500 ka–10 ka
Acheulean/Mode 2 assemblages of one form or another continued to accumulate
in sub-Sharan Africa until 200 ka or even later. But beginning in the mid-Middle
Pleistocene, 400–500 ka or so, we can detect a notable expansion of technical diver-
sity. This is marked most obviously by the appearance of well-developed, clearly
differentiated methods of blade production (C. R. Johnson & McBrearty, 2010;
Wilkins, 2013; Wilkins & Chazan, 2012) as well as Levallois technology sensu stricto
(Tryon et al., 2005). Not surprisingly, there is a proliferation of named assemblage
types across Africa dating the later part of the Middle Pleistocene, marking the tran-
sition from Early to Middle Stone Age. These “nasties,” to use J. Shea’s term (Shea,
2014), include Late Acheulean, Lupemban, Sangoan (Basell, 2010; McBrearty, 1988;
Taylor, 2016), and Fauresmith (Herries, 2011; Underhill, 2011). The taxonomic
status, chronology and geographical distributions of these assemblage types are all
in flux. Nonetheless, they share several characteristics including distinctive and pos-
sibly specialized biface forms, well-defined methods of blank production including
laminar (blade) manufacture and/or Levallois production, and a chronological pos-
ition in the latter half of the Middle Pleistocene. The incorporation of new forms
of manufacture and new varieties of stone tools into a preexisting Mode 2 techno-
logical repertoire expands the alpha diversity of Middle Pleistocene MSA or “tran-
sitional” assemblages. How that enhanced diversity maps out on an inter-site basis is
currently unclear, as there are few comparative studies of these assemblages.
This trend towards diversification at the alpha scale continued into the Upper
Pleistocene with a series of distinctive named Middle Stone Age assemblage types,
including the MSA 1 and MSA 2, Pietersburg, Stillbay, Howiesons Poort, and “post–
Howiesons Poort.” The definition and chronology of these assemblage types have
received a great deal of attention due to the many “precocious” features they pre-
sent as well as their presumed association with early Homo sapiens (reviewed by
Wadley, 2015; Wurz, 2013). The Upper Pleistocene MSA manifests a whole series of
novel technological developments, including regular working of osseous materials
(Backwell & d’Errico, 2005; Backwell et al., 2008), heat treatment of stone (Brown
et al., 2009; Delagnes et al., 2016; P. Schmidt et al., 2013), systematic use of inter-
changeable stone elements in composite tools (Ambrose, 2010; Brown et al., 2012;
Lombard, 2012; Lombard & Wadley, 2016), pressure flaking (Mourre et al., 2010) as
well as new media for personal ornamentation and communication (d’Errico et al.,
2005; Henshilwood, d’Errico, & Watts, 2009; Henshilwood & Dubreuil, 2011;Texier
et al., 2010;Wadley, 2015). Even less flashy and less widely discussed technologies, such
Diversity 227
as bedding and traps and snares, seem to have flourished in the Upper Pleistocene
MSA (Wadley et al., 2011) All of these phenomena have been discussed in prior
chapters and I will not revisit them in detail here. What is significant for the current
discussion is the continuing extension of the range of technological options, and the
greater potential for both alpha and beta diversity to be expressed.
At least some of the inter-assemblage diversity in the MSA is expressed tem-
porally. One of the noteworthy features of the South African MSA is the compara-
tively rapid turnover in assemblage types. Wurz argues that well-defined temporal
patterning in assemblage types is apparent only beginning in late MIS 5 (Wurz,
2013). The subsequent Upper Pleistocene sequence is characterized by sequen-
tial replacement of a series of variants across the southern part of Africa. The
chronology of the sequence has become much clearer although some facts are
still in dispute (Conard & Porraz, 2015; Guérin et al., 2013; Henshilwood, 2012;
Jacobs et al., 2008a, 2008b; Jacobs & Roberts, 2015; Porraz et al., 2013; Tribolo
et al., 2009). The rapid turnover of assemblage types in the period between 90 ka
and 40 ka reminds many researchers of the Upper Paleolithic sequences in western
Eurasia and has been nominated as another feature of behavioural modernity. I will
return to this observation in the final chapter. Likewise, some researchers argue
that the development of distinctive assemblage types and artefact forms across the
African continent during the MSA marks the appearance of regional cultural iden-
tity or even ethnicity (J. D. Clark, 1988; McBrearty & Brooks, 2000).
Africa is a very large and ecologically diverse continent, and South Africa is not
a microcosm for the entire continent. The sweeping replacement of one “culture”
by another is not typical of all of sub-Saharan Africa. A recent synthesis of lithic data
from across East Africa (Blinkhorn & Grove, 2018) demonstrates a general pattern
of regional continuity in lithic assemblages, superimposed with periods of diversi-
fication and territorial expansion (see also Tryon & Faith, 2013). Deeply stratified
sites in East Africa show rather different evolutionary trajectories from the South
African sites. At Mumba Cave (Tanzania), the sequence is remarkably homogeneous
within the MSA and even across the MSA/early LSA transition (Diez-Martín et al.,
2009; Marks & Conard, 2008). The MSA layers from Porc Epic Cave (Ethiopia) (J.
D. Clark et al., 1984) contain both Levallois production and backed tools on small
blanks, but they occur in the same layers (Pleurdeau, 2003, 2005), indicating either
very rapid patterns of cyclical turnover or continued co-existence of various elem-
ents of technology.
It is also important to emphasize that MSA assemblage types such as Howiesons
Poort and Stillbay are not homogeneous entities (A. Mackay, 2009; Soriano et al.,
2015; Wadley, 2015). This provides an alternative perspective on the behavioural
influences on beta variation. Systematic comparative study of lithic assemblages from
both stratified cave sequences and surveyed landscapes show that Upper Pleistocene
MSA artefact assemblages varied in response to a range of factors. Changes in
patterns of resource availability brought on by environmental shifts as well as
increasing incorporation of marine resources in hominin diets, led to changes in
hominin land-use: these in turn influenced how assemblages accumulated across the
228 Diversity
landscape (Barut, 1994; Kandel & Conard, 2012; A. Mackay, Stewart, & Chase, 2014;
McCall, 2007; McCall & Thomas, 2012; Thompson et al., 2014; Will et al., 2013).
The growing variability in assemblage structure and content attests to the increas-
ingly broad and varied roles played by stone artefacts in the lives of MSA hominins.
Hominins did many different things with stone tools, and in many different places.
They used a variety of strategies, from long-distance movement of raw materials
(see Chapter 4) to specialized core reduction and tool resharpening and composite
artefact design (Chapter 6), to make sure they had usable implements when and
where needed. McKay has even observed what he interprets as micro-stylistic vari-
ation between neighbouring (quasi-) contemporaneous sites (A. Mackay, 2011)
although it currently remains an isolated case.
The transition to Late Stone Age (LSA) technologies appears to have begun at or
before 45 ka in both South and East Africa (Ambrose, 1998; Villa et al., 2012). With
the overwhelming interest in the late MSA over the past few decades, the Late Stone
Age has receded into the background. It appears that the patterns established in the
late MSA, the fairly rapid turnover of “cultures” or assemblage types,” and expansion
of technological repertoires continued during the final 30,000 years of the Pleistocene.
Recent research at Border Cave reveals that many basic features of Holocene forager
adaptations, including the use of specific poisons and mastics, were in place at the
very beginning of the LSA in South Africa (Villa et al., 2012).Whether some of these
technologies and material culture items first appeared in the late MSA is an open
question: later LSA sites can have much better preservation than older MSA ones, so
perishable organic objects and substances are more likely to be recovered from the
younger sites. Technologies of communication, including wall painting and use of
ornaments expanded in the LSA, becoming much more widespread.
The sequences from a few deeply stratified South African caves tend to dominate
discussion of late Pleistocene technologies in Africa. In fact, the LSA in sub-Sharan
Africa is surprisingly diverse. A few “cultures” such as the Robberg are widespread,
but outside of South Africa a wide range of assemblages have been documented.
Some have strong microlithic components, while others are based on macro-blade
or even flake technologies (Mitchell, 2002b: 122–125). Assemblages that can be
classified as Middle Stone Age may even persist in a few areas until near the end
of the Pleistocene (Scerri et al., 2017). Given the background of diversification
at small (alpha) and larger (beta and gamma) scales that began in the late MSA,
it is noteworthy that certain features of material culture actually became more
homogeneous during the last 40 ka in Africa. Ostrich eggshell beads, the earliest
of which date to the very late MSA or earliest LSA (Ambrose, 1998; McBrearty
& Brooks, 2000; Villa et al., 2012), came to be effectively ubiquitous by the end
of the Pleistocene. Mitchell argues that larger numbers of ostrich eggshell beads
and bone points near the end of the Pleistocene represents an expansion and insti-
tutionalization of trade and friendship networks analogous to the Hxaro system
(Mitchell, 2002a, 2002b: 157). Something similar occurred with microlithic tech-
nology. Formalized bladelet technology was present in some localities by ca. 35 ka
or even earlier, but it came to dominate southern and eastern African assemblages
Diversity 229
by the LGM, roughly 20,000 years ago (Mitchel, 2002b; Ambrose, 2002). Ambrose
suggests that the fixation of microlithic manufacture strategies was a response to
population circumscription and decreased home range size (Ambrose, 2002). Many
groups could obtain fine-g rained raw materials only through long-distance trips
or through exchange, so they adopted strategies to conserve whatever good stone
they could get their hands on. Overall, the patterns of large-scale (gamma) diversity
suggest continuing local divergence of traditions due to local conditions as well
as barriers to interaction, crosscut by certain near-universal technologies. In the
case of beads, it was probably the need for a standard and accepted set of criteria
about what constituted appropriate ornaments and trade items that led to the near-
universal use of a single artefact type (Stiner, 2014). The equally broad adoption of
microlithic, bladelet-based approaches to composite artefact manufacture is more
likely to be a response to common adaptive problems, whether these derived from
changes in mobility, population growth, or the rigours of the LGM.
7.3.4 Late Middle and Upper Pleistocene Diversity in North Africa,

500 ka–10 ka
Although part of the African continent, Africa north of the Sahara was alternatively
isolated from or connected to the rest of the continent during the Pleistocene,
depending on conditions in the Sahara (N. A. Drake et al., 2011; N. A. Drake,
Breeze, & Parker, 2013; N. A. Drake & Bristow, 2006). It should not be surprising
therefore that North Africa follows its own unique cultural evolutionary trajectory.
Despite a very long history of hominin presence in North Africa, the mid-Middle
Pleistocene records are comparatively sparse. Surface occurrences of assemblages
with handaxes and other LCTs abound but very few are well dated (see Sahnouni,
Semaw, & Rogers, 2013). Nonetheless, evidence from the Casablanca area and other
localities (Alimen & Zuber y Zuber, 1978; Balout, Biberson, & Tixier, 1967; Sharon,
2011) shows that hominins were present in various parts of the Maghreb espe-
cially throughout the Middle Pleistocene (Raynal et al., 2002; Rhodes et al., 2006).
Some of these “late” Acheulean assemblages of North Africa contain evidence for
distinctive and sometimes elaborate prepared core methods for producing flakes to
serve as blanks for handaxes and cleavers (Alimen & Zuber y Zuber, 1978; Balout
et al., 1967; Sharon, 2011)
Like other areas, North Africa saw a diversification in forms of flake tools and
methods of blank production during the second half of the Middle Pleistocene,
although the limited data available suggest that this process may have begun later
than in sub-Saharan Africa. Recent redating of hominin-and artefact-bearing layers
at Jebel Irhoud (Morocco) provides an age estimate for early “Middle Stone Age”
assemblages, with multiple methods for producing small blanks, of just before 300 ka
(Richter et al., 2017). In the Casablanca area Levallois production is associated with
finely-made bifaces in deposits dating to ca. 200 ka (Raynal et al., 2002). It is likely
that these age estimates will be moved back in time with new discoveries and better
dating of known sites. The late Middle Pleistocene assemblages without handaxes
230 Diversity
have been called “Mousterian” as well as “Middle Stone Age.” Differences in ter-
minology do not refer to characteristics of the materials themselves so much as the
backgrounds of scholars, and individual interest in emphasizing Eurasian vs African
affinities (Garcea, 2012b).
It is in the later Middle Pleistocene, during MIS 6, that North Africa begins
to show divergence in technological evolution from surrounding regions. Aterian
assemblages are widely distributed across North Africa, from western Egypt to
Atlantic Morocco and south as far as northern Mali, Mauritania and Niger (Garcea
2012: Figure 3). The Aterian is marked by the addition of two principal elements
to the technical repertoire of North African hominins, bifacial thinning of small
foliate points and the manufacture of tangs on artefacts, related partially or wholly
to an increased emphasis on hafting (see Chapter 3). The timing and significance of
the appearance of bifacial foliates and tangs remain matters of debate. Currently, the
oldest assemblage with tangs and foliate bifaces, from Ifri n’Ammar, date to ca. 130–
150 ka: however, the majority of ages are more recent, clustering in the first half of
the Upper Pleistocene (Bouzouggar & Barton, 2012; Dibble et al., 2013; Richter,
Moser, & Nami, 2012). At many deeply stratified sites, assemblages without tanged
pieces and small bifaces, sometimes called “Mousterian,” are stratified beneath
Aterian layers with these artefacts. However the apparent ages for the “Mousterian-
Aterian transition” vary widely from site to site (Dibble et al., 2013: Table 4), and
in some cases “Mousterian” assemblages without tanged pieces are stratigraphically
younger than “Aterian” assemblages with them.
Researchers are divided over the significance of the two “complexes.” Some
argue that the Aterian represents a distinct cultural phenomenon, perhaps adapted to
arid conditions (Bouzouggar & Barton, 2012; Garcea, 2012b) while others (Dibble
et al., 2013; Richter et al., 2012) see a continuum among the various assemblages,
attributing variation to functional or situational rather than cultural discontinu-
ities. To these alternative explanations we can add issues of sampling bias. Tangs
and bifaces almost never make up a large portion of artefact assemblages so their
presence or absence can be strongly affected by sample size. As trenches typically get
smaller with depth, assemblages from the lower part of stratigraphic sequences are
often quite a bit smaller than assemblages from stratigraphically shallower layers, and
are thus less likely to contain rare artefact forms. In the end, this question can only
be resolved through systematic comparative studies of the elements of the respective
assemblages that are not bifacial or tanged pieces (Bouzouggar & Barton, 2012).
With regard to the present discussion, the question of whether the Aterian is a
distinct culture or simply a functional variant of a broader Mousterian/MSA com-
plex is of little consequence. What is important is that assemblages called Aterian
mark a period of technological diversification at the end of the Middle Pleistocene.
And we should limit the discussion to lithic technology. Currently, North African
sites provide some of the earliest evidence for the use of ornaments as media for
signalling or information exchange. Most layers with Aterian assemblages contain
beads made from marine shells such as Nassarius/Trivia (N. Barton & d’Errico,
2012; Bouzouggar & Barton, 2012; Bouzouggar et al., 2007; Vanhaeren et al.,
Diversity 231
2006). Interestingly, the beads seem to go along with the other Aterian type
fossils: Mousterian or “non-Aterian” assemblages typically do not contain them.
Aterian type fossils are also sometimes associated with stones used for grinding and
pounding activities, possible indicators of expansion in technologies for food prep-
aration and processing, although such artefacts are seldom discussed or analyzed.
Likewise, small numbers of worked bone objects have been recovered from Aterian
contexts (Bouzouggar & Barton, 2012)
Because of the overwhelming concerns with placing sites in geological contexts
and obtaining reliable dates, there have been few explicit studies of beta (inter-
assemblage) or gamma (large-scale regional) diversity in North African Paleolithic
sites of any period. Working from technological comparisons of assemblages
distributed across North Africa, E. Scerri has argued persuasively for the exist-
ence of regional variation among Aterian assemblages. She further argues that the
structure of variation reflects more than isolation by distance, that late Pleistocene
hominin populations in North African were “structured” into bounded regional
groupings (Scerri, 2013b, 2013a; Scerri et al., 2014). Even more broadly, to the east
of the Maghreb, the Nile Valley appears to have followed yet another a distinct evo-
lutionary path during the Upper Pleistocene. During MIS 6 and 5 lithic assemblages
from most of Egypt have been characterized as either Middle Paleolithic or MSA,
chiefly because of their rather “generic” features: most are based on Levallois
flake technology (Van Peer, 2004; Van Peer et al., 2003; Vermeersch, 2010). What
is described as a variant of the Lupemban, with large lanceolate bifaces, was also
present in the area near the end of the Middle Pleistocene (Rots et al., 2011; Van
Peer et al., 2003). Near the beginning of MIS 5, a distinctive method of flake
production, called “Nubian” core technology, appeared in sites in the Nile Valley
and adjoining regions (Van Peer, 2004;Vermeersch, 2010). The east-west boundary
between Nubian and Aterian areas seems to have been fairly impermeable, in that
distinctive artefacts from one type of assemblage very seldom are found in the
other area. Interestingly, traces of Nubian technology have been identified in good
context from areas to the north (Goder-Goldberger, Gubenko, and Hovers 2016),
to the south (Will, Mackay, & Phillips, 2015) and to the east, across the Red Sea in
Yemen (Rose et al., 2011). But they do not occur in the western Maghreb.
Although the North African MSA shares several “precocious” features with the
southern African MSA, it differs in one important respect. There is no evidence for
the sequential turnover of technological variants that characterizes the first part of
the Upper Pleistocene in South Africa. In fact, there has been little or no discussion
of change over time in the Aterian/MSA subsequent to the appearance of tanged
artefacts and bifacial foliates. Even if time-trends are recognized it is clear that the
changes are not as sharp as the contrasts between MSA I, Stillbay, and Howiesons
Poort in South Africa. The same would be true of the Nubian complex in the Nile
Valley.
The long reign of the Aterian/MSA in North Africa lasted until the late Upper
Pleistocene.What happened next is not entirely clear. In Libya assemblages with dis-
tinctive chamfered pieces occur stratigraphically above the Aterian. The “Dabban”
232 Diversity
assemblages such as occur in the famous site of Haua Fteah (McBurney, 1967)
superficially resemble early Upper Paleolithic materials from the Mediterranean
Levant.The thick Dabban layers at Haua Fteah are stratified above the Campagnian
Ignimbrite (CI) tephra, meaning they post-date 40 ka: modelled ages based on 14C
dates span a relatively wide interval between roughly 40 ka and 18 ka (Douka et al.,
2014). At a few other Libyan sites, assemblages with large blades stratified above the
Aterian are dated to between roughly 25 ka and 50 ka (Garcea, 2012a). However,
this phenomenon is quite localized. Elsewhere across North Africa the Aterian
was succeeded much later by a backed-bladelet technology, the Ibero-Maurusian.
Currently the earliest dates for the Ibero-Maurusian are around 24–22 ka (R. N. E.
Barton et al., 2007, 2013; Bouzouggar et al., 2008). At the site of Tafforalt in eastern
Morocco, a distinctive “non-Levallois MSA” assemblage is stratified between the
Aterian and the Ibero-Maurusian (R. N. E. Barton et al., 2013) but other sites show
either a hiatus or a direct contact between Aterian layers and deposits containing
backed- bladelet assemblages. In the Nile Valley and Nubia, bladelet- based late
Paleolithic assemblages dating to between 25 ka and 10 ka have been assigned to a
series of different cultural groups (Schild & Wendorf, 2010). Whether this diversity
is a function of the criteria used to define industries or whether it actually reflects a
much greater range of variation compared to the Maghreb is unclear.
The dispersal of backed-bladelet-based technologies across North Africa appears
to be part of the same continental-scale process that led to the proliferation of
microlithic assemblages across eastern and southern Africa. It was accompanied by
many of the same technological innovations, including expanded use of osseous raw
materials (R. N. E. Barton & Bouzouggar, 2013) and possibly greater emphasis on
certain techniques of food processing. Large-scale regional differentiation (gamma
diversity) is clearly expressed during the last 15 ka of the Pleistocene in North
Africa. In the western Maghreb (Morocco) variants of Ibero-Maurusian tech-
nology continued to be produced though the beginning of the Holocene (R.
N. E. Barton & Bouzouggar, 2013). To the east, in Algeria and Tunisia, a distinct
set of archaeological characteristics, the Capsian, developed at the very end of the
Pleistocene and beginning of the Holocene. The Capsian is distinguished from the
late Ibero-Maurusian by a higher proportion of the geometric microliths, but more
importantly by the introduction of a new approach to blank manufacture, pressure-
blade(let) production (R. N. E. Barton & Bouzouggar, 2013; Jackes & Lubell, 2008;
Lubell et al., 1976; Rahmani & Lubell, 2012)
7.3.5 Middle and Upper Pleistocene Diversity in western

Eurasia, 500 ka–10 ka
The number of documented sites in western Eurasia dating to the later Middle
and Upper Pleistocene is markedly greater than for earlier periods. Part of this may
be due to growing populations but a great deal of the increase in site numbers is
likely due to taphonomic bias and differential preservation (Surovell et al., 2009).
On one hand, the larger numbers of sites provide a rich basis for discussing diversity
Diversity 233
at different scales. On the other it makes complete coverage virtually impossible.

The discussion which follows focuses on a few particularly well-documented and
illustrative case studies. It gives less coverage to other examples, not because they
are uninteresting or unimportant, but because there is just not enough space to
treat every region or sequence at the same level of detail. Given the hundreds of
well-documented sites in places such as southwest France, northern Spain or the
Mediterranean Levant it is inevitable that this discussion will do injustice to details
about individual sites and local or regional sequences. I emphasize that this is in
service of sketching out a broader picture of variation at multiple scales.
As is the case in Africa, assemblages with large numbers of bifacial LCTs,
often called Acheulean, continued to be produced up until MIS 6 or even later in
some areas (Moncel et al., 2018a; Rossoni-Notter et al., 2016). At the same time
assemblages dominated by flake tools, with and without handaxes, became increas-
ingly abundant after ca. 400 ka. The terminology for these various assemblages and
“industries,” and whether they are properly termed Lower or Middle Paleolithic,
continues to be a point of debate in some circles. However the distinction is some-
what arbitrary and ultimately of little wider significance (Malinsky-Buller, 2016;
Shimelmitz & Kuhn, 2017; Villa, 2009). What is important is that the mid-Middle
Pleistocene was a period of notable dynamism in Eurasian Paleolithic technologies
and in other dimensions of behaviour.
This dynamism is well illustrated by the archaeological sequence from the
eastern Mediterranean. As discussed in previous chapters, the long period of exclu-
sive presence of Mode 2/Acheulean assemblages in the region was interrupted
around 400 ka with the appearance of a series of assemblage types termed Yabrudian,
Amudian and Acheulo-Yabrudian, sometimes grouped together as the Mugharan
tradition (Jelinek, 1990). The nature of these materials was discussed in greater
detail in Chapter 6. What is important for the current discussion is that they are
characterized by a high level of alpha (intra-assemblage) diversity in flake produc-
tion methods and artefact forms. Any given assemblage may contain a range of flake
tools, made on blanks produced by a range of distinct methods (Barkai et al., 2009;
Malinsky-Buller, 2016; Shimelmitz, Barkai et al., 2016; Shimelmitz, Kuhn, Ronen
et al., 2014; Shimelmitz et al., 2016), as well as bifaces. Evidence suggests that these
different blanks were destined for distinct functions and life histories. Although
similar developments occurred in Africa at roughly the same time it is likely that
the two trends are independent. Species profiles at Qesem Cave, known for its
sequence of deposits spanning roughly 400 ka and 200 ka, preserves an entirely
Holarctic fauna with no obvious African elements (Stiner, Gopher, & Barkai, 2011).
Although both the Levantine and sub-Saharan African records for this period con-
tain early evidence for blade production, as far as I know the large scrapers with
Quina retouch have no counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa.
Along with this expanded alpha diversity, this period demonstrates novel
patterns of beta (inter-site) diversity. Acheulo-Yabrudian assemblages have been
reported from sites such as Tabun, Qesem, Misliyah, Masloukh, and Bezez caves
in the humid coastal Levant, but they are also known from the more arid interior
234 Diversity
parts of Syria and perhaps Jordan (Copeland, 2000; le Tensorer et al., 2007; Muhesen
& Jagher, 2011). All across the region, they occur exclusively in two contexts: in
caves and rockshelters, and at permanent spring mounds. In fact, this is the period
in which caves were first systematically occupied in West Asia. Heavy scrapers
with Quina retouch and typical Yabrudian bifaces occasionally appear in open-
air surface collections (Garrard, Stanley Price, & Copeland, 1975) but character-
istic assemblages are found only in places with permanent natural affordances such
as springs and natural shelters. This does not imply that mid-Middle Pleistocene
hominins spent all their time or discarded all of their stone tools in caves or at
springs. Substantial open-air sites such as Holon (Pora et al., 1999), Revadim Quarry
(Marder et al., 2011, 2008), and Nadaouiyeh Aïn Askar (Jagher, 2016; le Tensorer
et al., 2007) overlap chronologically with the Acheulo-Yabrudian. However, their
assemblages are classified as Acheulean mainly because of the abundance of bifacial
handaxes, though all contain an important flake tool component (Agam et al., 2015;
Chazan, 2000). There are no published comparisons of the technology of the Late
Acheulean open-air sites and the Acheulo-Yaburudian cave sites, but it is reasonable
to postulate that they represent complementary parts of the same system rather than
two independent ways of life that existed side-by-side, with one group sleeping and
working in caves and the other spending their time exclusively in the open.
I argue that expansion of beta (inter-site) diversity in the mid-Middle Pleistocene
reflects increasingly differentiated land-use. Hominins consistently did different
things with different tools in different places. Combined with the heavier use of nat-
ural shelters and the increasingly ubiquitous evidence for fire use within the shelters
(Karkanas et al., 2007; Shimelmitz, Kuhn, Jelinek, et al., 2014; Shahack-Gross et al.,
2014; Stiner et al., 2011), the evidence for strong spatial partitioning in activities
points to the emergence of domestic spaces or base camps as distinct components
in regional land-use systems (Chazan, 2009; Kuhn, Shimelmitz, & Clark, 2018;
Rolland, 2000, 2004; Stiner, Barkai, & Gopher, 2009; Stiner et al., 2011). This is
a profound development in hominin evolution. As Isaac and Lovejoy pointed out
decades ago, the appearance of stable central places in which people and food were
brought together set the stages for many future evolutionary developments (Isaac,
1978; Lovejoy, 1981). Some of the implications of this shift will be discussed in the
final chapter.
I would not claim that this key evolutionary transition occurred only, or even
first, in the Near East. Most of the same developments can be seen in other parts
of Eurasia (Rolland, 2000, 2004). The use of natural shelters appears to have
become more regular across Asia, Africa, and Europe after about 500 ka. Much
older cave occupations are known, such as the 1ma+ horizons at Wonderwerk
Cave in South Africa (Berna et al., 2012; Horwitz & Chazan, 2015; Villa, 2009).
But despite greater taphonomic attrition to sites in unprotected open situations, the
vast majority of archaeological sites known across Europe, Asia, and Africa dating
to before 500,000 years ago occur outside of natural shelters. After this time the
situation changes, at least in places with abundant natural shelters (Chazan, 2009).
Other parts of Eurasia also witnessed expansion of modes of flake production in
Diversity 235
the later Middle Pleistocene. In many locations Levallois production, non-Levallois

blade manufacture, and other methods for producing flakes and tool blanks occur
together in what are called Late Acheulean or Early Mousterian industries dating to
400 ka or later (Adler et al., 2014; Carmignani et al., 2017; Moncel, 2005; Moncel
et al., 2011; Santonja et al., 2014; Santonja et al., 2016; Villa, 2009). Outside of
the eastern Mediterranean the contents of open-air and cave sites may not be so
clearly differentiated as in the Levant: assemblages with and without large bifacial
tools occur in both contexts. However, Santoja and Villa observe that “… Acheulian
bifaces rarely occur in caves and rock shelters …” in French sites pre-dating MIS
7 (Santonja & Villa, 2006: 465–466). The same is true of Iberia, where Acheulean
localities are biased toward open-air locations while roughly contemporaneous
“early Middle Paleolithic” occurs mainly in caves (Santonja et al., 2016). In sum, the
trend towards increasingly diversified lithic assemblages, increasingly differentiated
land-use, and perhaps the first domestic spaces, appears to extend across much of
western Eurasia.
Moving forward in time, the patterning of diversity at various scales becomes
increasingly fragmented. Contrasting trajectories are manifest in individual regions,
with adjoining areas sometimes showing divergent trends.The discussion will focus
on the best-known areas: the Mediterranean Levant and western Europe.
In the eastern Mediterranean Levant, the notable upward trend in alpha diver-
sity which began around 400 ka was truncated abruptly around 200– 250 ka
by the evolution or arrival of a new technological pattern. The so-called early
Levantine (or Tabun D-type) Mousterian became essentially ubiquitous across the
region by around 200 ka. These assemblages are not entirely homogeneous, but
compared with the Acheulo-Yabrudian which preceded them, they show a notable
lack of variety in blank production and retouched tool forms. All early Levantine
Mousterian assemblages show a strong tendency toward the production of large,
elongated blanks. In some cases, such as the iconic site of Tabun Cave in Israel,
the dominant method of production is a variant of Levallois (Shimelmitz & Kuhn,
2013, 2017b). In others, such as Abou Sif, Hayonim, or Misliya (Israel), most blades
were produced by non-Levallois “laminar” methods (Bar-Yosef & Meignen, 2001;
Meignen, 2000). In many assemblages the two approaches are combined, sometimes
on the same core, but the main products are elongated blades and points (Bar-Yosef
& Meignen, 2001; Meignen, 2000; Wojtczak et al., 2014; Zaidner & Weinstein-
Evron, 2012). Most researchers believe this abrupt technological transition between
Acheulo-Yabrudian and laminar early Mousterian marks the arrival of a new
hominin population, although what hominin taxon it was and where it came from
remains a matter of speculation (Valladas et al., 2013; Weinstein-Evron & Zaidner,
2017). However, recent results from Misliya Cave suggest that the makers of the
early Mousterian there possessed many dental features of Homo sapiens (Hershkovitz
et al., 2018).
The reduced technological diversity of early Levantine Mousterian assemblages
may be accompanied by a decline in the variety of retouched tools: the early
assemblages are dominated by laterally retouched blades and “points” (Zaidner &
236 Diversity
Weinstein-Evron, 2012). Of course, not all things called points served as weapon
tips and the seemingly limited array of retouched tool forms may have been used
in a wider range of activities (Groman-Yaroslavski et al., 2016; Yaroshevich et al.,
2016). Early Middle Paleolithic production systems also produced a range of usable
blanks from the same core (Shimelmitz & Kuhn, 2017b; Wojtczak et al., 2014), so
blank selection may also have been important in determining stone tool function-
ality. Despite the decline in alpha diversity, the late Middle Pleistocene Mousterian
assemblages continue the trend toward greater beta diversity (inter-site differences in
assemblage composition), reflecting complex and variable patterns of land-use and
provisioning (Meignen et al., 2006; Weinstein-Evron & Zaidner, 2017;Yaroshevich
et al., 2017; Zaidner et al., 2013)
The Middle Paleolithic assemblages from the eastern Mediterranean are usu-
ally described as forming a clear evolutionary sequence in which the laminar early
technological variants were replaced across the region first by variants of centri-
petal recurrent and preferential Levallois and finally by reduction methods oriented
toward the production of broad Levallois points. This sequence, first defined on the
basis of findings from Garrod’s excavations at Tabun Cave (Garrod & Bate, 1937)
has held up remarkably well over the years (Bar-Yosef & Meignen, 2001), although
there are exceptions and ambiguities (Goren-Inbar & Goldberg, 1990; Shea, 2014).
As the numbers of sites excavated and the numbers of assemblages studied with new
eyes and approaches have expanded, perspectives on the nature of this succession
have also shifted. Greater appreciation of the range of variation within and among
assemblages belonging to each of the three “stages,” exemplified by Hovers’s exem-
plary work on the key site of Qafzeh Cave (Hovers 2009a), has led to a broad con-
sensus that differences among the three types of Levantine Mousterian are matters
of changes in emphasis on different kinds of products and procedures, and not
simple replacements of one form of Levallois with a completely different one. The
similarities between the late “B-type,” and earlier “C-type” assemblages are espe-
cially pronounced, while the earliest laminar assemblages may represent categoric-
ally different approaches to making blanks (Culley, Popescu, & Clark, 2013). The
resemblance between the B- and C-type Mousterian assemblages is especially note-
worthy given that they are associated with different hominin forms, Neanderthals
in the former case and “proto-Cro-Magnon” Homo sapiens in the latter (Hovers
et al., 1995; Bar-Yosef, 2002b; Shea, 2003). Meanwhile, the amount of documented
beta diversity has continued to grow, particularly as more excavations in open-air
sites have exposed a wider range of occupation types including short-term kill-
butchery locations and quarry-workshops (Been et al., 2017; Sharon & Oron, 2014;
Zaidner et al., 2013).
The eastern Mediterranean Levant is a small area compared with Europe or
sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps it is not surprising that gamma (inter-regional) diver-
sity is comparatively low throughout much of the Middle and Upper Pleistocene.
Assemblages from different areas differ in subtle ways from one another but given
the limited chronological resolution it is impossible to be certain whether these
differences are products of gradual change over time or geographic isolation.
Diversity 237
The much-discussed transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic in the eastern

Mediterranean continues the trend toward gradual shifts in technology and regional
homogeneity. The earliest Upper Paleolithic across the region corresponds with
what has been called “Emiran” or “Initial Upper Paleolithic” (IUP) (Garrod, 1955;
Kuhn & Zwyns, 2014). The lithic assemblages, which date to between roughly 50
ka and 40 ka are characterized by forms of blade production which contain elem-
ents of both Levallois and prismatic blade manufacture. Several researchers (Belfer-
Cohen & Goring-Morris, 2007; Meignen, 2012; Pastoors,Weniger, & Kegler, 2008)
argue that the earliest Upper Paleolithic technologies emerged from some late
Middle Paleolithic variants, but that the process did not occur everywhere across
the region. The appearance of the Initial Upper Paleolithic is accompanied by an
expansion of technological diversity to include shell ornaments and systematic pro-
duction of osseous artefacts (Kuhn, 2003b, 2003a). The number of well-excavated
assemblages in too small to support any discussion of beta diversity for the early
Upper Paleolithic. Evidence from the long sequences at Ksar Akil in Lebanon
(Azoury, 1988; Ohnuma & Bergman, 1990) and Boker Tachtit (Marks & Volkman,
1983) in the Negev desert of Israel does show that the IUP was not stationary, that
there are directional changes in flake production and artefact forms. Leder (2014)
argues for the existence of several distinct temporal and geographic variants of the
Initial Upper Paleolithic, but in the absence of systematic quantitative analysis and
robust chronology these claims must remain conjectural.
The regional homogeneity of eastern Mediterranean technocomplexes appears
to continue until around MIS 2. The basic structure of variability is clear, even if
the details and especially the chronology remain to be resolved. The Emiran/IUP
was succeeded assemblages called Ahmarian, apparently as a result of a gradual
technological transition from one method of blade production to another (Barzilai,
Hershkovitz, & Marder, 2016; Gilead, 1991; Kuhn, 2004b). At some point a very
different sort of assemblage, termed Levantine Aurignacian appeared in some places.
This is widely thought to represent an intrusion from the northwest (Bar-Yosef &
Belfer-Cohen 2010; Belfer-Cohen & Goring-Morris, 2014a; Gilead, 1991), or pos-
sibly the east (Otte 2014; Otte et al., 2007, Otte & Kozłowski 2004). A major point of
contention is whether Aurignacian and Ahmarian assemblages were produced within
the same general interval of time. The dates overlap, but given the many difficulties
with 14C dating for the period between 30 ka and 40 ka, this is not definitive proof of
contemporaneity. In a few sequences, such as Ksar Akil in Lebanon, the Aurignacian
is succeeded by a group of assemblages which resemble the Ahmarian (so-called late
Ahmarian). Variants of the Ahmarian are found all across the region, from southern
Turkey to the Egyptian Sinai and from the Mediterranean littoral to the desert basins
of Syria and Jordan. In contrast, the Levantine Aurignacian is confined to the western
Levant (Belfer-Cohen & Goring-Morris, 2007, 2014a; Gilead, 1991)
The sequence of “selective sweeps” in which various forms of material culture
supplanted one another across the entire Levantine region was interrupted only
around the beginning of MIS 2. As in many other parts of the world there, a dis-
tinct tendency toward microlithization began around 20–25 ka, identified with
238 Diversity
the appearance of so-called Epipaleolithic cultures. The earliest forms of backed-

bladelet assemblages, usually called Kebaran, share certain general characteristics but
are distinguished by a range of material culture traits involving bladelet production,
microlith forms, ornaments, and other associated material culture (Belfer-Cohen &
Goring-Morris, 2014b). Evidence for other types of material culture such as housing,
cordage and netting (Nadel et al., 1994; Nadel et al., 2006; Nadel & Werker, 1999)
is also associated with the first bladelet assemblages, though this is largely a conse-
quence of the extraordinary preservation at sites such as Ohalo II, a waterlogged
camp on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Similar technologies utilizing perish-
able raw materials may have existed long before but have gone largely undetected.
Food processing technologies, in the form of grinding equipment, also began to
appear in the archaeological record of the early Epipaleolithic (Maher, Richter, &
Stock, 2012; Wright, 1994), becoming more abundant and more elaborate over
time. Interestingly, aside from beads and other ornaments, technologies for infor-
mation transmission never became well developed in the eastern Mediterranean
Upper Paleolithic. Prior to the terminal Pleistocene Natufian, decorated objects
are limited to a handful of pebbles and bone artefacts engraved with geometric
motifs (Hovers, 1990) and a pair of animal engravings from the Aurignacian layer
at Hayonim Cave (Belfer-Cohen & Bar-Yosef, 1981). The geometric markings are
not notably more complex that incised lines on cortical flint flakes from late Middle
Paleolithic layers in the same region (Marshack, 1996).
Because of the long history of research and abundance of well-documented sites,
the Middle and Upper Pleistocene archaeological sequence of Europe serves as a
kind of de facto reference standard for the rest of the world.The problem with this is
that cultural evolution shows very different trajectories in other parts of the world
(Kuhn & Hovers, 2013; McBrearty & Brooks, 2000). Even within Europe patterns
of diversification vary in neighbouring regions.
Europe as a whole witnessed nothing like the sharp reduction in alpha diversity
that accompanied the appearance of the early Levantine Mousterian between 250
ka and 200 ka. What is conventionally seen as a transition from Lower Paleolithic,
with large bifacial implements, to Middle Paleolithic, dominated by flake and blade
tools, took place gradually and in a piecemeal fashion. Numbers of bifaces declined
on average, the numbers and variety of flake tools increased gradually, but there
is no clear-cut chronological boundary (Kuhn, 2013; G. F. Monnier, 2006; Villa,
2009). After around 200 ka most of the lithic assemblages created across Europe
fall on the MP side of the spectrum, but there are still exceptions (Moncel et al.,
2018a). As for alpha diversity, my impression is that the diversification of methods
of débitage that began earlier in the Middle Pleistocene continued through the
first part of the Upper Pleistocene but at a more gradual pace. A few distinctive
techniques appeared (Delagnes, 1993), and the number of variants on the theme of
Levallois increased (Boëda et al., 2013; Kuhn, 2013; Shimelmitz & Kuhn, 2017b),
but the main developments in technological procedures were refinements of long-
established methods. Sometime during the later Middle Pleistocene hafting was
added to the technological repertoire of Eurasian hominins (see Chapter 3). Ochre
Diversity 239
and other colourants came into wide use after this time as well. Bones were increas-
ingly used as implements, particularly for retouching stone tools, a practice which
goes back to MIS 9 or earlier (Blasco et al., 2013; Daujeard et al., 2014; Moigne
et al., 2016). Even human bones were used as retouchers (Rougier et al., 2016) but
that is more a symptom of dire circumstances than technological evolution.
It is impossible to do justice to what we have learned about inter-assemblage
variation among Middle Paleolithic sites in western Europe in a few lines, or a few
dozen pages for that matter. It seems clear that beta diversity continued to expand in
the better-known parts of Europe through the end of the Middle Pleistocene and
into the early Upper Pleistocene. Researchers have identified a wider range of sites,
from localities with large mass kills to individual hunting events (e.g. Costamagno
et al., 2006; Gaudzinski-Windheuser & Niven, 2009; Jaubert & Delagnes, 2007;
Locht et al., 2002; Rendu et al., 2012; Rodríguez-Hidalgo et al., 2017; Starkovich &
Conard, 2015), base camps of course, as well as large workshop sites (Baena Preysler
et al., 2015; A. E. Clark, 2015; Kuhn et al., 2015), each with distinctive arrays of
artefacts and manufacture debris, and faunal remains. This is probably a reflection
of more highly differentiated land-use, but increasingly fine temporal resolution in
archaeological sites and larger numbers of well-controlled excavations, especially of
open-air localities, also contribute to the amplification of inter-assemblage diversity.
However, it is not all about sample size. Technological responses to local exigen-
cies as well as systemic patterns of foraging and mobility seem to be more clearly
expressed in terms of artefact life histories and even choices among alternative
modes of débitage (Delagnes & Rendu, 2011; Kuhn, 1995; Meignen et al., 2009;
Turq et al., 2017). Hominins were making a wider array of choices in producing
and using tools than ever before based on both the immediate circumstances and
their accumulated cultural knowledge.
The appearance of Upper Paleolithic technologies in western Eurasia during
the last 40,000 years of the Pleistocene signals another interval of alpha diver-
sity in Paleolithic technologies, although the most profound developments are
not expressed in lithic technology. Descriptions of the Upper Paleolithic focus
almost entirely on blade and bladelet production. In some cases, such as the early
Aurignacian, blades and bladelets were the products of distinct and independent
châines opératoires, whereas in others, such as the proto-Aurignacian, they seem
to represent different segments of a continuum. Almost all Upper Paleolithic
assemblages also contain flake cores and debris that had little to do with making
blades and bladelets. Whether these represent a separate production system or
simply the output of unskilled knappers is not clear. If anything, however, modes of
debitage became less diverse than in the preceding periods. By 35 ka or so, systems of
production, such as Levallois, Discoid, and Quina that had served hominins for 100s
of thousands of years, were no more to be found in western Eurasia.
Lithic technology may have become more narrowly focused in the Upper
Paleolithic, but other forms of material culture flourished. The real growth in
material culture diversity associated with the last stages of the European Paleolithic,
whether measured through the number of distinct procedures or the variety of
240 Diversity
artefact forms, comes in the form of implements made from osseous materials and
other substances that were used lightly or not at all by earlier hominins. Projectile
technologies, including spear-throwers and even the bow-and-arrow seem to have
proliferated in the European Upper Paleolithic (Hoffecker, 2005; I. Schmidt, 2015a;
Shea, 2006, 2009; Shea & Sisk, 2010; Villa & Soriano, 2010), not surprising for
populations inhabiting northern temperate zones during periods of mostly cold
climates. Other important additions to the technological repertoires of European
humans during the last half of the Upper Pleistocene relate not to implements
but procedures for processing and preserving food (Stiner, 2002). Techniques
such as stone boiling and grease rendering become more evident in sites dating
to the later part of the Upper Paleolithic (e.g. Manne 2014; Manne et al., 2012;
Nakazawa et al., 2009), although the practices could have begun much earlier (Speth,
2015). Grinding of small seeds and nuts is typically associated with the end of
the Pleistocene and early Holocene, but there is growing evidence for its practice
more than 25,000 years ago by Upper Paleolithic Gravettian populations in Italy,
Russia and the Czech Republic (Aranguren et al., 2007; Mariotti Lippi et al., 2015;
Revedin et al., 2010). Although not as flashy or impressive as new forms of weapons,
by altering the nutritional properties of foods these processing technologies funda-
mentally changed the relations between human populations and their resource base.
Of course ethnologies primarily serving to transmit information –art, ornaments,
and the like –also become more ubiquitous and more diversified with the earliest
Upper Paleolithic (Conard, 2003; García-Diez et al., 2015; Higham et al., 2012;
Pike et al., 2012; Porr, 2010; Quiles et al., 2016)
It is difficult to assess incremental changes in beta (intra-site) diversity during
the last half of the Upper Pleistocene. In part this is because of the sheer quantity of
information. At the same time there are biases in how archaeologists typically report
findings from Upper Paleolithic versus earlier cultures. Researchers are quick to
assign specialized functions to Upper Paleolithic sites and more circumspect about
drawing similar conclusions about earlier sites. Perhaps this reflects real differences
in the grain and structure of the respective archaeological records, but it may also
be a function of preconceptions. It is widely assumed that Upper Paleolithic people
practiced more highly differentiated, “logistical” foraging systems than did earlier
humans (e.g. G. A. Clark & Barton, 2016; French & Collins, 2015; Riel-Salvatore
& Barton, 2007), meaning that one should expect a range of different “kinds” of
sites. In fact, we really ought to expect an increase in diversity of land-use patterns
rather than a categorical shift. Some studies show only comparatively minor macro-
scale changes in land-use between the Upper Paleolithic and earlier periods (Miller
& Barton, 2008) while others detect more profound differences (e.g. Sisk, 2011;
R. White, 1982). In any case, at least one new category of locality does appear with
the Upper Paleolithic, places devoted specifically to art and the storage and dissem-
ination of information. Dating of decorated caves such as Chauvet and others shows
that predominantly symbolic uses of the landscape were expressed materially fairly
soon after modern humans arrived in Eurasia (Clottes, 1996; González-Sainz et al.,
2013; Pike et al., 2012). Some authors argue for the existence of “mega-sites” that
Diversity 241
served as regional centres for social interaction and information exchange (Bahn,
1982; R. White, 1982) at this time.
In attempting to assess diversity at even larger, inter-regional or gamma scales,
comparability becomes an even more serious obstacle. For better or worse the
only common thread across western Eurasia are broad categories of named assem-
blage types, and broad categories of reduction methods. As discussed in the opening
section of this chapter, not everyone in Europe used the same approaches to defining
and categorizing Paleolithic assemblages, and some academic traditions produce
more typological “splitters” and some more “lumpers.” Nonetheless, broad-brush
comparisons can be useful.
The Paleolithic records of southern France and northern Spain are probably the
most intensively studied in Europe, and they are a good place to start. One thing
for certain, the Paleolithic of southwest France is no longer the same as described
by F. Bordes in the mid-20th century (Bordes, 1961a, 1972). The simple alter-
nation of four or five distinct Mousterian cultures between the last interglacial
(MIS 5) and late MIS 3 is no longer a viable scenario. The region still shows a
wider range of variation among Middle Paleolithic assemblages than any other place
in Eurasia, but the structure of that variation is much more complex than Bordes
could have imagined. Researchers now recognize dozens of variants on Bordes’ five
basic Mousterian themes that were defined based on variation retouched tool forms
and characteristic methods of blank manufacture.The development of luminescence
and uranium series dating has also revolutionized our understanding of how this
variation is partitioned in time and space. Most obviously we now know that the
Middle Paleolithic lasted twice as long as Bordes and his contemporaries thought,
with some assemblages dating as early as MIS 7. Large-scale syntheses (Delagnes,
Jaubert, & Meignen, 2007; Delagnes & Meignen, 2006; Geneste et al., 1997; Guibert
et al., 2008; Meignen et al., 2009) also show that, as Mellars suggested many years
ago (Mellars, 1970), some of this variation is chronological. Diversity increased in
the later (Upper Pleistocene) part of the sequence (Delagnes & Meignen, 2006), but
some of the variability is synchronic as well: not all of the assemblages dating to the
same period are similar in terms of retouched tool forms or modes of débitage. As
has long been recognized there is also some geographic partitioning among Middle
Paleolithic assemblage types, though there is also a great deal of spatial overlap among
some of them (e.g. Delagnes, Jaubert, & Meignen 2007).
The complexity and internal diversity of the Middle and Upper Pleistocene
record in southwest France is partially due to the unmatched intensity of research
in the area: more assemblages usually means more kinds of assemblage. But it is not
entirely a product of sampling. The neighbouring region of northern Spain, which
has been almost as intensively researched as southern France, shows very different
patterns of variation. Many of the same basic typologically and technologically-
defined assemblage types are present, but there is less variation and chronological
patterns are less well expressed (de la Torre, Martínez-Moreno & Mora, 2013).
Farther afield new kinds of assemblage appear, but total variability is less compared
with southern France and northern Spain. In Central and Eastern Europe, dates
242 Diversity
for assemblages with different forms of small biface –called late Micoquian,
Keilmessergruppe and Blattspitzengruppe—overlap with those of “typical” forms
of Mousterian during the early Upper Pleistocene (Conard, Bolus et al., 2012;
Kozłowski, 1992, 2014; Marks & Chabai, 2006). Needless to say, explanations for
this diversity remain equally varied. Marks and Chabai propose that Micoquian and
Mousterian industries on the Crimean peninsula represented separate groups with
very different foraging adaptations (Marks & Chabai, 2006), but other authors raise
the possibility that the presence or absence of particular shaped implements is a
matter of function rather than differences in cultural background. As biogeographic
theory would predict, some inter-regional differences as well as overall levels of
diversity in late Middle and early Pleistocene assemblages may be products of geo-
graphic barriers. For example, the Pyrenees mountains may have been a partial
barrier to hominin movement and communication during MIS 3 (Thiébaut et al.,
2012).The striking diversity of Middle Paleolithic assemblage types in the Caucasus
mountains (Golovanova & Doronichev, 2003) may be largely a product of geog-
raphy as well. The Caucasus are topographically complex, and are situated at the
interface of several major geographic regions, including the Near East, the eastern
European plain, and Central Asia, precisely the kind of situation we would expect
to lead to cultural diversification.
The period between 50 ka and 40 ka, which contains the earliest Upper
Paleolithic and latest Middle Paleolithic assemblages in Europe, witnessed radical
changes in diversity at the broadest scale. It has been common to associate region-
alization, or development of distinct local archaeological material cultures, with
the Upper Paleolithic, but the situation is more complex and interesting than that.
“Final Middle Paleolithic” assemblages across western and central Europe show
considerable variability (Kozłowski, 1992), although certain kinds of assemblages,
such as those dominated by discoid flake production and denticulate tools, are very
common (Faivre et al., 2016; Faivre et al., 2017). The evolution of the first Upper
Paleolithic or “transitional” technocomplexes signals greater diversity. As discussed
in Chapter 6, the earliest or “basal” Upper Paleolithic industries in central and
western Europe are an extraordinarily diverse lot, differing in terms of character-
istic artefact forms, modes of blank production, ornamentation, and even hominin
associations. It is difficult to quantify the degree of differentiation, but it would
be safe to say that an experienced archaeologist would have a much easier time
distinguishing Szeletian, “LRJ,” Uluzzian, Chattelperronian, or Bohunician arte-
fact assemblages than they would distinguishing among late Mousterian collections
from the same regions. Given the climatic instability and complex demographic
situation of the period between 45 ka and 40 ka, this diversity is not surprising.
What is more surprising is the reversal in trends toward large-scale diversity that
characterize the period between 40 ka and 30 ka. The regional patchwork in earliest
Upper Paleolithic technologies is truncated by a series of cultural phenomena that
show unprecedented geographic scope. Proto- Aurignacian assemblages, with a
strong focus on bladelet production, appeared across much of southern Europe
in contexts dating between roughly 42 ka and 39 ka (Banks, d’Errico, & Zilhão,
Diversity 243
2013). The succeeding early Aurignacian has a sub-continental-scale distribution.

Conservatively, the Aurignacian occurs across western and central Europe, Anatolia,
and into the northern Levant, though some scholars would extend its range even
further, into Iran and even Central Asia (Banks et al., 2013; Hublin, 2015; Kozłowski
& Otte, 2000; Mellars, 2006; Otte, 2014; Otte et al., 2007; Otte & Kozłowski,
2004). The precise chronological boundaries of the early Aurignacian remain con-
troversial, due primarily to uncertainties with 14C dates from the time period, but
the general time frame is 41–37 ka (Banks et al., 2013; Higham et al., 2012, 2009;
Ronchitelli et al., 2014; Szmidt et al., 2010; Wood et al., 2014; Zilhão & d’Errico,
2003). The succeeding Gravettian has an even wider, albeit different, distribution.
Gravettian assemblages of one form or another are found across all of unglaciated
western and eastern Europe (Kozłowsk 2015; Bicho, Cascalheira Gonçalve, 2017).
Unlike the Aurignacian they are never found in the Near East, but in compen-
sation the range of Gravettian (or Gravettoid) assemblages extends much farther
east. Neither the Aurignacian nor the Gravettian is homogeneous across its entire
range: there are many distinct regional variants of each.Yet they all share a number
of characteristics that justify assigning them to the same broad taxon.
The geographic coverage of the Aurignacian and Gravettian is unprecedented in
Eurasia. No single comparable Middle Paleolithic complex in Eurasia occupies an
area of comparable size.These “cultures” occur across areas equal to, and more con-
tinuous than, the area covered by basic technological procedures such as Levallois or
bifacial shaping.Yet they are different orders of phenomena. Handaxes and Levallois
are narrowly defined characters, and in one form or another were created over
hundreds of thousands of years.The Aurignacian and Gravettian are each defined by
a series of linked behavioural traits in several domains of material culture, and they
were produced over periods of “only” a few thousand years each.
The vast distributions of the Aurignacian and Gravettian do not represent any-
thing that we would recognize as a culture in the sense of a group with which
people consciously identify, and for which clear boundaries separate “us” from
“them.” The geographic scale of these sets of linked material culture traits is on par
with something like a language phylum in North America, a set of distantly related
languages that share a common ancestor (Buchanan et al., 2017). The distribution
of material culture traits probably reflects the scales of social networks and con-
nectivity between neighbouring groups.The near-continental-scale distributions of
the Aurignacian and Gravettian do tell us that the human meta-populations were
large enough that information travelled easily between neighbouring groups, but
not so dense that competition had led to the establishment of impermeable social
boundaries among adjacent demes. Local populations, defined by geographic and/
or social boundaries, undoubtedly existed, but the boundaries between them open
enough to promote fluid circulation of ideas and or individuals. Genetic evidence
suggests that the spread of the Aurignacian and the Gravettian were facilitated by
movements of peoples, but the Gravettian at least does not represent a complete
population replacement (Fu et al., 2016). Along with genes, populations exchanged
ideas about how to make stone tools and Venus figurines.
244 Diversity
The Gravettian is the last Paleolithic “mega-complex” in Eurasia. Marked region-

alization (re)appears gradually around MIS 2. In western Europe this is marked by
the appearance of the Solutrean in Iberia and France, and by late Gravettian and
Epigravettian technologies in similar-aged deposits in other unglaciated parts of
Europe. The structure of variation in material culture, including lithics but also
ornamentation, art and other technological products, continued to fragment geo-
graphically through the end of the Pleistocene and early Holocene, prior at least
to the arrival of Neolithic. For example Maier (2015) uses the very large corpus
of documented Magdalenian sites from north-central Europe to document the
co-existence of five distinct regional groupings, expressed in several dimensions of
economy and material culture, between the Rhône valley in the west and the Vistula
valley in the east. In this, as in many other things, the LGM seems to have been a
tipping point. Perhaps the re-organization of territories due to glacial expansion,
combined with steep environmental gradients and more impermeable geographic
barriers helped to establish the foundational architecture for cultural differenti-
ation (Straus, 1991, 2000). Interestingly, European Upper Paleolithic populations
from after the LGM were significantly smaller in stature on average than pre-LGM
groups, a fact which could be attributable to profound changes in economic regimes
and nutrition around this time (Formicola & Giannecchini, 1999).
7.3.6 Late Middle and Upper Pleistocene Diversity in Asia,

500 ka–10 ka
The later Middle and Upper Pleistocene archaeological records of East Asia, China
in particular, show a remarkable degree of stability compared to their counterparts
in the global west. The marked expansions and contractions of diversity at different
scales and the rapid turnover of cultural variants simply do not appear to be
expressed in much of East Asia. To a certain extent, the perceived homogeneity
could be a product of the comparatively low density of well-dated and reported
sites, but by now there is a large enough corpus of reliable information to have
confidence in the general trends. This is not to say that the record is completely
static and unvarying. New methods of production and shaping appeared and old
ways of doing things disappeared. But the production of novelty and the turnover
of “cultures” proceeds at a much more leisurely pace in East Asia than in western
Eurasia or Africa.
One obvious change in both alpha and beta diversity within China is marked by
assemblages with handaxes and other LCTs.The material from the Bose Basin seems
to date to the very end of the Lower Pleistocene. But there are later examples as
well. The Luonan Basin in north-central China contains numerous open-air arch-
aeological localities. Some contain handaxes and other LCTs, while others yield only
small cores and flake tools. The various findspots and sites appear to reflect peri-
odic occupation of the basin throughout the Middle Pleistocene (Lu, Zhang et al.,
2011). The handaxes from Luonan appear quite different from the artefacts from
the Bose Basin. They are often made on large flakes and resemble African or west
Diversity 245
Asian counterparts more closely than do the Bose handaxes (Moncel et al., 2018b;
Petraglia & Shipton, 2008).The handaxe-bearing deposits have not been extensively
dated, but assemblages from the Liuwan site, which contain only small cores and
flake tools, date to between roughly 675 and 525 ka (Sun et al., 2014). It is likely that
the appearance of handaxes and cleavers made on large flakes in the Luonan Basin
post-dates these assemblages, putting them in the mid-or late Middle Pleistocene. It
is important to emphasize that this technology did not spread as widely across nor-
thern or Central China as it did in Africa and western Eurasia. Though the number
of known sites with Acheulean-like assemblages has grown markedly in the last two
decades, they are still far outnumbered by localities with Mode 1 technologies. As in
western Eurasia and Africa, the dichotomy between cave and open-air sites holds in
China as well. All the major sites with LCTs are open-air locations, whereas core and
small-tool assemblages occur in caves as well as in open-air contexts.
The stability of the Chinese record is such that X. Gao and colleagues have
proposed that the term Middle Paleolithic be abandoned entirely. They contend
that the tripartite division of the Chinese Paleolithic is an inappropriate impos-
ition of chrono-cultural frameworks from western Eurasia and Africa onto the East
Asian evidence. Sites and assemblages are called Middle Paleolithic because they
date to a particular time period rather than because of their technological or typo-
logical characteristics (Gao, 1999; F. Li, 2014; Norton et al., 2009). These authors
argue for replacing the tripartite terminology with two broad periods, Early and
Late Paleolithic: the boundary would be marked by the appearance of prismatic
blades but especially microblade technology. In fact, lithic technology was not abso-
lutely stationary during the Early Paleolithic period in East Asia. The frequency of
formal discoid core reduction increased during the later Middle and early Upper
Pleistocene (Kei, 2012; F. Li, 2014). Bipolar or hammer-anvil technique is also more
common at late Middle Pleistocene sites such as Zhoukoudian locality 15 than in
earlier assemblages (Gao, 1999, 2001). Nonetheless, expansion of intra-assemblage
diversity in reduction methods and implement forms over the Middle and early
Upper Pleistocene is much more gradual and incremental than in western Eurasia
and Africa.
The Upper Pleistocene saw more profound but often highly localized changes
in technological diversity within China. Something resembling a European
Mousterian assemblage, with both discoid and Levallois technology, is found in
a few sites in northeast China such as Jinsitai in Inner Mongolia, where it dates
minimally to 45 ka (Bar-Yosef & Wang, 2012; Li et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2010).
Between 40 ka and 35 ka, a distinct form of lithic assemblage made its appearance
in western China at sites such as Shuidonggou localities 1, 2, and 7 (Boëda et al.,
2013; F. Li et al., 2013; Madsen et al., 2014; Nian, Gao, & Zhou, 2014; Pei et al.,
2014; Peng, Wang, & Gao, 2014). The presence of systematic macro-blade manu-
facture using Levallois and non-Levallois reduction systems is unique for China,
though similar kinds of assemblages are known from northeast Asia, including
Mongolia (Krivoshapkin, Anoikin, & Brantingham, 2006; Kuhn & Zwyns, 2014;
Madsen et al., 2001; Zwyns et al., 2014, 2011). As with the earlier bifaces, these
246 Diversity
examples of Levallois and prismatic blade technologies remain highly localized.

To date they are confined to semi-arid areas in the north and west of the country.
Moreover, they do not even persist in the western regions where they are known.
At Shuidonggou locality 2, core and flake industries seem to have replaced early
blade technologies by about 30 ka (F. Li, Kuhn et al., 2013). In most of China,
broad regional patterns such as the division between pebble tool assemblages
in south China and small core and flake tool industries in the north continued
through the Upper Pleistocene (Bar-Yosef & Wang, 2012; Gao, 2013; Qu et al.,
2013; Wei et al., 2016, 2017).
In fact, the most important changes in technological diversity within the Upper
Pleistocene in China did not involve stone tool making at all. Late Pleistocene
hominins in China developed and adopted entirely new technologies while con-
tinuing to make stone tools with methods that had been in place for hundreds of
thousands of years. “Upper Paleolithic” sites such as Zhoukoudian Upper Cave and
Xiaogushan contain bone and antler tools, some quite sophisticated, yet associated
with “simple” flake tools.These locations, as well as Shuidonggou locality 2, also con-
tain ornaments made from ostrich eggshell, marine shells and animal teeth, the earliest
evidence of material culture used explicitly for information transmission in East Asia
(F. Li et al., 2019; Qu et al., 2013; Wei et al., 2016, 2017). The site of Shizitan 29 has
yielded possible evidence for flax fibre processing dating to between 28 ka and 18 ka
(Song et al., 2017). Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers across Asia even adopted ceramic
technology between 20 ka and 13 ka, much earlier than in other parts of the world
(Cohen et al., 2017; Derevianko et al., 2004;Y. V. Kuzmin, 2006; Wu et al., 2012).
The first broad and abrupt change in Chinese Paleolithic technology to occur
after the initial appearance of stone tools in the Lower Pleistocene began between
25 ka and 20 ka with the spread of pressure microblade technology. The shift
was not instantaneous: it took as much as 20,000 years for micro-blades to pene-
trate into some areas (Bar-Yosef & Wang, 2012; Qu et al., 2013; Yi et al., 2013).
A clear extension of a set of procedures and strategies distributed across all of
North Asia, the adoption of micro-blade-based manufacture strategies had funda-
mental implications for the organization of labour, technological complexity, and
other dimensions of behaviour (L. Barton, Brantingham, & Ji, 2007; Bleed, 2002;
Elston & Brantingham, 2002;Yi et al., 2013) (see discussion in Chapters 3 and 4).
Despite its many potential advantages, this approach to toolmaking only became
widely established in north China. In much of south China people continued
to rely on pebble and flake tools well into the Neolithic period (Bar-Yosef &
Wang, 2012; Dennell, 2009; Qu et al., 2013; Yi et al., 2013). Once again, the
advantages of apparent “technological advances” were not sufficient for them
to supplant tactics of tool manufacture and use that had been in place since the
Lower Pleistocene. The failure of microblade technology to sweep across south
China the way it had in the rest of North Asia also shows the stability of the
primary expression of gamma diversity in the Chinese Paleolithic. Whatever the
factors behind it, the division between north and south was robust in the face of
major climate cycles, the appearance of novel technologies and even the influx of
new populations of hominin.
Diversity 247
India and South Asia provide different perspectives on beta diversity across
Middle Pleistocene landscapes, comparable to what is known from East African
localities. The large groups of sites documented in the Hunsgi and Baichbal valleys
contains a wide range of localities, including large sites with multiple artefact classes
and evidence for diverse activities, smaller “special use” sites, perhaps butchering
stations, and workshops. One site, Isampur, appears to be a dedicated quarry work-
shop, where blocks of stone were extracted from the substrate and knapped to
produce large flake blanks for cleavers and handaxes (Paddayya & Petraglia, 1993;
Petraglia, 1998; Petraglia, LaPorta, & Paddayya, 1999).
It has long been thought that Acheulean assemblages based on large flakes persisted
until comparatively late in South Asia and India in particular. However recent research
shows that changes in lithic technology, including a diversification of small- tool
production, also began in India during the mid-Middle Pleistocene. At the site of
Attirampakkam, “Middle Paleolithic” assemblages with Levallois production date as
far back as 385 ka, and persist at least until ca. 170 ka (Akhilesh et al., 2018).The scar-
city of other dated sites makes it difficult to know whether trajectories of change and
diversification over this key interval deviated from neighbouring regions in subtler
ways. India shows a very distinctive pattern of change over the Upper Pleistocene.
Generalized “Middle Paleolithic” industries prevailed in many areas until sometime
between 45 ka and 30 ka, when they were replaced by “microlithic” assemblages with
geometric backed tools. The date for this transition, and the question of whether it
represents an in situ development or intrusion of an exogenous population and culture,
remain hotly contested (Hiscock, Clarkson, & Mackay, 2011; James & Petraglia, 2005;
Mellars et al., 2013; Mishra, Chauhan, & Singhvi, 2013; Petraglia et al., 2009; P. Roberts,
Boivin, & Petraglia, 2015). It should be noted that while some authors describe these as
“microblade” industries (e.g. Mishra et al., 2013), they differ technologically from the
pressure microblade assemblages of North and East Asia.They would be more properly
characterized as bladelet technologies according to the criteria outlined in Chapter 4.
7.4 Summary: Diverse trends in diversity

It is impossible to summarize global developments in diversity at different scales in
a single table. The summary discussion and figures are thus organized around three
continental-scale regions, Africa, western Eurasia, and Asia.
The earliest cultural remains in sub- Saharan Africa (Figure 7.4) show very
limited diversity at all three scales. What inter-regional differences exist can mostly
be attributed to local raw materials, although geographic vicariance may also have
had an effect. The appearance and development of LCTs beginning around 1.7 my
led to heightened diversity at a number of scales. The new artefact forms and
manufacture techniques inevitably augment alpha diversity, but expanded ranges
of site contexts and assemblage contents also suggest more varied activities and
differentiated land-use. After around 500 ka, a new stage of diversification in material
culture began, marked by the appearance of specialized methods of blank produc-
tion (Levallois, blades) as well as entirely new practices such as hafting and use of
pigments.This interval may also have seen greater regionalization in material culture.
248 Diversity
FIGURE 7.4 Trends in diversity in sub-Saharan and North Africa.
Trends towards expanded alpha, beta, and gamma diversity persisted through
the later Middle Pleistocene in sub-Saharan Africa with the addition of new
variants on old technologies as well as new kinds of technology (heat treatment,
composite mastics). The rapid turnover of assemblage types after MIS 5 in South
Africa marks a novel sort of dynamic. However, this pattern is not continent-
wide: Upper Pleistocene MSA sequences of North and East Africa are much
more stable. The appearance of LSA industries with blade and bladelet tech-
nology actually signals a reduction of diversity in lithic technology in South and
North Africa, although other forms of material culture flourished. Importantly,
the spread of microlithic technologies seems to have occurred later in much of
North Africa than it does south of the Sahara.
Diversity 249
FIGURE 7.5 Trends in diversity in Europe and southwest Asia.
The record in western Eurasia (Figure 7.5) is of course somewhat shorter than
in Africa. Until around 800 ka, material culture shows a remarkable lack of diver-
sity, with simple Mode 1 assemblages persisting across all of the inhabited parts
of Europe. The widespread appearance of Mode 2 assemblages with well-made
LCTs across Europe and the Levant after 800 ka had similar consequences for
alpha and beta diversity as in post-1.7 my southern Africa. In the absence of many
well-preserved Middle Pleistocene landscapes, the sharp contrasts between material
250 Diversity
years BP
10,000
20,000
rapid diffusion of microblade technology
diversification in material culture/technologies

appearance of “Western” UP
50,000
100,000
moderate diversification in flake production
500,000
regional diversity in Mode 1 vs 2

Mode 1 assemblages common
1,000,000
1,500,000
earliest stone tools
FIGURE 7.6 Trends in diversity in Asia.
culture inventories of cave and open-air sites is one of the main expressions of beta
diversity in western Eurasia. Sometime after 450 ka, western Eurasia witnessed the
same diversification of flake production technologies as occurred in Africa: if any-
thing, blank production was even more varied in Europe and the Levant. Other
developments, such as hafted points and pigments, become apparent somewhat
later. Inter-regional differences in material culture are also augmented in the later
Middle Pleistocene of Europe, beginning with the differential distribution of Mode
1 and Mode 2 assemblages, and continuing with the development of different
regional variants of early Middle Paleolithic industries. In southwest Asia, the spread
Diversity 251
of early Mousterian assemblages around 250–200 ka resulted in a loss of techno-

logical diversity at the alpha scale, but this did not occur in Europe. Moving into the
Upper Pleistocene, dynamics of change in technologies became regionalized across
western Eurasia as well, with turnover of different technological variants in some
areas and relative continuity in others.
The appearance of the modern humans and Upper Paleolithic assemblages
after 50 ka in Eurasia had contrasting effects on technological diversity at different
scales. The proliferation of blade and bladelet technology and the disappearance of
Levallois, discoid and other earlier methods result in a loss of alpha diversity in lithic
manufacture. In some places the expansion of other forms of material culture (bone
and antler implements, art and ornaments) compensates for the loss of methods
for producing stone tools. Patterns of beta diversity, variation among sites, seem to
continue trends towards differentiation begun during earlier periods. At the largest
scale, the marked regional diversity of the earliest Upper Paleolithic was truncated
by the near-continental distributions of the Aurignacian and Gravettian material
culture. Strong patterns of regionalization became re-established in western Eurasia
at the end of MIS 3 or the beginning of MIS 2.
The records of technological diversity in South and East Asia (Figure 7.6) seem
less eventful than those of Europe, the Levant, or Africa. In part this may be attribut-
able to a lower density of well-studied sites and assemblages. But the broad trajectories
of change as understood today seem to provide robust evidence for a greater level
of stability than is observed in other parts of the world. We now know that Mode
2 assemblages with large handaxes, cleavers, and picks were present in some parts of
East Asia during the Middle Pleistocene, though they are not as ubiquitous as core
and flake or pebble tool assemblages. In South Asia Mode 2 prevailed throughout
the Middle Pleistocene. East Asia did not witness the rather abrupt “technological
radiation” in methods for flake production that characterized Europe, West Asia, and
Africa between 500 ka and 400 ka. Instead, there was a very gradual expansion in
the range of techniques for producing flake blanks over the latter half of the Middle
Pleistocene and the beginning of the Upper Pleistocene. The Middle Paleolithic of
South Asia seems better defined, though the pace of its development is unclear.
The transition between Early and Late Paleolithic in China also occurred at
a different pace than the major changes in technology during the late Upper
Pleistocene in “the West.” Macro-blade assemblages resembling the early Upper
Paleolithic of Central Asia and Europe did made a brief appearance in north-
west China, but they did not spread or persist. The most salient changes in lithic
technology, marked by the spread of micro-blade-based systems of artefact pro-
duction, occurred later, roughly coincident with the LGM. On the other hand,
developments in other forms of material culture (bone and antler tools, personal
ornaments), including ceramics, preceded major changes in lithic technology in
much of East Asia. The development of bladelet/microlithic technologies occurred
earlier in South Asia. Due to the limited database we are not in position to assess
patterns of diversity in lithic technology or other dimensions of material culture.
8
ARTEFACT COMPLEXITY
8.1 What do we mean by complexity?

The term “complexity” has taken on several very different meanings in the nat-
ural and social sciences. In its most common usage, the term refers to the number
of parts or distinct elements that make up a whole. A single-celled organism is
on the simple end of things, a multi-cellular organism is more complex. In this
context, complex essentially means internally differentiated or intricate. In fields
such as “complex systems” or “complexity science,” the word complex refers
to specific system- wide dynamics such as self- organization. Self- organizing
complex systems are characterized by properties such as emergence, wherein
the interactions of multiple independent agents or parts, behaving according
to simple rules, produce system-wide dynamics that are not predicted by the
behaviour of any of the individual components. Many kinds of group-level phe-
nomena, from the behaviour of human crowds, to the seemingly coordinated
predator-avoidance of shoals of fish, to spontaneous phase-changes in materials
or networks, can be described as complex in this second sense (Bak, 1996; Gel-
Man, 1995; Waldrop, 1993).
When we discuss complexity in human technologies, we most often use the
first definition, referring to the number of parts and the interactions among them.
A sharp-edged flake or a single-piece wooden spear is a simple artefact, a toggling
harpoon made up of 11 distinct elements is a much more complex one. Procedural
complexity can be conceptualized in a similar way, as the number of different kinds
of actions or gestures, or the number of hierarchically organized sets of actions,
necessary to produce a desired result.This is not to say that artefacts or technological
processes do not also sometimes behave as complex systems: they do. However, it
is a perspective which has not often been applied to technology in archaeological
contexts.
Artefact complexity 253
The story we most often tell about technological evolution during the
Paleolithic is one of gradually increasing complexity of artefacts and production
processes. Over time things come to have more and more parts.This trend is widely
assumed to be a direct function of the cognitive sophistication of human ancestors
combined with the gradual accumulation of cultural knowledge. Hominins got
smarter over time, it is thought, which enabled them to make more complex, and
presumably more effective artefacts. At the same time, cumulative culture enabled
humans to develop a deep repertoire of know-how that could be applied to making
more and more complicated artefacts.Yet our knowledge of long-term trends and
synchronous variation across the Paleolithic world is not completely congruent
with a model of gradually increasing complexity. “Progress” in human technolo-
gies was, and is, neither inevitable nor monotonic. Sometimes change occurred
quickly, while for long periods of time neither artefacts nor procedures became
more complicated. Elaborate procedures appeared and then disappeared, giving way
to seemingly simpler technologies. Sometimes cognitively “advanced” hominins
made surprisingly simple artefacts and vice versa. And of course there are many
different pathways toward increasing complexity in artefacts and procedures.
Although archaeologists often speak about the complexity of artefacts, there has
been surprisingly little development in methods for measuring it. In the 1970’s,
W. Oswalt (1976) developed one system for quantifying artefact complexity. Oswalt
defined a “techno-unit” as a discrete component of an artefact that plays a unique
role in its construction or function. The complexity of an implement would be
measured in terms of the number of techno-units it contained. A throwing stick
consists of a single techno-unit.The shaft, forshaft, and point of an atl-atl dart are all
separate techno-units, as are binders, ties, fletching, and so on. On the other hand,
each of the microlithic stone barbs in a composite spear tip would not be counted
individually: because they all served the same purpose, they would amount to a
single techno-unit. The result is an intuitively satisfying and replicable means for
assessing the complexity of whole artefacts (Figure 8.1).
Logical as it is, Oswalt’s system has been used sporadically by archaeologists. I am
unaware of any systematic attempts to apply Oswalt’s system to individual stone
artefacts or artefact types, and the prospect seems fraught with difficulties. Advocates
of the techno-functional approach (Boëda, 2001; Bonilauri, 2010; Soriano, 2000)
argue that even single-piece implements consist of several distinct parts. However,
because these “parts” are not physically discrete it difficult to differentiate them.
Moreover, within this system of classification all implements have the same basic
number of elements. Counting distinct attributes is not much more helpful. Is a
side-notched arrowhead more complex than a bipointed one? Is a scraper with
a serrated edge more complex than one with a smooth edge? It depends on
how attributes have been defined. If a smooth edge is equivalent to the absence of
serrations, then a denticulate tool is more complex. If smooth and serrated edges
are considered alternative forms of the same feature, then neither is more complex.
The greatest obstacle to applying Oswalt’s approach to the Paleolithic comes
from the fact that we so seldom deal with complete implements. Before the hafting
254 Artefact complexity
FIGURE 8.1 We would all agree that most of these artefacts (a–d) are simple but that
one (e) is quite complex. a, b, Aranda throwing sticks; c, d, Hopi throwing sticks; e,
Inuit toggle-headed harpoon (from Oswalt 1976, Figures 5.1, 5.5).
of artefacts became widespread, starting 500–400 ka (see below and Chapter 3)

stone artefacts were likely the most elaborate material constructs of hominins.
After composite tools came into widespread use, the stone elements represented an
increasingly minor component in the complex whole. Because of this, it is more
useful to apply an approach similar to Oswalt’s to procedures of lithic production

and shaping alone. Whereas we may not have complete stone artefacts to study,
we often have at least a sense of complete reduction sequences. Typical methods of
blank production may or may not involve a series of actions aimed at establishing
core form, reshaping and strengthening the platform, adjusting the contours of
the faces from which blanks will be removed, error correction, and so on. In prin-
ciple at least these are free to vary—the only absolutely essential act common to
all procedures is the striking of a blow to remove a flake. Perreault and colleagues
(2013) proposed just such a system and applied it to a range of blank production
procedures from the Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic. The method is some-
what constrained by prior definitions of relevant stages, steps, or modules of the
lithic reduction process. However, I would argue we know more about these than
we do about the functional aspects of different parts of a scraper or an arrow-
head, and what we do not know is experimentally accessible. As with Oswalt’s
method, this approach is most easily applied to idealized modal conceptualizations
of manufacture procedures: only with more-or-less complete refitting sets would
it be applicable to individual reduction events. However, it is the best conceptual
model going.
One aspect of Oswalt’s thinking that should be emulated in any measure of
complexity, whether applied to implements or to procedures, is his insistence
on counting only elements with distinct functions. It is vital to distinguish the
number of actual actions or gestures that went into making an artefact from the
number of different kinds of actions or gestures. The removal of 25 blades from
a core does not by itself imply a more complex set of actions than the removal
of only 15 blades. The lengths of reduction sequences, the number of blanks
produced, or the number of flakes detached in shaping an implement do tell us
something interesting about raw material economy, investment in artefact pro-
duction or about the life histories of artefacts. However, by themselves, these facts
provide evidence for a longer sequence of actions, but not necessarily a more
complex one.
In investigating the complexity of artefact production, it is also important
to account for as much of the complete chaîne opératoire as possible. In principle,
different segments of the chaîne opératoire might vary independently. Just as in other
aspects of life, procedural complexity at one stage might encourage greater or lesser
complexity at another. Working to get access to the best raw materials might help
people produce objects that would be impossible to achieve using run-of-the-mill
stone (Tomasso & Porraz, 2016). Heat treating of crypto-crystalline silicate rocks,
which can be an involved and demanding process (but see Mercieca & Hiscock
2008; Schmidt & Mackay, 2016), improves the working properties of some rocks
substantially by reducing fracture toughness (Domanski & Webb, 1992, 2017), so that
stones with poor flaking properties can be employed in demanding procedures such
as bifacial thinning and microblade production (Brown et al., 2012). Elaboration at
one stage can also eliminate the need for complicated procedures at the next. The
more effort people put into shaping the core in order to produce blanks with par-
ticular physical properties, the less work is needed to shape those blanks once they
are struck. Among Middle and Upper Pleistocene assemblages in western Eurasia as
a group, there is a general tradeoff between complexity in débitage (blank produc-
tion) and façonage (implement shaping) (Delagnes & Meignen, 2006; Meignen et al.,
2009). The products of methods that produce blanks of regular and predictable
shapes and sizes (such as prismatic blades or Levallois flakes or points) may be used
with a minimum of additional modification. Conversely, blanks that are made using
less elaborated methods may require quite a bit of secondary shaping to transform
them into useful implements.
The number of steps in a process is just one measure of complexity. Another
dimension, albeit one that is less easily measured, is modularity and hierarchical
organization of a set of procedures. As Isaac noted more than 40 years ago (Isaac,
1976), hierarchical organization of procedures or actions is a strong measure of
evolved complexity in cognition and behaviour (Coolidge & Wynn, 2009; Stout,
2011). In this context, the term hierarchical organization refers to nesting of
procedures into a series of higher-order levels. For example, production of bifacial
projectile points can be divided into a series of more-or-less independent “modules”
such as raw material procurement, core shaping, blank production, blank shaping
(preforming) and finishing. Perhaps the best known example is E. Callahan’s analysis
of staged production of Paleoindian fluted points from the eastern United States
(Callahan, 1996) (Figure 8.2). Each module involves somewhat different techno-
logical procedures: core shaping would require hard-hammer percussion whereas
finishing of the edge would be done with applied pressure or even abrasion. Each of
these stages might in turn contain sub-routines. What is crucial is that the modules
must be executed in the correct sequence to produce a successful outcome. The
extent of hierarchical organization in lithic technology has implications for cog-
nitive processes as well as for the most effective kinds of mechanisms for cultural
transmission. This sort of modularity in technology could also lead to greater flexi-
bility in potential products just as modularity in development permits phenotypic
plasticity (Stout, 2011: 1051).
While it is clear that hierarchical modularity is an important dimension of any
technological system, it is less clear how we can recognize it in lithic technology. Like
complexity, there is no universal scale for assessing structural hierarchy. Depending
on the detail of analysis, one could argue that any act of flaking represents a hier-
archical sequence of actions. One means of understanding hierarchical organization
in lithic technology is through decision nodes and evidence of independence. Where
procedures follow on one another through mechanical necessity there is little room
for choice. If knappers made choices in moving from one module to the next, then
we can say that the system was hierarchically organized. If a sequence of actions
always occurred together, in the same order, then it is better to consider them part
of a single module or level. To cite an obvious example one cannot make a stone
artefact without first obtaining some stone. The fact that these steps always occur
in the same order is not evidence of hierarchical organization or choices made by
hominins: they did not have the choice of making stone tools before they actually
collected the stone.
FIGURE 8.2 E. Callahan’s schematic illustration of paradigmatic “hierarchical” reduction

system, the production of early Paleoindian bifaces in eastern North America. Note
that additional stages of preparation for hafting are not illustrated (redrawn by
M. C. Stiner after Callahan 1996, Table 1).
Consider one of the simplest possible procedures in lithic technology, making a

flake by free-handed hard-hammer percussion. To do this successfully, the knapper
must (1) grasp the core in one hand, (2) grasp the percussor in the other, (3) locate
a suitable striking platform, and (4) strike the core with the percussor. In theory,
these four actions are independent. However, to show that they were hierarchic-
ally organized independent modules, we would have to show that people actually
exploited this independence, that taking up core and hammerstone did not always
result in the same outcome. To keep things manageable would further stipulate
that choice had to be exercised within a limited time frame, that is, that of making
artefacts. If knappers sometimes took up core and hammer but used the hammer to
batter or peck the core rather than flake it, some rudimentary hierarchy of actions
would be present. A knapper could take the core in one hand, the hammer in the
other, and beat them together to produce a rhythm for dancing, although some
might not consider that a technical choice. One of the strongest signs of hier-
archical modularity would be evidence that tool-makers sometimes skipped stages.
If knappers sometimes moved directly to pressure-flaking a biface, without pre-

shaping the piece by soft-hammer percussion first, then we can infer that they were
able to manipulate the sequence of actions by re-arranging modules. Evidence that
products from one stage could follow different pathways, leading to different linked
sets of procedures, would be another good indicator of hierarchical organization. In
some contexts, for example, tool-makers exercised choices to transform flakes into
bifacial tools though shaping and finishing, to make them into unifacial tools using
marginal retouch, or just to use them as is without further modification. In this case
there is an obvious hierarchical organization, with blank production and shaping/
retouch as separate modules. However, if products were always treated in the same
way, if the flakes made by a particular method were always transformed into the
same sort of implement, then it is harder to argue for truly modular organization.
In thinking about the complexity and hierarchical organization of Paleolithic
technologies we must also be mindful of the fact that the stones tell only a part of
the story, and sometimes a very small part at that. Once people began making com-
posite tools that integrated parts made of different materials the potential for imple-
ment complexity, whether measured as a function of the number of procedures
or as hierarchical organization, increased by an order of magnitude. Composite
tools must be assembled in the right order. More importantly, producing multi-part
implements also demands that makers master multiple techniques for shaping the
various parts and sticking everything together (Wadley, Hodgskiss, & Grant, 2009).
The lithic components that survive represent only the tips of the proverbial ice-
berg. It might be tempting to view complexity of stone elements as an index of
the complexity of the entire implement, but such an inference is unjustified. Very
complicated composite tools can incorporate very simple elements. In fact, we
might predict just the opposite, that use of composite tools relaxes some constraints
of the forms of stone components. This could in turn permit, though not force,
simplification of manufacture procedures. Making a large, multiply-barbed bifacial
point of stone would involve a fairly elaborate and demanding set of techniques,
but a well-made antler armature could be fitted with a series of very simple stone
inserts to create the tip and barbs. The near-complete focus on making small,
undistinguished inserts for composite tools during the European Mesolithic was
formerly viewed as a kind of technological degeneration compared with the pre-
ceding Upper Paleolithic (G. A. Clark, 1980; Czarnik, 1976; Dennell, 1983; Price,
1991). However, when they are available for us to see, the non-lithic components
of Mesolithic toolkits tell a very different story (e.g. Anderson, 1986; G. A. Clark,
1980; J. G. D. Clark, 1954; Price, 1991).
Finally, it is important to recognize that statements about complexity require
some sort of scale. In recent years a great many claims have been made for unex-
pected complexity in the technology and foraging behaviour of early humans.
But any behaviour can be considered complex, or simple, relative to something
else. Compared to a flatworm just about everything people do looks complex,
while compared to a contemporary aircraft the most elaborate Paleolithic com-
posite artefacts must look quite simple. Moreover, complex behaviour is hardly the
exclusive bailiwick of humans and human ancestors. What really matters is “com-
plex compared to what?” In many instances, behaviour is recognized as complex
only in comparison to prior (mis)understanding of a particular period. To a great
extent this is an inevitable consequence of knowledge growth. The more facts we
learn about the actions of early humans the better positioned we are to appreciate
the flexibility and diversity of their behaviour. It is unquestionably a good thing
that we are able to expand our knowledge and to develop increasingly sophisticated
models of hominin behaviour. But in the absence of a comprehensive framework
for comparison, simply claiming that some behaviour is “complex” is no more
meaningful than calling an object large or heavy.
8.2 Why do things get complex, or not?

Ultimately, many Paleoanthropologists would like to read increasing technological
complexity over the course of the Pleistocene as an indicator of cognitive advance-
ment, whether in the ability to conceptualize complex procedures and designs or
in the capacity to accumulate and synthesize knowledge. For instance, Wynn and
Coolidge have made a strong case that prepared-core technologies such as Levallois
required long-term working memory capacities similar to extant humans (Wynn
& Coolidge, 2004). Although many arguments linking procedural complexity to
specific cognitive capacities are plausible, it is important to recognize that cognitive
capacity is a necessary but not sufficient explanation for behavioural complexity.
Most importantly, simplicity of products does not necessarily equate with simplicity
of mind. Cognitively sophisticated humans can and do produce very simple things.
Like the other dimensions of technology discussed in this book, variation in arte-
fact complexity is as much affected by the conditions of life as by the capacities of
hominins.
Any evolutionary process must begin at the simple end of the scale, so there
is some inherent drive toward increasing complexity within evolutionary time
frames: starting from the simplest possible beginning there is only one direction for
change. But this tendency cannot account for synchronous variation in the elabor-
ation of behaviour, or for periods when technology rapidly became more complex
or simpler. More fundamentally, we cannot assume that people will make elaborate
implements just because they can. Assuming complex implements are more costly
to produce than simple ones, why would people normally bear that cost unless
there were some benefit to working harder to make a fancier tool?
In fact, there are strong circumstantial arguments for differential investment in
certain kinds of technology. It has been shown convincingly that, among recent
foragers, the complexity of implements used in the food quest increases with lati-
tude, effective temperature and other proxy indicators of potential time stress or
risk in subsistence pursuits. As the argument goes, more elaborate tools increase the
likelihood of success in any encounter with a target, or enable harvesting of more
individual packages at once. Consequently, people invest more in producing more
complex artefacts in environments where subsistence is uncertain or the cost of
failure is high (Collard et al., 2005;Torrence, 1983, 2001). In the case of the foraging
tools, which are the main focus of work on complexity in hunter-gatherer tech-
nologies, it would appear that elaborate implements are preferred only when the
payoff from their greater effectiveness outweighs their higher costs.
Based on this research, an obvious conclusion would be that Paleolithic humans
made more and more elaborate, and more and more costly, hunting weapons over
time because the more elaborate implements produced better hunting success. But
while this is a highly plausible assumption, it remains only an assumption. Despite
many interesting and productive arguments about the benefits of investing more
in complex artefacts (Bettinger, 2009; Bettinger et al., 2006; Kelly, 2013; Ugan,
Bright, & Rogers, 2003) there is little actualistic or experimental evidence to back
up assertions that one kind of tool or weapon is more effective than another. In
fact, people could have received an entirely different sort of return from making
intricate and costly implements. Making more elaborate artefacts than are strictly
necessary, or simply possessing such elaborate artefacts, could serve as honest costly
signals of one’s technological skill or ability to purchase or command the labour of
another. Such benefits of complex technologies are not often included in models
of technological investment. I do not believe that costly signalling is a useful way
of thinking about long-term trends in technological complexity. The contextual
factors that promote one set of signals may be quite volatile and they are unlikely
to account for developments over the ultra longue durée. On the other hand, it is
worth considering the benefits of signalling one’s quality or competence, in add-
ition to foraging efficiency, in explaining small-scale, local variation in techno-
logical complexity.
Variation in the complexity of manufacture is probably best explained by a
different mix of variables than the ones that influence the design of implements.
First, procedures are often more closely constrained by the nature and availability
of raw materials than by the availability of game. Second, more complex produc-
tion does not necessarily reduce the risk of failure. Some procedures, such as adding
flutes to projectile points, may actually increase risk of failure (MacDonald, 2010;
Winfrey, 1990), and some complex reduction processes are also more prone to
failures from which it is difficult to recover (e.g. Bleed, 1996). Finally, and most
importantly, there is no reason to expect that production complexity for stone
tools in particular will help reduce subsistence risk in the same way as does, say, the
complexity of a fish trap. The majority of artefacts in Paleolithic assemblages were
not used directly in the food quest. Activities such as hide preparation and carving
wood may be vital to survival, but they are not influenced directly by the distribu-
tion and abundance of food resources. And, as noted above, the stone components
of very elaborate multi-part implements may themselves be quite simple.
In explaining the complexity of blank production or shaping procedures we
need instead to consider other variables. The cognitive capacities of hominins are
one set of limiting factors. Other important factors include the specific functional
attributes of the products, the potential for standardization, or the efficiency with
which procedures convert raw material to usable implements. Even the demands
of knapping as performance may have some power in explaining the choice to

use elaborate and time-consuming procedures to flake stone. In turn the effects of
“neutral” (population-size-related) forces on elaboration of technological processes
will depend on the strength of these other sorts of influences.
8.3 Trends in complexity within Paleolithic technologies

It is no surprise that the earliest stone artefacts were made using very simple
procedures. Between 3.1 and 1.8 ma, procedures for knapping seem to have
involved no more than a few basic steps. At the most fundamental level knapping
procedures consisted of a short sequence of gestures resulting in the production of
a flake (Braun, Tactikos, et al., 2008; Reti, 2016; Stout, 2011; Toth, 1985). Knappers
selected an appropriate piece of raw material, chose a likely platform, and struck off
a flake using a hard stone hammer. Subsequent flakes could be struck from the same
platform, or the core could be rotated to expose a better one. De la Torre argues
that in the earliest assemblages from Omo and other contemporary sites, knappers
seldom rotated cores, discarding them when the first platform no longer produced
usable flakes, although he recognizes that the very small quartz nodules used at
Omo may not have permitted the development of longer reduction series (de la
Torre, 2004: 454). Stout and colleagues see more rotation at Gona, but argue that it
may be a learned habit rather than a flexible strategy (Stout et al., 2019).
This basic sequence of actions –with or without rotation –could be repeated,
sometimes many times. Typical Oldowan reduction sequences incorporated no
more than ten discrete actions/removals. In rare cases such as at Lokalalei 2C, refit-
ting studies reveal sequences of 50 or more removals (Delagnes & Roche, 2005;
Roche et al., 1999). It is difficult to know whether these long series are excep-
tional or typical, as the site preservation conditions enabling such complete refitting
of blocks are relatively rare. More to the point, serial repetition of similar actions
is not necessarily a sign of greater complexity. Early Mode 1 technology is non-
hierarchical (Stout, 2011). Typically, a single set of linked procedures was applied
repeatedly but with no larger goal. Once the raw material was selected, the only
real choices knappers made was whether to continue making flakes or to abandon
the core (Figure 8.3). Evidence of a hierarchical sequence of actions, such as inten-
tional preparation of platforms or shaping of detachment surfaces, is minimal.
Knappers sometimes opted to use a previous flake scar rather than a cortical surface
as a striking platform but these scars were usually the results of earlier attempts to
make usable flakes and not intentionally prepared platforms. If late Pliocene and
Early Pleistocene knappers did intentionally shape cores to provide better striking
surfaces the “preparation” amounted to little more than removal of a single flake
(e.g. Delagnes & Roche, 2005; de la Torre, 2009, 2011: 1034).
It is important to emphasize that asserting that the earliest stone tool technolo-
gies were simple is not to claim that they were ineffective or poorly executed.They
served the needs of early Homo for close to a million years, and similar tactics of
flake production persisted into the present in many places. On the other hand, we
FIGURE 8.3 Non-hierarchical Oldowan knapping. Refitting group 9 from the 2.34-

million-year-old site of Lokalali 2C (Kenya). Eleven flakes were refitted to this
particular core, and as many as 58 flakes were struck from other refitted cores from this
site. However, while knapping episodes were prolonged (or perhaps repeated), there
is little or no differentiation among actions: the aim of each blow was seemingly to
strike a usable flake (photograph © Anne Delagnes).
should not be too eager to attribute deep understanding or explicit knowledge

to the first stone tool-makers. Some researchers have asserted that the consistent
selection of appropriate platforms and platform angles indicates that the first tool-
makers already had a basic understanding of the principles of conchoidal fracture
in vitreous materials (Roche et al., 1999; Semaw, 2000; Stout et al., 2010). To be
sure, a degree of understanding of how to successfully strike a core is necessary to
make basic flakes, but the evidence presented does not permit one to evaluate how
well these Early Pleistocene hominins understood what they were doing. Analyses
focus overwhelmingly on successful attempts to make flakes, which could only have
occurred when blows were directed to the right part of the core. What we don’t
know as much about is how often hominins were unsuccessful in their attempts to
detach flakes, how frequently they chose unsuitable platform angles or overly flat
surfaces. Only by considering both successful and unsuccessful actions can we begin
to evaluate the level of savoire faire that early hominins actually possessed. Otherwise,
we are like scientists trying to measure the intelligence of rats by considering only
the individuals which were able to successfully navigate a maze. One study of errors
on flakes and cores from early Mode 1 assemblages (Hovers, 2009b) does suggest
that hominins were able to recover from accidents, implying at least some broader
understanding of fracture mechanics.
While most researchers agree about the basic structure of knapping between
2.6 my and 1.8 my, accounts of its broader significance with respect to human cog-
nitive and technological evolution vary widely. At one extreme are researchers who
see Oldowan production as a “least effort technology” (Reti, 2016), in which the
simplest possible procedures were used to make small numbers of very basic tools.
At the other extreme are scholars that detect more complexity in the Oldowan,
particularly after 2.0 my. According to Roche et al. (1999: 59), “The repeated
application by knappers of the same technical principles to a whole series of cores,
and during the reduction of each core, indicates an elaborate debitage scheme,
implying motor precision and coordination.” In other words, the same redundancy
and small repertoire of actions are interpreted alternatively as evidence for very
superficial and very deep understanding of lithic reduction.
From purely heuristic purposes the minimalist perspective on the earliest lithic
technology seems the most useful. The very same outcomes can be generated by
very different rule sets. A contemporary composer may choose to make “minim-
alist” music as part of a long dialogue with Western classical music traditions. But
other individuals make “minimalist” music because that’s how they learned to do
it, or because they are not yet skilled enough to do anything else. Insects produce
elegant and elaborate structures by following a few basic behavioural rules that
have nothing to do with designing the overall form of the construction (Moussaid
et al., 2009; Theraulaz & Bonabeau, 1995; Theraulaz, Bonabeau, & Deneuborg,
1998). Ants might construct a large, symmetrical mound following very simple,
genetically-encoded rules for behaviour. A human toddler playing in the sand at
the beach or a middle-schooler preparing a science-fair presentation might produce
a structure very much like an ant mound based on a more diverse and complex set
of motivations and recipes for action. In trying to understand the evolution of tech-
nology and hominin cognition, we ought to start with the simplest model, more
like the musical novice than like Philip Glass, more like the ant than the science-fair
participant. It should be clear when that model fails to account for our observations
and must be made more elaborate. At the same time, we should not confuse the
adoption of a minimalist perspective as a heuristic with minimalism as an ontogen-
etic stance. The persistence of many basic knapping techniques from 2.5 my ago
to the present reminds us that simple behaviour does not necessarily imply simple
strategies or cognition.
Hard-hammer flake production is not the only kind of technological procedure
manifest in Oldowan assemblages. Bipolar or hammer- and- anvil technique is
represented, especially on quartz. The battered spheroids that become common in
later Oldowan assemblages were produced through a very different set of actions: in
fact, battering or “thrusting percussion” may be a much larger component in the
Early Pleistocene technical repertoire than many have thought (Mora & de la Torre,
2005; Torre & Mora, 2010). The production of polyhedrons, whether as cores or
as precursors to spheroids, may also have involved slightly different mechanics than
typical flake production (Sahnouni et al., 1997; Torre & Mora, 2010). Like most
reconstructions of Oldowan flaking procedures, battering and flaking of oblique
angles are also very redundant processes, simple repetition of identical acts: in this
respect they do not differ so much from hard-hammer flaking. A valid question is
how much choice was exercised in moving from raw material selection to arte-
fact shaping or blank production. Frequently, though not inevitably, spheroids and
polyhedrons are made of different raw materials than flake tools and choppers
(Sahnouni, Schick, & Toth, 1997; de la Torre & Mora, 2010:21), suggesting that
they were part of independent sequences of behaviour. Speaking more broadly,
associations between raw material, technological procedures, and products tend to
be more redundant in Lower and Middle Pleistocene assemblages than in later
ones: within an assemblage one raw material tends always to be transformed into
a particular tool form while other raw materials are often used in different ways
(Goren-Inbar & Belfer-Cohen, 1998). On one hand, the choices made seem quite
“rational”: tough materials are often selected for large implements, more brittle
glassy materials for smaller light-duty tools. On the other hand, such observations
also point to more rigid, less truly modular systems of artefact production.
Stout (2011) sees at least a minimum level of hierarchical modularity in
Oldowan technology, consisting basically of raw material selection and flake pro-
duction, each with a few sub-routines. Based on the criterion of independence I do
not see the evidence for true modularity. One cannot knap without first collecting
flakeable stone, and one cannot successfully make flakes without grasping core and
hammerstone, choosing a good place to strike, and so on. Another possible example
of hierarchical modularity in the earliest stone tool industries is the use of retouch,
intentional modification of the edges of flake tools. Scarce to absent in the earliest
assemblages of lithic artefacts, simple marginal retouch became more common in
assemblages dating to after 2.0 my (see Chapter 7). Apparently there was a “decision
node” in the production of flake tools, sometimes leading to the use of unmodi-
fied flakes and sometimes to the modification of edges or prehensive parts. What
we do not know is whether these choices were made in response to functional
requirements of certain activities, as a consequence of wear or damage to the edge,
or for some other reason. In any case, the extent of hierarchical organization in
Mode 1 technology, if it exists at all, is very limited.
Things changed in a fundamental way within a few hundred thousand years
with the appearance of the first handaxes around 1.7 my (Beyene et al., 2013; Diez-
Martín et al., 2015; Lepre et al., 2011). As discussed in prior chapters, the earliest
stages of this “event” are far from earthshaking. Mode 1 assemblages continued
to accumulate alongside assemblages with handaxes for a half-million years or
more.Very early handaxes and picks also did not represent a major departure from
Oldowan choppers. They are larger, longer and possess more flake scars, but they
were made by very similar methods, basically marginal shaping of cobbles. But early
on a new strategy appears, which may be the first indisputable evidence for hier-
archical organization of production.
A notable feature of even the earliest Acheulean or Mode 2 technologies is pro-
duction of large (>10 cm) flakes as blanks for cores and large cutting tools (LCTs)
(Beyene et al., 2013; Diez Martin et al., 2015; Isaac, 1969; Lepre et al., 2011). This
focus on large flake blanks was the first real development in procedural complexity
since the beginning of stone tool making. Oldowan assemblages seldom contain
artefacts larger than 10 cm, much less flakes that big, but such objects are markers of
the early Acheulean in East and South Africa (Sahnouni et al., 2013). The produc-
tion of flakes as blanks for large tools entails at least two very different technological
procedures or modules, the striking of large flakes from larger cores or outcrops
of stone, and the secondary trimming of those blanks. The two modules involve
different sorts of actions as well as probably different kinds of percussors: one is
not a simple continuation of the other. Moreover, they imply two opportunities
for knappers to exercise choice. First is the decision whether to use a cobble as
a tool blank or to produce a large flake: both options were available to and were
sometimes exercised by hominins. Once the large flake was produced, the second
decision node concerned what to do with it—to transform it into an implement or
a core. The procedures for making LCTs on flakes may not have been much more
strongly hierarchical than the production of small retouched flake tools, but they
are at least minimally so.
There is some evidence that Early Pleistocene hominins did exercise choices
as to what to do with the large flakes they made. The so-called Karari industry of
Koobi Fora (Harris, 1978; Harris & Isaac, 1976) illustrates another possible trajec-
tory within this sort of hierarchically organized technological system. Although
they are contemporary with the early Acheulean in the Rift Valley, dating to 1.2–
1.6 my ago, the Karari assemblages lack LCTs such as cleavers and handaxes, and
so are not considered Mode 2 technologies. However, the assemblages do show
a similar hierarchical structure of production to the “large flake” Acheulean. In
this case large lava flakes were used as blanks for “scrapers,” now recognized to be
mobile flake cores (Braun, Rogers et al., 2008). Small flakes were struck from the
larger flake using its ventral surface as a striking platform. While both stages or
modules—manufacture of the large flake and production of the smaller flakes from
it—can be considered debitage or production rather than tool shaping, they involved
different kinds of actions and probably different-sized percussors as well.
Although detailed descriptions are few, it appears as if the large flake blanks in
the earliest Acheulean in East Africa were made using fairly simple techniques.
Often the flakes are cortical, meaning that they were struck from a natural sur-
face or minimally-worked core. Over time the methods for blank production
became more and more elaborate. Kombewa method (Figure 8.4), in which a large
biconvex flake is struck from the bulbar surface of an even larger flake, appears
at roughly 1.0 ma (Durkee & Brown, 2014; Gallotti & Mussi, 2017). Somewhat
later, more elaborate sets of procedures such as Victoria West (H. Li, Kuman, Lotter,
Leader, & Gibbon, 2017; Sharon & Beaumont, 2006) (Figure 8.5) and the Tabelbala-
Tachengit methods (Figure 6.18) evolved in South and North Africa, respectively
(Alimen & Zuber y Zuber, 1978; Goren-Inbar, Grosman, & Sharon, 2011; H. Li
et al., 2017; Sharon, 2009). Successful execution of these methods required more
extensive shaping of the core, which resulted in the production of blanks with
more predictable morphology, or at least common elements such as a sharp cutting
edge and a blunt natural back to serve as a handle. Illustrating the tradeoff between
complexity of blank production and complexity of tool shaping or façonnage, the
blanks produced from these elaborately shaped cores could often be turned into
serviceable implements with a minimum of marginal retouch. Not all flakes to be
turned into cleavers or handaxes were made by such elaborate methods, but it does
seem that the upper limit of procedural complexity had been raised compared with
earlier periods.
At the remarkable Acheulean site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov in the Jordan Valley,
researchers have identified several distinct methods for production of cleaver flake
blanks. Herzlinger and colleagues (Herzlinger et al., 2017) argue that the ability to
operationalize these different procedures, and to select among them, implies a sort
of “expert cognition,” engaging both long-term and short term working memory.
Whether the manufacture of cleavers at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov 780,000 years ago
can actually be demonstrated to meet the criteria for identifying “expert perform-
ance” (Herzlinger et al., 2017:2–3) remains to be seen. Nonetheless, the Gesher
Benot Ya’aqov case certainly documents a marked level of hierarchical modularity
compared with earlier technological systems.
One of the most striking (no pun intended) features of these hierarchical systems
for producing large flakes is that they involve a “leap of faith.” When manufac-
turing a chopper or handaxe from a pebble, each successive blow makes the object
piece resemble the presumed target more and more: a partially trimmed cobble
looks more like a finished handaxe than an untrimmed cobble. This is not the case
with more complex prepared-core methods. The initial stages of manufacture do
not produce anything like a partially formed handaxe or cleaver. The capacity to
defer immediate gratification in order to get a better outcome down the line is
FIGURE 8.4 Example of simple hierarchical Kombewa technology from Gesher Benot

Ya’aqov, Israel. Left: schematic illustration of procedure: step 1, select large core;
step 2, remove flake from short edge to create platform; step 3, strike large cortical
flake from resulting platform; steps 4–5, remove a large flake from the bulbar surface
(from Goren-Inbar, Grosman, & Sharon 2011, Figure 15). Right: minimally modified
Kombewa flake cleaver of basalt (from Herzlinger, Wynn, & Goren-Inbar, 2017,
Figure 2). Scale bar = 10 cm.
FIGURE 8.5 Victoria West or “proto-Levallois” cores from the Canteen Kopje

Acheulean site, South Africa. Photographs in third column show faces from which
large flakes were removed: arrows indicate direction of removals (from Li et al., 2017,
Figure 3). Scale bar = 5 cm.
considered a central feature of working memory and executive function in humans

(Welsh, Pennington & Groisser, 1991;Wynn & Coolidge, 2011).The nature of some
hierarchical blank production systems suggests that hominins possessed this cap-
acity in some degree by 800 ka–1 my (Herzlinger et al., 2017), although Wynn
and Coolidge argue that working memory did not reach “modern” levels until the
newgenrtpdf
FIGURE 8.6 Schematic illustration of preparation and exploitation of Levallois cores, illustrating several hierarchically organized
stages (redrawn by M. C. Stiner from Inizan et al. 1995, Figure 23).
dispersal of modern humans in the Upper Pleistocene (Coolidge & Wynn, 2005;
Wynn & Coolidge, 2011)
It is not only the large flakes which show increasing complexity over time within
the Early and Middle Pleistocene. More elaborate methods for making small flakes
also began to appear, particularly during the Middle Pleistocene. For the first 1.5+
million years, a good deal of small flake manufacture involved a very simple set of
actions. A suitable core was chosen and a flake or flakes struck from a natural surface.
The core was then rotated until another suitable striking platform was identified,
and another flake or small set of flakes was produced. The outcome of this sort of
“moving platform” core technology is highly dependent on the starting config-
uration of a core. Starting with differently shaped pebbles, the strategy of “strike
and rotate” can yield polyhedral, disc-shaped or single platform cores, sometimes
providing a misleading impression that a range of different reduction strategies
were in use. We cannot exclude the possibility that Oldowan tool-makers set out
to make different kinds of cores by first selecting different kinds of nodules, but the
same outcome would have occurred had they selected cobble shapes at random
and applied the same repetitive tactics of flake production to them. In the absence
of evidence that differently shaped flakes were somehow preferred for different
applications, the simpler model seems more parsimonious.
By the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene, however, a range of truly novel
methods for making small blanks were incorporated into the technological
repertoires of African hominins. These have been called proto-Levallois or hier-
archical systems (Leader et al., 2016; Sharon & Beaumont, 2006; White & Ashton,
2003; de la Torre et al., 2003). They are distinguished by a kind of specialization of
different parts of the core. Flake blanks are detached from one face of the core—
typically a broad, relatively flat surface—while another face is reserved for prepar-
ation of striking platforms.While they share this important characteristic with more
classic Levallois production, these early methods lack some of the other features that
define Levallois in its fullest expression (Boëda, 1986; Boëda, Geneste, & Meignen,
1990) Nonetheless, they show a distinct modularization that is missing from the
“moving platform” approach that was prevalent earlier.
Classic definitions of the Acheulean or Mode 2 technology have highlighted
bifacially-worked artefacts such as handaxes. Although early handaxes may have
been worked on both faces, true bifacial technology –involving systematic thinning
of the object piece –is not represented in the earliest Acheulean in southern and
eastern Africa. Sometime around the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene this
more elaborated form of bifacial technology made its appearance in East Africa,
and soon after in the rest of the world. Currently, the earliest well-dated example of
full-fledged bifacial thinning is at the site of Isenya (Kenya), dated to around 0.7 ma
(Roche et al., 1988; Roche & Texier, 1991).
True bifacial shaping represents a different, but equally complex and hierarch-
ical sort of organization as the proto-Levallois cores. In essence, the method is
characterized by systematically “peeling off ” thin, flat flakes from two surfaces of
an object piece. This produces a relatively flat artefact with biconvex cross section
and sharp, sturdy edges. A wide range of procedures for bifacial reduction have
been described, but one feature common to all of them is division of manufac-
ture into a series of modules or stages (reviewed in Shott, 2017). The numbers
of stages reconstructed vary according to researcher and the material in question,
but it appears that two is the absolute minimum. This level of hierarchical modu-
larity is a distinct departure from the pure repetition of similar actions typical of
Mode 1 technologies. The first stage is always rough shaping of the object piece
to obtain the biconvex form necessary for additional bifacial shaping. Without this
first shaping, it will be impossible to strike off flakes that extend across the piece’s
centre line, which is necessary to thin the biface. The next stage (or stages) entails
the systematic bifacial thinning of the piece by systematically removing large, inva-
sive flakes. Each of the two or more basic stages in biface reduction encompass a
series of sub-routines. In thinning a biface, flake scars on one face serve as the plat-
form surfaces for removing flakes from the opposite face. Successfully executing the
procedure involves constant rotation of the object piece, evaluation of the poten-
tial platforms, and reshaping or re-orientation of edges by flaking or grinding. As
anyone who has learned to make bifaces can attest, the novice’s first impulse is to
simply remove flakes along the edges of one face and then flip the piece over. This
never works: the resulting artefact is typically blocky and impossible to thin effect-
ively. The two basic stages also require different sorts of percussors. Rough shaping
normally requires a hard stone hammer while bifacial thinning is usually executed
with an organic or soft stone hammer. Shott (2017) argues that, from an archaeo-
logical perspective, it is better to treat biface production as a continuum rather than
a series of distinct stages.The point is well taken: as Shott’s paper illustrates it is often
difficult or impossible to assign individual archaeological specimens to a particular
stage. Nonetheless, the fact that knappers consistently conceive of biface reduction
as staged is strong suggestion that the procedure is hierarchically organized, even if
the structure is difficult to access archaeologically.
Bifacial handaxes and cleavers are arguably the first immediately and univer-
sally recognizable artefacts to appear in the archaeological record. Consequently, for
decades scholars have scrutinized these artefacts for any clues they might provide
about the evolution of hominin abilities, both physical and cognitive. One of the first
explicit propositions about the cognitive implications of bifacial shaping concerned
spatial competence. In a book and series of articles, Wynn (1989) proposed that the
successful execution of bifacial thinning and shaping required an ability to antici-
pate and coordinate actions in three dimensions. He further asserted that Mode
1 or Oldowan technology showed no evidence of such capacities. He later added
symmetry and “spatial quantity” to the list of cognitive characteristics that can
be attributed to the makers of Acheulean handaxes but that are absent earlier on
(Wynn, 1993).Wynn’s work, and in fact nearly all attempts to draw inferences about
cognition from handaxes, have been critiqued based on the so-called “finished
artefact fallacy.” Handaxes had life histories and the forms archaeologists dig up
were not necessarily final forms intended by the makers. Artefacts recovered from
the archaeological record instead represent the outcomes of many decisions about
whether and how to renew or reshape the working elements (Davidson, 2002;
McPherron, 2000). Some researchers have even proposed that handaxes may not
have been tools at all, that they might well have simply been sources of sharp flakes.
While these criticisms are valid, they do not necessarily undermine Wynn’s per-
spective on the cognitive significance of changes in artefact manufacture. Whether
the forms of artefacts recovered from archaeological sites result from static design,
life history, or some combination of influences, consistent application of complex
shaping methods and principles should reflect something about the thinking of the
hominins who made them.
The recognition that production of bifacial handaxes could require more com-
plex thinking than earlier stone artefacts has also prompted scholars to seek out a
link with language. Assertions that bifacial handaxe technology could not have been
effectively learned and passed on except though symbolic language are based on
little more than a firm conviction about the power of language and the unsuitability
of non-linguistic forms of communication for encoding complex processes. In fact,
ethnographic evidence from traditional societies in the contemporary world shows
that complex craft skills can be acquired with little linguistic instruction (Roux, Bril,
& Dietrich, 1995;Tehrani & Riede, 2008). On the other hand, there have been a few
attempts to establish a more direct link between language and artefact production.
In a remarkable series of experiments employing functional neural imaging, Stout
and colleagues have shown that production of handaxes by contemporary knappers
activates different parts of the brain than does Oldowan-style flaking (Faisal et al.,
2010; Stout & Chaminade, 2007, 2012; Stout et al., 2000). Specifically, they impli-
cate the pre-frontal cortex and “executive function.” Importantly, they also show
that the actions and postures involved in the two modes of toolmaking are quite
similar, indicating that differences in patterns of brain activation are due to the ways
tool-makers think about the process and not to differences in neuro-muscular con-
trol (Faisal et al., 2010). Because the gestures involved in bifacial production show
lateralization and involve areas of the brain implicated in linguistic production,
Stout, Uomini, and others (Morgan et al., 2015; Stout & Chaminade, 2012; Uomini
& Meyer, 2013) argue for co-evolutionary links between language and tool making.
More direct connections with language come from experimental studies of
“cultural transmission” in acquisition of stone tool making skills. Not surprisingly,
some experiments show that explicit teaching and language use improve the fidelity
of cultural transmission (Morgan et al., 2015) although others show little effect
(Putt, Woods, & Franciscus, 2014). While many studies confirm the advantages of
language-aided instruction in effective transmission of knapping skills, they do not
demonstrate that it is necessary. Almost all contemporary experiments take place
in Western university settings with Western university students as subjects. Both
experimenters and subjects have spent the greater part of their lives in institutions
that emphasize formal instruction and verbal communication at the expense of
other modes of learning. The experimental group is less thoroughly trained to
engage in non-linguistic cultural transmission. Given the additional differences in
motivation, frequency of practice and time to perfect skills between Pleistocene
hominins and contemporary experimental subjects, we should be extremely

cautious about using the performance of modern students to judge what hominins
in the deep past could or could not do.
The evolution of lithic technological complexity does not end with handaxes.
Eventually, LCTs were replaced mostly or entirely by a range of small flake and blade
tools. The “transition” from Lower to Middle Paleolithic, or Mode 2 to Mode 3 in
Grahame Clark’s system, is typically gradual, especially in Eurasia, and may not even
coincide with the boundary between assemblage types or modes. It is less a revo-
lution than a gradual shift in the balance of assemblage composition. Nonetheless,
as discussed in previous chapters, by the middle part of the Middle Pleistocene we
see a marked diversification and elaboration of methods for producing flake tools.
Starting ca. 400–500 ka, the important changes in artefact complexity have to do
with how small flake tools were manufactured and modified.
Discussions of important developments in artefact manufacture typically focus
on two basic modalities, Levallois (Figures 6.17 and 6.19) and blade produc-
tion (Figure 8.7). The reasons for emphasizing these two modalities are different.
Levallois technology has been very thoroughly analyzed and documented, thanks
most recently to the work of E. Boëda and colleagues (1986, 2013; Boëda et al.,
1990), who emphasize the way production is organized and executed rather than
the morphology of the products. Most researchers would agree that fully realized
Levallois production is more elaborate, involves more distinct steps and decisions
than anything that came before. Blade manufacture in contrast is considered
important mainly because it was once thought to be associated exclusively with
modern humans and the Upper Paleolithic (Bar-Yosef & Kuhn, 1999). However,
there is no longer reason to think that just making elongated flakes requires any
special “modern” cognitive adaptations. Recent experimental work even suggests
that Levallois is more strongly hierarchical and complex than basic prismatic blade
production (Muller et al., 2017).
The first definitions of Levallois were based on the shapes of the presumed
products. Boëda’s important and widely cited redefinition of la méthode Levallois
focuses instead on the geometry of cores and the tactics used to maintain the shape
parameters needed to produce flakes with certain characteristics. Boëda reduced the
essential definition of Levallois to a series of simple criteria. Note that the actual
shapes of the products are not specified. By this definition, Levallois encompasses
more than centripetal-tortoise cores that yield large, oval flakes: a series of different
variants have been described, characterized by different modes of surface prep-
aration and exploitation, and yielding different products (Boëda, 1986; Boëda,
Geneste, & Meignen, 1990; Dibble & Bar-Yosef, 1995).
The roots of Levallois method extend very deep into the Lower Paleolithic in
Africa and western Eurasia. The principle of pre-shaping core faces is present in
methods such as Victoria West and Tavelbala-Tachengit. So-called proto-Levallois
technology, which possesses some but not all of the features identified in Boëda’s
definition, has been identified in Middle Pleistocene assemblages such as that from
Gesher Benot Ya’aqov and other sites dating to 500 ka or before (Tryon et al., 2005).
FIGURE 8.7 Diagram of blade/bladelet core production at the Ahmarian Upper

Paleolithic site of Nahal Nizzana XIII, Israel. Numbers 1–5 show different means of
producing the same type of narrow-fronted cores. These cores were very productive
but the ways they were worked are not demonstrably more complex than Levallois
technology (from Goring-Morris and Davidzon, 2006, Figure 7).
What is called “debitage facial,” or “Acheulian” core exploitation, systematic or

opportunistic removal of flakes from the broadest face of a core, appears throughout
the Middle Pleistocene as well (Shimelmitz, Kuhn, Ronen et al., 2014; Turq, 2000).
What is typically missing from these earlier forms of flake production is the sys-
tematic preparation and re-preparation of the flaking surface. A single flake might
be removed from a flat surface that happens to possess the appropriate convexities,
or the core face might be shaped by removal of a few flakes. But preparation of
subsequent flaking surfaces is rare. Elaboration of strategies for preparing and re-
preparing the “Levallois surface” of cores began late in the Middle Pleistocene and
extended into the Upper Pleistocene.
As the term is normally applied, blade production refers to the shapes of the
products: blades should be more than twice as long as they are wide. But there are
many ways to make blades, and some of them are more complicated than others.
Classic prismatic blade production entails a number of special techniques to establish
and maintain the shape of the face of blade detachment and to set up appropriate
platform angles. These produce characteristic byproducts such as crested blades,
core tablets, and “neo-crests.” Shea (2013a) makes a good point in arguing that both
Levallois and prismatic blade production involve a good deal of control over the
geometry of both core and product, and should be grouped together in terms of
general levels of complexity. On the other hand, not all blades were made by such
elaborate methods.The early blades recovered from the Kapthurin formation in East
Africa, from Kathu Pan in South Africa (C. R. Johnson & McBrearty, 2010;Wilkins
& Chazan, 2012), or from Amudian assemblages from the eastern Mediterranean
Levant (Barkai et al., 2009; Shimelmitz, Barkai et al., 2016) (Figure 8.8) were highly
systematic or at least redundant but it involved very limited preparation and renewal
of the core. Crested blades were commonly produced at various stages in reduction
of a single core but core tablets were seldom employed to adjust the angle of the
striking platform (Monigal, 2002; Shimelmitz, Barkai et al., 2016).
Blades and Levallois receive most of the attention because of their demonstrated
or asserted complexity, but flake production in the Middle Pleistocene was much
more varied than that. As discussed in Chapter 7, by 400 ka a range of methods were
employed globally to produce blanks for flake tools. Discoid and bipolar techniques,
versions of which had been in existence since at least 2 ma, were common. In
Europe, a range of lesser known modalities of small-blank production have been
recognized, including “Clactonian” and “Quina” methods (discussed in Chapter 7)
(Baena Preysler et al., 2017; Bourguignon, 1997; Lemorini et al., 2016; Shimelmitz,
Kuhn, Ronen et al., 2014; Shimelmitz,Weinstein-Evron et al., 2016).There is a ten-
dency to associate the phenomenon of “pre-determination” with Levallois or per-
haps blade production, but in fact any means of making flakes affords some level of
control over the outcomes (Meignen et al., 2009). The tool-makers who produced
Yabrudian assemblages in the Levant or Quina assemblages in Europe consistently
sought certain properties in flakes used as scraper blanks, including large size and
a blunt “back” which probably aided in gripping the piece (Shimelmitz, Kuhn,
Ronen et al., 2014).This form of blank manufacture may not have entailed as many
decision nodes as Levallois production, but similar principles of core shaping and
maintenance are nonetheless present.
Additional levels of complexity appear when we consider the entire life his-
tories of artefacts and not just the ways they were made or how they look. Middle
Pleistocene flake tools show a range of life histories, from short and simple to
FIGURE 8.8 Schematic diagram of production of blades from flat flint slabs during
the late Middle Pleistocene at Qesem Cave, Israel (from Shimelmitz, Barkai, &
Gopher, 2011).
long and complex. The individual procedures involved in making and maintaining
tools may not have been very elaborate, but the differences in how artefacts were
exploited show that the larger system of behaviour was. As discussed above, there
was often a tradeoff between complexity of manufacture and post-manufacture
modification. Sometimes elaborate methods such as Levallois were used to produce
blanks which required very little additional modification, whereas in other cases
comparatively simple techniques provided blanks that could be extensively shaped
by retouch. The fact that tool-makers employed one or both strategies points to
a level of decision making not present before the Middle Pleistocene. These phe-
nomena are detailed in Chapters 4 and 6.
While procedures for making stone tools became more complex, the greatest
increases in procedural complexity during the Middle Pleistocene are almost cer-
tainly associated with the development of hafted tools. As discussed in Chapter 3,
hafting appears to have first become widespread (though not ubiquitous) around
250 ka. Creating a hafted artefact requires integrating a series of independent
procedures and processes. In the end we are dealing with a different order of com-
plexity, with a series of independent sub-routines embedded into a larger plan. To
be sure, many of the individual procedures or sub-routines might stand on their
own. The same woodworking techniques could be used to make a spear shaft or a
throwing stick, and the same knapping procedures could produce tools to be held
in the hand or to be hafted. Only the production of mastics is specifically associated
with composite artefacts. Nonetheless, collecting and integrating products of a
diversity of processes into a single implement demonstrates a level of planning
and organization, and a strict hierarchical organization, scarcely represented in any
single modality of Paleolithic stone flaking.
The trend toward diversification and elaboration of methods for making small
blanks continued through the rest of the Middle Pleistocene and into the Upper
Pleistocene across Europe, western Asia and Africa. Middle Paleolithic assemblages,
which date to between roughly 250 ka and 40 ka in Eurasia, and Middle Stone
Age assemblages which cover the period between 400 ka and 45 ka in Africa, are
noteworthy for the diversity of approaches brought to bear on making blanks and
shaping implements (Kuhn, 2013).There are a few truly novel developments. What
we see instead is the refinement of these processes and techniques. For example, the
wide variety of core forms and exploitation patterns united under the umbrella of
la méthode Levallois really only appear after 200 ka.These alternative versions involve
somewhat different actions and throw off different ranges of (by)products, but they
all manifest similar levels of procedural complexity.
One novel development during the first part of the Upper Pleistocene is the heat
treatment of raw materials. For most of the history of lithic technology, knappers
made do with the properties of natural raw materials. When given a choice they
might select stones based on their workability or durability but, so far as we know,
they made little attempt to modify those properties. There is solid evidence that a
few groups of hominins in South Africa began to systematically heat natural silcrete
in order to improve its flaking properties (Brown et al., 2009) around 70 ka. Heat
treatment could have been used even earlier (Brown et al., 2009: 860) but burned
stones are common in Paleolithic sites. Thus before heat treatment was systematic-
ally and regularly applied, it is difficult to distinguish it from inadvertent burning.
Initial claims about the sophistication of heat treatment technologies have also been
challenged (P. Schmidt & Mackay, 2016; Schmidt et al., 2013): it may be possible
to effect the desired transformations in some raw materials with relatively simple
procedures. Nonetheless, the intentional physical alteration of stone by heat added
another layer of potential complexity into technological processes. At present the
early use of heat treatment in the South African MSA is not replicated in other
regions: in the rest of the world systematic alteration of stone by fire is evident only
much later in the later Upper Pleistocene.
We know a great deal about the later stages of Paleolithic chaînes opératoires.
Innumerable studies have been conducted of the way stone was flaked, the ways the
products were used, and even of the conditions under which they were eventually
discarded. We know much less about the earliest stage of the process, raw material
procurement, especially in early time periods. Extraction of raw materials could add
yet another level of complexity to technological procedures in the Paleolithic. It is
commonly assumed that early humans obtained raw materials in the simplest, least
costly way possible, by picking them up off the surface of the ground. And while that
is probably a safe assumption most of the time it may not always have been true. First,
we do not know what might have been available on the surface tens or hundreds of
thousands of years ago. Exposures of rock may be buried and re-exposed many times
on a geological time scale. At some times and places hominins may have had to work
hard to extract rocks from the substrate. Second, there can be advantages to using
freshly-extracted rocks. Crypto-crystalline silicates such as flint can hold water in
the fine voids between crystals or grains. Freshly-extracted specimens are more fully
saturated with water than pieces that have been lying in the sun for a long time, and
exhibit better flaking properties because of it (Sieveking et al., 1972). Under some
conditions, therefore, hominins might have been motivated to extract fresh stone
even when there were plenty of rocks lying around on the surface.
Direct evidence for systematic extraction of stone from the substrate appears
relatively late in prehistory. As far as we know now, the earliest traces of systematic
subsurface quarrying come from Middle Paleolithic sites in Egypt. At a number of
locations in Upper and Middle Egypt, deep pits were excavated into the ground to
obtain buried flint nodules (Vermeersch & Paulissen, 1993;Vermeersch (ed.) 2002;
Vermeersch, Paulissen, & Van Peer, 1995).This is not a terribly complex technology,
but it does involve more steps and more distinct techniques than does, say, stooping
down to pick up a flint cobble from the ground. Such evidence of quarrying is
probably relatively ephemeral, however, and in locations where people continued to
extract stone, byproducts from later, more massive operations are likely to obscure
traces of small-scale quarrying by earlier groups. Consequently, direct extraction
of raw material could have been more common in the remote past than we know.
A particularly ingenious study applied unusual scientific methods to the question
of ancient quarrying.Verri and colleagues studied the accumulation of cosmogenic
isotopes of beryllium and aluminium on the surfaces of Middle Pleistocene flint

tools from Qesem and Tabun Caves in Israel (Verri et al., 2004, 2005).Tiny amounts
of the isotopes 10Be and 26Al are created as cosmic rays interact with elements on
the surfaces of rocks. They accumulate while rocks are exposed within a meter of
the ground surface but stop building up once the specimen is deeply buried or
transported into a cave. The assumption is that concentrations of these cosmogenic
isotopes will be higher on artefacts produced from cobbles or nodules that were
collected after lying on the surface for some time, but will be quite low for artefacts
made on flint nodules extracted directly from the limestone. The authors find con-
siderable variation in isotope concentrations from different Middle Pleistocene
assemblages, which they interpret as shifting strategies of raw material procure-
ment: sometimes hominins collected flint from the surface and sometimes they
extracted nodules directly from the bedrock. If this interpretation is valid, these
results would be evidence for purposeful extraction of flint as early as 300–350
ka. While they are interesting, the cosmogenic isotope data are only suggestive of
differences in context of procurement. There is no independent scale for evaluating
how long artefacts were exposed based on isotope concentrations. Observed vari-
ation could simply reflect different surface residence times for flint nodules, and
low concentrations could represent situations where flint-bearing limestones were
eroding more quickly, leading to more exposure of “fresh” flint.
Of course, stone tools were not the only kinds of material culture that helped
Middle Pleistocene hominins cope successfully with their environments. As
populations moved into the higher latitudes and became established in cold, sea-
sonal environments, thermoregulation became an important adaptive problem. At
a certain point, hominins would have needed some form of clothing to protect
themselves from the cold. The minimum amount of protection needed to survive,
say, a glacial period winter in southern Europe is less than pampered urban dwellers
might expect (Aiello & Wells, 2002; Gilligan, 2010; Wales, 2012), but clearly some
kind of portable protection from the elements was needed for survival. With very
rare exceptions, such as from well-preserved burials (Trinkaus et al., 2014) or art, evi-
dence for Paleolithic clothing is limited to the tools used to make the clothing. And
this tells us something about the basic manufacture techniques but not the elabor-
ateness of the final product. Use-wear on flint tools suggests some form of hide pro-
cessing was practiced as early as the mid-Middle Pleistocene (Lemorini et al., 2016)
Middle Paleolithic assemblages dated to the late Middle and early Upper Pleistocene
show edge damage and polishes from working hides (e.g. Anderson-Gerfaud, 1990;
Faulks et al., 2011; Hardy, 2004; Lemorini, 1992; Shea, 1989). Specialized bone
hide processing tools called lissoirs are found in some Upper Pleistocene Middle
Paleolithic sites in France (Soressi et al., 2013).The absence of eyed needles and awls
before the early Upper Paleolithic has led to a widespread assumption that Middle
Paleolithic and earlier clothing was fairly simple and untailored (Collard et al., 2016;
Gilligan, 2007; Hoffecker, 2005; Mellars, 1996b; Wales, 2012; R. White, 1982), per-
haps just unsewn hide cloaks and footwraps. However, the development of more
elaborate sewing equipment later in the Paleolithic may have been as much about
ornamentation and display as about thermoregulation. In any event sewing is only

part of the story. Even “simple” hide tanning is a complex and prolonged process
involving both labour and technical know-how. A detailed focus on techniques of
hide processing, even one based on indirect evidence, might reveal unexplored areas
of complexity in sophistication in Middle and Upper Pleistocene technologies.
Increasing complexity during the early Upper Pleistocene is manifest in other
non-lithic technologies as well. The discovery of resins made from tree bark in
Middle Paleolithic contexts in Europe has led researchers to investigate the kinds
of procedures used to produce such adhesives.These studies show that manufacture
of large quantities of mastics from bark is in fact a very involved process (Koller
et al., 2001). What we do not know at present is how systematic the production
actually was. It is possible that the few cases of bark resins documented to date
reflect opportunistic exploitation of substances produced by simpler techniques or
even incidentally (Kozowyk et al., 2017). The addition of mineral oxides (ochres)
to plant resin adhesives around 50–60 ka is a more convincing example of added
complexity in production (Lombard, 2007; Wadley et al., 2009)). Geochemical
evidence for manufacture of pigments, involving both heating and the admixture
of other materials to affect colour and adhesive properties of the colourants, also
reveals more elaboration of procedures in the Upper Pleistocene of both Eurasia
(Hoffmann et al., 2018) and South Africa (Rosso, Martí, & d’Errico, 2016) used by
Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, respectively.
Another invisible layer of complexity in technology that emerges during the
Upper Pleistocene is the use of artificial propulsion systems for projectiles. The
projectiles themselves, whether spears, darts or arrows, may not have been that
much more elaborate than earlier hand-held or hand-thrown spears. However, the
development of additional elements, including spear-throwers and bows, implies
added levels of complexity in the entire weapon system, and perhaps in manufacture
procedures as well. Unfortunately, the non-stone elements of these weapon systems
seldom survive, and almost never in complete form. Indirect evidence related to the
sizes and weights of projectile tips (Shea, 2006; Sisk & Shea, 2011) and, more con-
troversially projectile velocities inferred from the characteristics of impact fractures
(Sahle et al., 2013), suggest that the first spear-throwers and later bows were utilized
in the late Stone Age of South Africa, starting around 90 ka (Backwell et al., 2008;
Henshilwood, 2012; Lombard & Phillipson, 2010; Shea, 2006, 2009; Shea & Sisk,
2010). Current evidence suggests that artificial propulsion systems first appeared
in Eurasia with modern humans around 45 ka (Shea, 2006; Sisk & Shea, 2011),
although future discoveries could well change the scenario.
It is commonly assumed that trends toward greater complexity in artefact pro-
duction continued through the end of the Pleistocene. While that is certainly the
case, the most obvious trends toward more elaborate procedures do not involve
stone tools. Blade and bladelet production of course become more ubiquitous glo-
bally with the Upper Paleolithic and Late Stone age. But as already discussed, basic
prismatic blade production is not substantially more complex or difficult than is
Levallois production. The most compelling evidence for increasing complexity in
lithic procedures through the last 30 ky of the Pleistocene comes from methods of
pressure microblade production described in northeast Asia, some of which do appear
to involve more steps and stages than either percussion blade/bladelet production
or Levallois (Bleed, 1996, 2002; Inizan, 2012; Nakazawa & Yamada, 2015; Takakura,
2012). Figure 8.9 presents P. Bleed’s (Bleed, 2002) reconstruction of stages in the
exploitation of a typical microblade core at the Kakuniyama site in Japan: as elab-
orate as this diagram is, it leaves out all of the early phases of production, including
shaping of the large “battered biface” that forms the blank for the microblade core.
These are among the most complex and elaborate lithic manufacture procedures
ever developed. Successful manufacture of very large, very thin Solutrean bifaces cer-
tainly required an extraordinarily high level of skill (Aubry et al., 1998, 2008; Bordes,
1969), but the actual procedures involved were not necessarily more elaborate than
those used to make more prosaic, functional bifaces.
During the final 40,000 years of the Pleistocene, much of the growth in
technological complexity involved technologies other than stone tool manu-
facture. Materials such as bone and antler require a completely different set of
techniques from stone flaking. While these procedures may not have the cachet
and mystique of stone knapping, they do require considerable skill and know-
ledge. Some reconstructed procedures for making bone and antler tools involve
many more steps and different techniques than even the most elaborate flaking
procedures (e.g. Ambrose, 2010; Julien, 1982; Liolios, 1999, 2006; Tejero, 2010).
Julien (1982: 127–137) describes seven distinct stages in the manufacture of late
Upper Paleolithic Magdalenian barbed antler harpoons (Figure 8.10), each with
a series of sub-routines. Even the simple extraction of a rod or “baguette” antler
blank for a harpoon involved a range of procedures and techniques (Averbouh,
Goutas, & Marquebielle, 2016). And of course these artefacts were parts of even
more elaborate composite implements involving several other materials –wood,
sinew, cordage, and adhesive –each of which required a different set of techniques
and knowledge to manipulate. Other materials and technologies which either came
into use or became markedly more elaborate between 50 ka and 10 ka include
pigments (Rosso et al., 2016; Sajó et al., 2015; Salomon et al., 2015; Villa et al.,
2015), cordage and textiles (Adovasio, Soffer, & Klíma, 1996; Hoffecker, 2005;
Hyland et al., 2002; Kvavadze et al., 2009; Nadel et al., 1994; Soffer, 2004), clothing
(reviewed in Collard et al., 2016), housing, food processing (Aranguren et al., 2007;
Manne, 2014; Mariotti Lippi et al., 2015), ceramics (Cohen et al., 2017; Farbstein
et al., 2012; Hyland et al., 2002;Y. V. Kuzmin, 2006), and of course ornamentation
and art. Because many of the substances and objects involved are perishable or
fugitive, we have only superficial knowledge of the true scale of mechanical and
procedural elaboration in these technologies.
The continued growth of technological complexity during the Upper Pleistocene
is most often understood in cultural rather than biological terms. Some authors argue
that hominins other than Homo sapiens (e.g. Neanderthals) lacked certain cognitive
structures such as enhanced working memory (Wynn & Coolidge, 2004) or the
ability to link disparate cognitive modules (Mithen, 1996) necessary for producing
FIGURE 8.9 P. Bleed’s
reconstruction of the latter phases of microblade core shaping
and production at the Late Upper Paleolithic Kakuniyama site, Japan (redrawn by
M. C. Stiner from Bleed, 2002, Figure 7.3).
FIGURE 8.10 Some of the most manufacture-intensive artefacts of the entire

Paleolithic: Magdalenian harpoons from Laugerie Haute and Laugerie Bas, France
(from Julien, 1982). Black bar = 10 cm.
the most complex Paleolithic artefacts and technologies. However, much growth in
technological complexity during the Upper Pleistocene is more likely due to the
effects of demography and cumulative culture. Large and more robust populations
increase the likelihood that novel ideas will develop, spread, and be retained (French,
years BP
10,000
20,000 replaceable-part technology ubiquitous; complex osseous tools
osseous materials, cordage in composite tools

50,000
compound adhesives, pigments; mechanical projectiles?

earliest heat treatment; complex procedures – bone tools?
100,000
composite tools common
earliest blades, Levallois

500,000
bifacial shaping/soft hammer percussion

complex large flake production systems
1,000,000
use of large flakes for LCTs

1,500,000
multiple techniques; retouch
FIGURE 8.11 Summary of developments in artefact complexity.
2016; Powell, Shennan, & Thomas, 2009; Premo & Kuhn, 2010; Shennan, 2000, 2001;
Stiner & Kuhn, 2006), although population size alone is not a guarantee of increasing
complexity (Collard et al., 2012; Vaesen et al., 2016). And inevitably the ratchet of
cumulative culture builds on earlier complexity to create new levels of elaboration
(Dean et al., 2014; Tennie et al., 2009; Tomasello, 1999). I emphasize that this should
not be taken to imply that cumulative culture had no effect prior to the late Upper
Pleistocene. However, the farther back in time we go, the stronger the effects of other
constraints on artefact complexity such as cost and cognitive limitation. It would be
more appropriate to postulate that cumulative cultural evolution became the dominant
signal in trajectories of technological change only relatively recently.
8.4 Summary: Trends in complexity

Figure 8.11 summarizes major trends in artefact complexity over the course of
the terminal Pliocene and the Pleistocene. Here at least conventional wisdom
holds true—the broadest trend is toward increasing elaboration and modularity in
technological procedures as well as in implements. However, the trend is far from
monotonous and is marked by shifts in the domains within which complexity is
expressed.
It is neither surprising nor controversial to claim that stone tool technolo-
gies, dating to before 2.0 my are exceedingly simple and minimally hierarchical.
However, after 2.0 my (although still within the so-called Oldowan) there are signs
for simple modularity in the form of distinct procedures that led to the production
of flakes, chopper/cores, polyhedrons, and battered tools and percussors. Expanded
use of retouch to shape tool edges may also be evidence for a simple hierarchiza-
tion of production. Slightly later, the use of large flakes as blanks for early handaxes
and cleavers is clear evidence for hierarchical modularity in artefact production.
Early on, handaxe blanks were made by simple techniques and reshaped with mar-
ginal retouch. Over time, procedures for making large flakes became hierarchical
themselves, emphasizing pre-determination of blank form as opposed to secondary
shaping for tools. After 700–800 ka, bifacial shaping, an undeniably hierarchical pro-
cess, was added to the hominin repertoire.
This trend toward increasing complexity and hierarchization in blank production
continued through the Middle and early Upper Pleistocene with the appearance,
refinement and diversification of Levallois, blade production, and others sets of
technological procedures. However, after the development of hafting in the mid-
Middle Pleistocene, the most impressive increases in complexity occur in the domain
of composite tools and the attendant technologies (wood, bone and antler working,
glues and mastics, cordage, etc.). Stone blanks produced by hierarchically organized
methods of flaking were fastened to the ends of hafts using various binders, each
of which entailed independent and more-or-less complex procedures of manufac-
ture. In South Africa, the use of heat treatment to change the working properties
of some raw materials during the mid-Upper Pleistocene adds yet another level
of hierarchical complexity to the production of composite tools. Evidence for the
manufacture of compound pigments first appears in both Europe and Africa around
the beginning of the Upper Pleistocene (MIS 5a–MIS 4). Compound adhesives and
mechanically propelled projectiles are detected shortly thereafter in Africa, though
the latter is not documented in Eurasia until around 45 ka. But after about 70 ka the
most striking changes in technological complexity occurred in domains other than
lithic technology. Some reduction methods for pressure microblade cores and a few
unusual artefact forms embody even higher levels of complexity and even stronger
hierarchical organization, but by and large late Upper Pleistocene lithic technology
was not in itself much more complex than earlier approaches to making stone tools.
In contrast, fragmentary evidence suggests substantial elaboration in technologies
for fibre production, clothing manufacture, and the assembly of composite tools
after 50 ka. If anything, stone tools became simpler, representing increasingly small
and anonymous components in much more elaborate composite implements.
9
SYNTHESIS –TRENDS, TENDENCIES
AND ENTRENCHMENTS
If nothing else, the range of evidence discussed in the previous six chapters should
demonstrate the diversity of evolutionary trajectories in Paleolithic technology.
One can easily recognize long-term directional change in any of the six dimensions
examined. Sometimes changes are synchronous across all dimensions but often they
are not. A few trends or events are truly global in scale, but most are not. Figures 9.1
though 9.3 summarize the patterns discussed in the preceding chapters, assembling
the information in the summary figures for Chapters 3 through 8. What I iden-
tify as intervals with one or more important developments are marked with dark
shading. The three rows of asterisks on the left of the figures indicate the approxi-
mate boundaries of important conventional “transitions” between Oldowan and
Acheulean (ca. 1.7 my), Lower and Middle Paleolithic or ESA and MSA (ca. 250
ka), and between Middle and Upper Paleolithic (or MSA and LSA) (ca. 45 ka).
Although there is some overlap between the conventionally defined transitions and
what I have identified as key technological developments, a great deal occurs within
these long-established time intervals. Had I approached this project using conven-
tional units such as Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic, I would have missed
many of the dynamics in the long and winding history of Paleolithic technologies.
Directional trends in technology are most apparent at the broadest spatial and
temporal scales. One can chart seemingly progressive change globally by selecting
regional examples that form a coherent sequence. However, adopt a more local,
finer-grained perspective and these trends become less coherent. We see periods
of stasis and even anti-trends. For example, within the period between 1.7 my
and 200 ka one can easily make a case that the methods hominins used to manu-
facture handaxes became more elaborate, and that handaxes themselves became
more refined, thinner and more symmetrical. But this gradual improvement is not
apparent everywhere: it is much more evident in northern France and England
than in the northern Mediterranean, for example (Santonja & Villa, 2006; Villa,
Synthesis 287
FIGURE 9.1 Diagram showing global temperature trends from 3.0 ma to the present.
Grey bars are peaks and thresholds of technological change discussed in the text
(Oxygen isotope data from Lisiecki & Raymo, 2005).
1981). And in some places and times typical measures of refinement actually show
a reverse trend (Jagher, 2016; Saragusti et al., 1998) after 500 ka.
How can we have exceptions to or reversals of what seem to be evolutionary
trends? The most important reason is that the measures we use are at best indir-
ectly related to hominin morphological and behavioural phenotypes upon which
evolutionary forces actually operated. By 800 ka or so, if not earlier, natural selec-
tion had equipped early humans with the perceptual and neuro-muscular architec-
ture required to make fine, symmetrical handaxes. Methods such as bifacial thinning
and prepared-core technologies, which translated these abilities into highly refined
products, had also appeared, indicating certain cognitive capacities. But while these
biological and cultural developments enabled hominins to produce certain kinds of
artefacts, they did not obligate them to do so. Cognitively and physically evolved
hominins sometimes produced less evolved-looking artefacts when it fit the needs
and exigencies of their lives. In other words, the expansion of hominin capacities, in
combination with the gradual ratcheting up of accumulated culture, is a necessary but
insufficient explanation for refinement in material culture. Becoming smarter, more
coordinated and more knowledgeable certainly raised the ceiling of what hominins
were able to produce. But the lower limits remained the same. A great many other
factors shaped the ways in which hominins actually exercised their capacities.
It should also be very clear that even macroscopic technological change actually
proceeded in fits and starts.There may be a long delay between the appearance of one
behavioural option and its full refinement or widespread adoption. Based on current
evidence, artefacts described as handaxes and cleavers appeared around 1.7 my ago in
southern and eastern Africa. However, they did not become ubiquitous until much
later. Bifacial thinning, the method of shaping most closely identified with handaxes,
and the approach which enables full exploitation of the artefacts’s potential as a mobile
tool or core, did not become part of the equation until at least 700,000 years later.
Bifacial thinning may have made the best handaxes, but it had nothing to do with
the reason hominins started making them in the first place. Likewise, small bladelets
were first produced systematically starting around 70 ka in some parts of South Africa,
and somewhat later in Europe.Yet bladelets were not widely used in either area until
newgenrtpdf
composite raw material information artefact
years BP tools economy content design complexity
288 Synthesis
10,000
20,000 microlithic tech ubiquitous elaborated tools elaborate composite & osseous tools
mobile & parietal art common

bladelets locally common provisioning places points as signals formal osseous tools
*********
50,000 compound adhesives ground-edge tools added infor value to formalized stone artefacts? osseous mat, & cordage
artefacts in composites
earliest bladelets transport >100km exotic artef. as tokens? mechanical projectiles &
100,000 compound adhesives
adhesives earliest ornaments heat treatment & comp. pigments
transport >50km hafting accomodation

hafting widespread pigments common composite tools common
*********
earliest hafting? diversified life histories first pigments? design for reduction earliest blade, Levallois tech.
500,000
prepared cores, hierachical methods

bifacial shaping
1,000,000
handaxes as signals?
1,500,000 habitual transport design by blank selection large flake LCTs

********* multiple functions retouch
2,500,000 regular transport systematic raw material selection
FIGURE 9.2 Summary of trends in composite tools, raw material economy information content, design, and
complexity.
newgenrtpdf
sub-Saharam North western East
years BP
Africa Africa Eurasia Asia
10,000
regional diversfication
20,000 rapid spread of microlithic tech rapid spread of microlithic tech
rapid spread of microlithic tech
rapid spread of microlithic tech rapid cultural turnover rapid cultural turnover earliest “western” UP
technical diversification
50,000 loss of diversity in lithic tech
100,000 technical diversification

rapid cultural turnover
logistical/functional differentiation diversification of
regionalization diversification of Levallois flake product
loss of diversity (west Asia)
diversified tool forms structured land use

flake production “domestic spaces”
diversified tool forms, diversified tool forms
flake production flake production
500,000
diversified LCT diversified LCT Mode 2 common regional diversity

production production regional diversity
1,000,000 Mode 1 common
1,500,000
Synthesis 289
diverse techniques, site types
expanded diversity first stone tools first stone tools first stone tools
2,500,000 stone tools widespread
FIGURE 9.3 Summary of trends in diversity in different regions.

290 Synthesis
much later, and did not become a truly global phenomenon until long after that.
As discussed below, the explanations for the delayed adoption and spread of bifacial
handaxes and small bladelets may rest on entirely different factors.
9.1 The big developments in Paleolithic technology

Seven major intervals punctuating the evolution of Paleolithic technologies are
summarized in Figures 9.2 and 9.3. The two summary figures may give the sense
of uninterrupted, gradual change but this is largely an artefact of the compressed
and logged time axis: after all, the text labels themselves cover tens or hundreds
of thousands of years. I have tried to be liberal in placing chronological limits on
these episodes so as to include as many of the relevant cases as possible. As with
any exercise in interpreting dating results from the Pleistocene, chronology is often
quite fuzzy. Part of the fuzziness stems from unavoidable uncertainties in the dating
methods themselves, and part of it is stems from the relatively small number of reli-
able case studies. And these effects of both inherent uncertainties and small sample
size grow the farther back in time one looks. It would certainly be possible to
identify more or fewer intervals, or to redefine the temporal boundaries of any one
interval. As discussed in the opening chapters, my purpose here is to try and liberate
discussion of evolutionary change in Paleolithic technologies from conventional
unit boundaries, in the absence of useful language for speaking about trajectories of
continuous change.These seven intervals are always open to discussion and revision.
In the following discussion I make the distinction between peaks and thresholds.
Peaks represent the culmination of long-term trends: they refer to periods in which
prolonged evolutionary developments produced something which is recognizably
different from what came before. Of course, this means that their boundaries are
particularly vague. Thresholds are more equivalent to phase shifts in technology.
They represent substantial changes in the relationships between hominin tech-
nologies and the external (environmental, social) or internal (cognitive, physio-
logical) forces that shaped their evolution. In highlighting these intervals, I do not
mean to imply that the long periods of time between them were “dead zones,”
periods of stasis: in fact, the definition of a peak implies just the opposite. What
peaks and thresholds represent are intervals when we have enough evidence of
novelty, and enough evidence—period—to claim that something significant had
happened.
9.1.1 Threshold: Widespread adoption of stone tools (2.6–2.3 ma)

It is tempting to highlight the earliest use of stone tools, currently pegged at 3.3 ma
at Lomekwi 3 (Harmand et al., 2015; Lewis & Harmand, 2016) as the first water-
shed event in technological evolution. As important as this finding is, however, we
must recognize that it is subject to a great deal of uncertainty. It is possible that
the original dating will be revised or that even older materials will be discovered.
Moreover, because the Lomekwi 3 case is unique, and there is currently nothing
Synthesis 291
linking it to the more numerous and better-studied artefact assemblages from 2.6
ma and later, we cannot even be certain that it is ancestral to later technologies
(Braun et al., 2019). It is not out of the realm of possibility that the Lomekwi
artefacts represent an early foray into stone-tool-aided adaptations that had no
influence at all on later hominin culture.
A more obvious interval of change began in sub-Saharan Africa after 2.6 ma. It
is marked by the widespread adoption of stone-flaking by hominins. Although early
Mode 1 sites are still few and far between, between 2.6 ma and 2.3 ma they appear
at multiple locations in areas as far apart as Ethiopia (Braun et al., 2019; Goldman-
Neuman & Hovers, 2012; de Heinzelin et al., 1999; Semaw, 2000; de la Torre,
2004b) and Kenya (Delagnes & Roche, 2005; Harmand, 2007). Stout (2017) puts
the generalized adoption of stone tools later, after 2.0 ma, based on an increase in
numbers of sites around this date. However, the fact that hominins in distant parts of
the Rift Valley were making sharp-edged flake tools by 2.3 my ago suggests either
that one population of stone-flaking hominins had been very successful, or that the
practice had already begun to spread among neighbouring populations.
This event is actually quite narrowly defined. It indicates that a very specific
kind of technology, involving serial production of sharp-edged stone flakes, was
adopted by multiple populations living in a variety of environments. I identify this
“event” (if anything that unfolded over 300 ky or more can be called an event)
as a threshold rather than a peak because of the scarcity of evidence for a gradual
increase in reliance on lithic technology. It looks as if sometime after 2.6 ma stone
tools began to do something different for hominins than they had before. Extractive
foragers par excellence, primates such as chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys employ
a range of implements in extractive foraging tasks. We can reasonably assume that
this was the ancestral condition for Pliocene hominids and hominins. Non-human
primates do not use sharp-edged tools in the wild, though, importantly, they can be
taught to do so in captivity (Roffman et al., 2012). But while non-human primates
do not seem to need sharp edges to cut things, late Pliocene and early Pleistocene
hominins clearly did. The default explanation, based on the presence of animal
bones in association with the earliest flaked stone tools, is that what they needed
to cut up were the carcasses of large animals (Ferraro et al., 2013; Plummer, 2004;
but see Domínguez-Rodrigo, 2009). I will not even dip my foot into the treach-
erous waters surrounding the question of how these hominins obtained the animal
carcasses. And we cannot lose sight of the fact that procurement and consumption
of other resources (tough roots and tubers, thick-skinned fruits) may have been
facilitated by the use of sharp edges. It is enough to say that, by the beginning of
the Pleistocene, hominins in different parts of East Africa were regularly producing
sharp stone flakes for extracting food (and perhaps other resources) from a variety
of sources.
Regardless of when exactly it occurred, the entry of hominins into the com-
munity of terrestrial large-game predators had enormous implications for their
ecology and evolution (Ferraro et al., 2013). It fundamentally changed the ecology
and habitat tolerances of hominins (Antón, Leonard, & Robertson, 2002; Foley,
292 Synthesis
2001; Stiner, 2002), brought new competitive pressures on them (Brantingham,

1998; Stiner, 2002), and altered constraints on cognitive and somatic evolution
(Aiello & Wells, 2002; Aiello & Wheeler, 1995; Braun et al., 2010). And to some
degree, these profound shifts were potentiated by the broad adoption of simple
flakes as aids to extraction of key resources. At the same time, entry into a new eco-
logical role that required technological assistance changed the evolutionary pressures
on hominin behaviour and technology. If getting better at making and using tools
had direct consequences for individual fitness, then, for the first time, the applica-
tion of material culture may have begun to place selective pressure on hominin
skeletal and neuro-anatomy.
9.1.2 Peak: Technological diversification (1.8 ma–1.5 ma)

Although the earliest technologies changed very slowly, they did change. By 1.8 ma
or a bit later, a number of new ways of doing things had been added to the
repertoires of African hominins. Specialized pounding tools such as spheroids
and anvils appeared in some assemblages. So-called core tools, choppers, and
chopping tools began to look more like implements rather than cores. And
hominins began to regularly modify the edges of small flakes to strengthen or
reshape them. None of these features is exactly revolutionary. Whether we call
these assemblages late Oldowan, developed Oldowan, or something else is irrele-
vant to the arguments at hand. What is important is that, over time, a range of
activities and habits involving stone tools became ingrained enough that they
led to recognizably different outcomes in artefacts. As discussed in previous
chapters, there is clear functional differentiation in artefact assemblages after 1.8
ma, with both heavy and light cutting tools and apparently dedicated percussion
implements found together in the same localities. It shows us that hominins were
doing more things with stone tools, and that they had begun to design artefacts,
in the simplest meaning of the term, for different ends. The expanded range of
applications for stone artefacts implies an increased importance of technology in
hominin adaptations overall.
Although the appearance of Large Cutting Tools (LCTs) in sub-Saharan African
around 1.7 ma is often thought to be a watershed event in hominins behaviour
and technology, I would argue that the earliest Mode 2 assemblages with handaxes
are not so very different from the latest assemblages without them. Moreover,
assemblages with and without LCTs continued to be produced for hundreds of
thousands of years. While they look different and are called different things, the
earliest handaxes made on cobbles were made in essentially the same way as earlier
core tools, by removing flakes from one or both faces of a cobble to produce an
edge or point. The earliest Mode 2 assemblages do also contain LCTs made on
flakes: in fact, this is one of the markers of early Mode 2 in Africa. However, the first
handaxes and cleavers on flakes can be seen as scaled-up versions of older retouched
flake tools. As far as I can tell the blanks were produced by very simple techniques,
just striking large cortical spalls from boulders or outcrops (also known as etame
Synthesis 293
flakes [Sharon, 2011]).The handaxes and cleavers of the early African Acheulean are
certainly more refined and probably more effective versions of core tools.They may
indicate increasing pressure to perform certain activities requiring heavy cutting
tools more efficiently. However, I would argue that they represent an extension of a
preexisting trend towards diversification and refinement, not a major technological
departure (but see de la Torre, 2016, and de la Torre & Mora, 2018, for a different
viewpoint).
Accompanying these new or improved artefact forms are both anatomical and
archaeological indicators of expanded mobility, larger home ranges, and use of a
greater range of environments and habitat types. The increased emphasis on large
cutting tools, which have potentially long use lives, may well have been linked to
these changes in hominin ecology and movement. Handaxes, cleavers, and similar
artefacts would have been very suitable gear for hominins moving over larger
distances and exploiting an expanded range of habitat types and resources.Whether
or not hominins actually took advantage of this potential prior to 1.5 my remains
largely a matter of conjecture, however.
Whatever the significance of the diversification and refinement in lithic tech-
nology evident between 1.8 ma and 1.6 ma, they had very little to do with facili-
tating the first hominin dispersals from Africa into Eurasia. The earliest lithic
artefacts outside of Africa are exceedingly simple, resembling the earliest Mode 1
more closely than contemporary Mode 1 or Mode 2 assemblages from Africa (Baena
Preysler et al., 2010; Carbonell et al., 2009; Carbonell et al., 2010; de Lumley et al.,
2009; de Lumley, Nioradzé, Barsky et al., 2005). Why things unfolded in this way is
a fascinating issue that should excite continued debate. It could simply be a function
of the fact that the first dispersals actually took place much earlier than the post
1.8 ma diversification. Recent findings from China suggest an initial appearance of
hominins there before 2.0 ma (Zhu et al., 2018), though further confirmation is
needed. Alternatively, the seeming anachronism of the earliest stone tools from out-
side of Africa could indicate that the first populations to disperse were actually those
groups who couldn’t or didn’t make the more effective artefact forms (Carbonell
et al., 1999), or that demographically unstable hominin populations were prone to
losing accumulated technological knowledge and starting over from scratch (Tennie
et al., 2016, 2017).The important point here is that while stone-tool-aided foraging
and more carnivorous diets might have been crucial to hominins’ potential for dis-
persal, it didn’t take very nice tools to get the process underway.
9.1.3 Threshold: The first hierarchical production systems

(850 ka–700 ka)
Sometime after 1.0 ma and before 800 ka, hominins in Africa and the greater
Rift Valley began producing some handaxes, cleavers, and other LCTs in ways that
have implications for both the functionality of artefacts and the cognitive demands
of producing them. The important developments involve methods of manufac-
ture and not the typological forms of the products. The first appearance of true
294 Synthesis
bifacial reduction, with staged removal of thinning flakes that cross the mid-line
of the artefacts, dates to between 850 ka and 700 ka at Rift Valley sites such as
Isenya, Kenya (Roche et al., 1988; Roche & Texier, 1991), Gesher Benot Ya’aqov
in Israel (Naama Goren-Inbar, 2011; Sharon, Alperson-Afil, & Goren-Inbar, 2011;
Sharon & Goren-Inbar, 1999), and elsewhere (Beyene et al., 2013; Gallotti & Mussi,
2017). Around this same time, if not somewhat earlier, a range of methods for pro-
ducing large, preshaped flakes suitable as blanks for handaxes and cleavers were
adopted in different areas (Goren-Inbar et al., 2011; Herzlinger et al., 2017; H. Li
et al., 2017; Sharon, 2009; Sharon & Beaumont, 2006). Raw material permitting,
one or more of these more complex methods of blank production are typically
represented in the same sites as the bifacially thinned handaxes. There are com-
paratively few well-dated sites from the end of the early Pleistocene and beginning
of the Upper Pleistocene in Africa, and many sites with apparently early bifacial
shaping or prepared-core technology are surface occurrences, so it possible that
these particular phenomena date back farther than is currently thought. Still it is
safe to say that they were well established and widespread, at least within Africa and
the northern Rift Valley by 700 ka.
The cognitive and behavioural significance of both bifacial façonage and
prepared- core technologies have been discussed extensively, and some of the
arguments are reviewed in Chapters 6 and 8. These kinds of production and
shaping systems are strongly hierarchical, which implies a greater level of com-
plexity than earlier methods of manufacture and shaping. Prepared-core tech-
nology also requires a kind of “delayed gratification,” which implicates some
degree of executive function and short-term working memory, even if it was not
as developed as it is among recent humans (Coolidge & Wynn, 2005; Stout et al.,
2014; Stout & Chaminade, 2007).
On the other hand, we should not equate the earliest evidence of seemingly
advanced mental abilities with their earliest evolution. All we really know is
that the capacity to organize and execute complex and hierarchically organized
recipes for action are first manifest in stone tools sometime after 800 ka. When
and why those capacities evolved is a separate question. A massive cross-species
study shows that levels of “self-control,” one index of executive function, increase
with brain volume. Among primates at least, self-control is also correlated with
diet breadth: holding brain-size constant, species with broad, varied diets exhibit
more self-control in tests than species with narrow diets (MacLean et al., 2014).
Interestingly, social group size shows no effect (Maclean et al., 2014). What this
suggests is that the cognitive functions revealed by changes in technological
procedures might well have evolved in response to selective pressures originating
in foraging adaptations, and were only later applied to material culture. The fact
that hominins did begin to apply evolved problem-solving ability to making tools
further indicates that there were benefits to improving the functionality of cer-
tain artefact forms, particularly large cutting tools. Clearly, these artefacts were
important enough to the well-being of individuals and groups that they took more
trouble and effort to make them.
Synthesis 295
Changes manufacture procedures also implicate raw material economies.

Bifacial thinning is an ideal shaping method for implements with long life his-
tories: a well-prepared biface can be reworked or resharpened many times with
little loss of functionality compared to a similar tool made by trimming the edges
of a cobble. Whether potential for a long functional life was a strong influence on
the early adoption of bifacial façonage remains uncertain because there have been
few if any systematic studies of shape transformation and reduction on early Middle
Pleistocene bifacial tools. In any event, limited data on raw material movement,
consistently “fragmented” reduction sequences, the repeated displacement of LCTs
from locations of production, and the presence of vast accumulations of handaxes
and cleavers at localities such as Kilombe, Orlorgesailie, and Isimila suggest that
such artefacts were regularly transported over some distance (Chapter 4). At the
very least this is evidence for the increasing importance of LCTs, and of the tasks
in which they were used, to hominins in Africa and beyond.
9.1.4 Peak and threshold: Technological diversification and new

socio-economic structures (500–350 ka)
A whole series of novel developments in technology occurred in the middle of
the Middle Pleistocene, between 500 ka and 350 ka. Unlike prior developments,
which took place mainly in Africa, some of these changes are global. For the first
time we also have reasonably abundant evidence for other, non-lithic technolo-
gies. This interval combines a peak in lithic technology with a threshold in other
forms of behaviour. As with previous and succeeding intervals of change it also falls
squarely between “transitions” in the traditional Paleolithic stage systems, well after
the Oldowan-Acheulean “boundary” and well before the conventional transition
from Lower to Middle Paleolithic or ESA to MSA.
The salient developments in lithic technology during this period can be
summarized as diversification. A range of novel, or more highly refined, methods for
producing blanks appeared in both Africa and western Eurasia between 500 ka and
350 ka. These include Levallois or its precursors, Quina/Yabrudian production, and
several variants of blade manufacture. Moreover, the different kinds of blank have
different functional properties, and in many assemblages blanks seem to have followed
contrasting life histories.The novel procedures for producing small flakes were added
to, but did not replace, the manufacture of bifacial LCTs. Procedures for making and
especially for (re)shaping handaxes may even have become more diverse over time.
At first glance the earliest manifestations of Levallois and prismatic blade manu-
facture would seem to be an example of a threshold, the development of something
novel and unprecedented. However, complex, hierarchically organized methods of
blank production had already existed before 500 ka: earlier on they were simply
applied to large blanks rather than small ones. Blade production per se does not
have an obvious precedent. But in its first manifestations, blade manufacture is dis-
tinctive only for the shapes of the blanks. It is not more complexly structured or
organized than bifacial thinning, early forms of Levallois, or even the manufacture
296 Synthesis
of Quina/Yabrudian blanks (compare Barkai et al., 2009; Johnson & McBrearty,
2010; Shimelmitz et al., 2014; Wilkins & Chazan, 2012).
On the other hand, two, and possibly three, technological thresholds were also
reached between 500 ka and 350 ka in domains other than stone-flaking. One
is the first evidence of hafting and construction of composite tools (Rots et al.,
2015; Rots & Plisson, 2014; Wilkins et al., 2012). At this point in time the earliest
examples consist of little more than stone tools with traces of hafting modification
or impact damage, as well as the still-unique examples of potential wood handles
from Schöningen (Thieme, 1999). We know very little about the technology of
hafting, the kinds of glues or binding materials that might have been used, and so
on. Nonetheless, as detailed in Chapter 3, the practice of constructing composite
implements from a variety of raw materials opens up a vast range of possibilities for
new or improved functionality in artefacts (Barham, 2013).
The second major technological threshold between 500 ka and 350 ka involved
the use of fire.The questions of when hominins began to use and to control fire (two
separate issues) remain a subject of vigorous debate, with some researchers arguing
for a Lower Pleistocene date (Alperson-Afil & Goren-Inbar, 2010; Alperson-Afil,
Richter, & Goren-Inbar, 2017; Beaumont, 2011; Berna et al., 2012; Gowlett &
Wrangham, 2013; Wrangham, 2009) and others claiming a later date, sometimes
much later, for the first controlled use of fire (Castel et al., 2017; Roebroeks & Villa,
2011; Sandgathe et al., 2011). Assuming for the sake of argument that hominins
began some involvement with fire very long ago, what took place sometime after
500 ka is something akin to its “domestication.” In several parts of the world there
is a distinct increase in the frequency of evidence for burning within archaeo-
logical sites during the latter part of the Middle Pleistocene, after 400 ka (Gao
et al., 2017; Roebroeks & Villa, 2011; Shimelmitz, Kuhn, Jelinek et al., 2014; Stiner
et al., 2009). Well-defined, constructed fire features are very rare, probably for
taphonomic reasons, but the abundance of burned bones, artefacts, and sediments
in sites dating to around 500–400 ka and later attests to the frequent presence of
fires within them.
The final possible threshold involved the appearance of pigments as signalling
media. The earliest well-documented use of ochres and other colourful mineral
pigments come from Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa, where it is dated to ca.
500 ka (Watts et al., 2016). However, as discussed in Chapter 5, this remains a fairly
isolated case both locally and globally. Ochre and other pigments seem to have
become part of the signalling technologies of hominins in Eurasia, and indeed in
the rest of Africa, somewhat later (d’Errico, 2008; Roebroeks et al., 2012), sometime
within the second half of the Middle Pleistocene. On the other hand, as methods
for recognizing and characterizing mineral pigments improve the amount of evi-
dence may soon increase.
The diverse technological developments of the mid- Middle Pleistocene
are associated with a shift in land use and site selection that has potentially vast
implications. Prior to 500 ka or so, hominins seldom seem to have used natural
shelters and caves. Occupation levels in a few caves and rockshelters predate this
Synthesis 297
time (Villa, 2009) but they are neither common nor especially rich. However,
after 500 ka hominins began to use natural shelters more and more often. These
new kinds of living areas complemented rather than supplanted various open-air
locations that had been favoured before.
Habitual use of caves and rockshelters has a number of implications for the
organization of hominin lives. Natural shelters have many potential benefits. They
provide protection from the elements, contain heat, and make it easier to exclude
unwelcome visitors such as hyenas and lions. But they are not typically places where
food can be found. Early and Middle Pleistocene open-air sites typically occur in
locations such as lake margins or stream banks. Resources including plant foods,
game animals, and/or carcasses would have been relatively plentiful in these wet
areas.Very little that is edible to humans grows in caves, and, depending on the local
geology, not much may grow right around caves either. Large herbivores, preferred
prey of Middle Pleistocene hominins, certainly do not typically frequent caves and
rockshelters. The choice to concentrate some activities in locations with limited
food resources reflects a fundamental change in the calculus of social relations and
food sharing. These were places that had to be provisioned with food and other
resources. They were attractive not as natural resource patches but as artificial ones.
The presence of other hominins and the things they brought with them are what
made natural shelters places hominins wanted to be.
The combination of increased use of natural shelters, increased evidence for fire
within the shelters, and localization of both subsistence and technological activities
within these spaces can be seen as the coalescence of domestic spaces, places on the
landscape where a range of activities were carried out that was distinct from the
locations where food and other resources were procured (Chazan, 2009; Gamble,
2018; Kuhn et al., 2018; Rolland, 2000, 2004; Shimelmitz, Kuhn, Jelinek et al.,
2014; Stiner, 2018; Stiner et al., 2011). Rather than moving from resource patch
to resource patch, hominin groups were increasingly moving resources around to
concentrations of people on the landscape. The diversity of artefact manufacture
and life histories manifest after 500 ka could have been a response to the increas-
ingly differentiated use of space. Hominins were doing more things in more places,
and had to take a range of measures to keep themselves supplied with the artefacts
and raw materials they needed. Limited use-wear evidence suggests that, in add-
ition to butchery, different sorts of stone tool were used to cut and scrape plant
and animal materials (Lemorini et al., 2006, 2016; Rots & Van Peer, 2006), pos-
sibly to make other kinds of artefacts. Increasingly intense and differentiated social
interactions among hominins within the confines of domestic spaces might also
foster the evolution of more complex signalling, using materials such as natural
pigments. In turn, the realignment of social and economic relations on Paleolithic
landscapes had significant consequences for the evolution of bodies, minds and
behaviour (Foley & Gamble, 2009; Stiner, 2018). Based on changes in raw material
movement patterns and cranial capacity, Layton et al. (2012) argue that something
like human band societies began to emerge during the second half of the Middle
Pleistocene.
298 Synthesis
9.1.5 Peak and threshold: Technological diversification and

recombination (120–60 ka)
When I was in graduate school a few decades ago most archaeologists believed that
the beginning of the Upper Pleistocene was a period of relative cultural stasis, that
nothing very interesting happened with the MSA and Middle Paleolithic technolo-
gies produced by hominins. Research over the past 40 years or so has turned that
idea on its head, showing that a large number of significant developments in both
the complexity and the range of technologies (McBrearty & Brooks, 2000; Wadley,
2015) were first manifest in the period between 120 ka and 60 ka. In some respects,
more seems to have happened during this period than in the previous 2.4 my or so.
There are several reasons for these changing views. First, for a century or more,
stone tools had provided the only reliable window on Paleolithic technological
behaviour, and some of the most interesting developments do not directly involve
stone tool technology. The period after 120 ka seems to indicate continued diversi-
fication and refinement of long-established trends in stone-flaking, but little that was
particularly revolutionary. Perhaps the only truly novel feature of lithic technology
per se to appear during this interval is pressure flaking for shaping and retouching
artefacts (Mourre et al., 2010), known from the Stillbay industry of South Africa. As
for other facets of Paleolithic techo-know-how, there have been some fortuitous
discoveries, to be sure, but methodological developments have also played major
roles in expanding our understanding. One is the refinement of absolute dating
techniques, especially various forms of accumulated-dose (luminescence) dating.
Applications of these techniques have revolutionized our understanding of both
the age of specific phenomena and their temporal sequencing, especially in Africa
(Wintle, 2008). At the same time, technical developments in archaeological chem-
istry have permitted archaeologists to characterize microscopic chemical residues
of adhesives, pigments and other materials in ways previously impossible (Lombard
& Wadley,  2009).
We can now identify a long list of important developments in technology
during the first half of the Upper Pleistocene, the period between 120 ka and 60
ka. These include widespread adoption of hafting and the use of various adhesives,
some of them requiring elaborate manufacture procedures. Evidence for hafting is
older than this, of course, but earlier hafting traces (Rots & Van Peer, 2006; Wilkins
et al., 2012; Yaroshevich et al., 2016) are largely confined to characteristic patterns
of damage on stone tools.Whether hominins first began experimenting with sticky
substances such as plant resins in MIS 5, or whether their apparent fluorescence is
simply a matter of limits on preservation, remains uncertain. Nonetheless, evidence
for hafting and the materials used in it becomes much more common within this
interval.
Not all hafted tools in the early Upper Pleistocene were weapon tips, but a sub-
stantial number were, and these tend to attract most of the attention. As discussed
in Chapters 3 and 6, the question of whether there were hafted weapon tips is
different from the question of whether specific artefact forms were designed and
Synthesis 299
manufactured specially to serve as the business ends of projectiles. At this point

the evidence is such that one can rightfully challenge the latter assertion but not
the former. Moreover, a novel strategy of creating composite tools –that of com-
bining multiple small (microlithic) parts to produce longer, more elaborate, or
more complex forms—also appeared toward the end of this interval, specifically in
connection with Howiesons Poort and related assemblages in southern and eastern
Africa. Finally, it seems increasingly likely that by 90 ka or so hominins in Africa
began experimenting with mechanical means of propelling projectiles, including
spearthrowers and possibly the bow-and-arrow (Lombard & Phillipson, 2010;
Lombard & Wadley, 2016; Shea & Sisk, 2010).
The use of bone and allied animal tissues to make artefacts also shows the first
period of rapid development between 120 ka and 60 ka. Bone and antler had been
used for percussors and occasionally was flaked as if it were stone beginning in the
Middle Pleistocene (Biddittu & Celletti, 2001; Moigne et al., 2016). However, as
discussed in Chapter 8, starting around 90 ka hominins in sub-Saharan Africa began
applying different techniques such as carving and abrasion for shaping implements
of bone (Backwell et al., 2008; Brooks et al., 1995; Henshilwood et al., 2001;Yellen
et al., 1995). Recent evidence suggests that Eurasian hominins were also exploring
new uses of bone around the same time, although they were using it to produce
different kinds of artefacts (Soressi et al., 2013).
A range of very different evidence points to important developments in signal-
ling technologies in various parts of the world beginning by MIS 5 or 6 (Chapter 5).
Use of pigments became widespread across the world sometime in the late Middle
Pleistocene. A few important cases suggest that the technology for preparing and
perhaps applying pigments had become more elaborated by MIS 5 (d’Errico, 2008;
Hoffmann, Angelucci et al., 2018; Rosso, d’Errico, & Queffelec, 2017; Rosso et al.,
2016; Van Peer et al., 2003). And, as detailed in Chapter 7, hominins in South
Africa, North Africa and the Levant, began using durable, standardized material
objects as ornaments. Once again, contemporaneous European hominins may have
gone down a similar road with creating body ornamentation, but using different
media (Peresani et al., 2011; Romandini et al., 2014). There is even evidence for
the appearance of abstract art in both Africa and Eurasia after 75 ka, although
the examples remain few and far between (Henshilwood et al., 2009; Hoffmann,
Standish et al., 2018; Texier et al., 2010).
I would genuinely like to be able to go into detail about the evolution of fire
technology during the Upper Pleistocene. However, while hominins had been
interacting with fire and at least bringing it to the places they spent time for
hundreds of thousands of years, it is difficult to say anything very definitive about
the construction, maintenance, and use of fires prior to the late Upper Pleistocene.
Much of the reason for this is that fires are destructive by nature and many of their
products are fugitive. There have been important methodological developments
for the recognition of combustion features (Berna & Goldberg, 2007; Berna et al.,
2012; P. Goldberg, Miller, & Mentzer, 2017; Sandgathe et al., 2011) but the field
is still too much in a state of flux for confident generalization. On the other hand,
300 Synthesis
emerging evidence from South Africa shows that late Middle Stone age hominins
sometimes used fire systematically to alter the working properties of lithic raw
materials (Brown et al., 2009; Delagnes et al., 2016; P. Schmidt & Mackay, 2016;
P. Schmidt et al., 2013). While there have been no claims that contemporaneous
hominins in Eurasia heat-treated raw materials, they did apparently use fire in the
production of adhesives (Carciumaru et al., 2012; Koller et al., 2001).
The list of possible or likely technological developments between 120 ka and
60 ka does not end there. Especially well preserved sites such as Sibudu Cave offer
extraordinary glimpses into the use of highly perishable plant materials for purposes
such as bedding (Goldberg et al., 2009; Lombard & Wadley, 2016; Wadley et al.,
2011). Unfortunately, such instances remain isolated so we cannot really speak
about the extent or the time depth of the kinds of practices they demonstrate.
The varied developments in technology during the early Upper Pleistocene
have received a great deal of attention over the past two decades. They have
been identified as indicators of that nebulous set of behavioural traits making up
“modern human behaviour” (e.g. Belfer-Cohen & Hovers, 2005; Barton et al. 2011;
Henshilwood & Marean, 2003; Klein 1995; Morgan, Barton, & Bettinger, 2017;
Powell, Shennan, & Thomas, 2009; Wynn, 2002). More concretely, researchers have
attempted to link specific technological developments in complex composite tools
(Ambrose, 2010; Lombard, 2012), ornamentation (Hoffmann, Angelucci et al., 2018;
Kuhn, 2014; Rosso et al., 2016; Stiner et al., 2007; Stiner, Kuhn, & Güleç, 2013),
traps and snares (Lombard & Wadley, 2016), and mechanical projectile weapons
(Coolidge et al., 2016) to particular cognitive or social developments. I don’t intend
to undertake a review of these diverse arguments here. I will concentrate instead on
the broadest macroscopic pattern, that of dynamism and diversification.
After 120 ka, hominins in large parts of Africa and Eurasia were exploring
new ways to make and deploy artefacts, and even new functions for artefacts
such as in signalling identity. It is important to recognize that many of these
developments were the consequence of recombination of know- how and
techniques that had been around for a very long time. Hominins began hafting
stone elements hundreds of thousands of years before, so it is highly likely that
they began experimenting with various sorts of adhesives quite early on as well.
What happened during the early Upper Pleistocene was that they began to com-
bine these elements in ways they had not before. Rare evidence from sites such
as Schöningen demonstrates what most paleoanthropologists suspected, namely
that hominins had begun shaping fibrous composites such as wood by carving
and abrasion by the second half of the Middle Pleistocene (Thieme, 1997, 1999).
Still, it wasn’t until 90 ka or so that they began applying these same approaches
to shaping structurally-similar materials such as bone and antler. The use of min-
eral oxide pigments had also been part of the hominin behavioural repertoire
long before they began heating it or mixing it with other materials to change its
properties. Not all new forms of technology are so clearly the result of recom-
bination: mechanically propelled weapons, heat treatment of stone, and the use
of shell beads or raptor talons as information technology, have fewer precedents.
Synthesis 301
Nonetheless, many of the changes in technology that occurred during this period
of time were the result of repurposing or recombining old ways of doing things
in novel and often more elaborate ways.
Emphasizing the role of combining practices in producing many of the spec-
tacular cultural developments of the early Upper Pleistocene does not diminish
their significance. The notion of a completely novel, utterly unprecedented inven-
tion may be overplayed in contemporary views of creativity and technological pro-
gress. Across a range of domains, most technological evolution in the present, and
presumably the past occurs through recombining basic modules of knowledge and
skill (Arthur, 2009; Arts & Veugelers, 2015; Cecere & Ozman, 2014; Charbonneau,
2016; Enquist, Ghirlanda, & Eriksson, 2011). More generally, models show that
interactions and interdependencies between elements of culture increase the poten-
tial for evolution and diversification (Enquist et al., 2011).The very notion of cumu-
lative culture as a basis for human distinctiveness and achievement (Dean et al.,
2014; Lombard, 2016; Shipton & Nielsen, 2015; Stout & Hecht, 2017; Tomasello,
1999; Zwirner & Thornton, 2015) hinges on the potential for retention and recom-
bination of existing knowledge and skills.
The big question is what would potentiate and permit intervals of compara-
tively rapid expansion of human culture, technology in particular. The field is not
short of answers, but none of them seems complete or sufficient. Climate, through
its effects on local environments, is often cited as a driver of specific evolutionary
or adaptive phenomena. Potts and colleagues have more recently focused attention
not on specific conditions but on rates of change as a driver in hominin enceph-
alization and behavioural change (Potts, 1998; Bonnefille et al., 2004; Potts, 2012;
Maslin et al., 2014; but see Shultz, Nelson, & Dunbar, 2012). But climate alone is
not a sufficient driver for the developments described above. The first part of the
Upper Pleistocene (MIS 5 and 4) was certainly an interval of climatic extremes,
but it did not witness substantially wider extremes or more rapid fluctuations than
earlier periods (deMenocal, 1995, 2004). Local environments were undoubtedly
important in shaping local trajectories, but climate alone would not account for
more global patterns.
Evolutionary changes in hominin cognition are another obvious trigger for
rapid developments in technology and other forms of cultural behaviour.This is an
area of enquiry which is itself undergoing a remarkable fluorescence due to rapid
developments in instrumentation for measuring brain activity as well as in meth-
odologies for studying cognition in other species. I will not presume to attempt
a full review here (instead see MacLean, 2016; Stout & Hecht, 2017; Stout &
Chaminade, 2007). Klein and others have posited that the cultural “fluorescence”
in sub-Saharan Africa during the early Upper Pleistocene can be attributed to a
rapid change in human cognitive capacities, perhaps linked to language ability
(Klein, 1995; Klein & Edgar, 2002). Other researchers have pointed to changes in
executive function and short-term working memory as key elements in potenti-
ating more complex technologies (Ambrose, 2010; Belfer-Cohen & Hovers, 2010;
Wynn & Coolidge, 2004, 2011). Still others have posited that increased tolerances
302 Synthesis
of other individuals, perhaps linked to reduced corticosteroid levels, could have

potentiated more constant and stress-free interactions among individuals, greatly
potentiating the spread and “recombination” of ideas and knowledge (Cieri et al.,
2014; MacLean, 2016: 6350).
All of these hypotheses about changes to hominin cognition are plausible to one
degree or another. However, what evidence there is seems to point to an earlier date
for evolutionary developments in cognition and hormone regimes. The reduction
of facial rugosity, one potentially independent indicator of reduced testosterone-
linked aggression, was well underway during the Middle Pleistocene (Cieri et al.,
2014). Overall cranial capacity, which is strongly linked with levels of executive
function across mammals (MacLean et al., 2014) reached current levels in both
Eurasia and Africa by ca. 200 ka, before the interval of technological changes under
discussion (D’Amore, Frederic, & Vančata, 2001; Hublin, Neubauer, & Gunz, 2015).
So it is likely that the necessary neurological and cognitive architecture was already
in place.
Although cognitive capacities and challenging environments certainly
contributed to the expansion of technologies during the first half of the Middle
Pleistocene, a third factor is needed to tie these disparate influences. The capacity
of any given population to create and sustain cumulative culture depends on more
than just the constituent individuals’ capacities for communication and imitation.
For culture to accumulate, information must be retained across generations. One
of the most important limits on how much an information transmission system,
whether genetic or cultural, can handle is fidelity (Andersson, 2011; Andersson &
Törnberg, 2016). No matter how large the memory capacity or how fast infor-
mation is acquired, information will be lost over time if it cannot be retained and
transmitted with a high level of accuracy. At the individual level, fidelity in infor-
mation transfer is determined by the cognitive and sensory apparatus. At a group
level, however, fidelity is also affected by the distribution of information. The more
people who possess a particular skill or bit of know-how, the less likely it is that the
packet of information will be lost by accident or misadventure. This is after all the
theory behind information redundancy and cloud computing: it is more likely that
one will lose a USB stick or that one’s hard drive will crash (especially when a term
paper is due) than it is that an entire distributed memory architecture will disappear.
What determines the sizes of information pools in which hominins participated?
One is absolute, census population size: there need to be people around in order
to share information with them. As discussed in Chapter 8, several seminal papers
(Bentley & Shennan, 2003; Henrich, 2004; Powell, Shennan & Thomas 2009) raised
the idea that population size alone could potentiate accelerated rates of techno-
logical change and diversification. Inevitably of course, there has been a reaction
against these proposals. Collard and colleagues have shown that census population
size does not necessarily correlate with instantaneous measures of complexity and
diversity in technology (reviewed in Chapter 8). Still, this does not mean that that
larger population size could not potentiate change. Larger populations certainly serve
as reservoirs for knowledge, even if this is not utilized or expressed all at once (Hill
Synthesis 303
et al., 2011: 1288). It also raises a question of what constitutes a population for the
purposes of exchanging information. Connectedness of individuals, the sizes and
structures of social networks, may be more important than local census populations
(Kobayashi, Ohtsuki, & Wakano, 2016). With respect to culturally- transmitted
information, the population in which an individual participates is not confined to
the residential, kin, or even ethnic group. Humans regularly interact with networks
incorporating large numbers of individuals outside their residential or kin groups,
and even with people claiming different ethnic identities. For example Hill and
colleagues estimate that an average Aché male has a chance to observe and interact
with around 300 people during his lifetime, an order of magnitude more individ-
uals than the average chimpanzee male might interact with (Hill et al., 2011). And it
is easy to see how the potential for acquiring, or reacquiring, and recombining skills
and knowledge expands commensurately with the sizes of these social networks.
Not surprisingly, there is evidence for expanding social networks among Upper
Pleistocene hominins in various parts of the world. One is increased evidence for
exchange in “exotic” raw materials, some of which at least represent tokens of
relationships rather than movement of practical goods (discussed in Chapters 4
and 5). Another is the use of durable items such as beads for ornamentation and
adornment. Unlike pigments applied to the body, these objects can carry infor-
mation beyond a face-to-face encounter. Beads can be, and today they often are,
exchanged among individuals as lasting tokens of friendships or mutual obligations
(Kuhn & Stiner, 2007; Mitchell, 2002a, 2002b). The expansion of signalling tech-
nologies to include the use of long-lasting, transferrable media is likely one signal
of growing social networks, and with them an enhanced potential for high-fidelity
information exchange and accumulation of culture. A number of researchers have
cited expanding and contracting social networks to explain specific events such as
the spread of the Howiesons Poort (e.g. Porraz et al., 2013). Here, I am arguing that
the general dynamism of the 120–60 ka interval more generally is at least partially
an effect of expansions in the geographic scale of hominin social interactions.
Trajectories of technological change between 120 ka and 60 ka are geographic-
ally divergent, as should be expected of populations living in very different envir-
onments and isolated from one another by distance and environmental barriers.
Nonetheless, interesting things were happening all over the world at this time.
Even though different hominin populations were involved, novel developments in
hafting and mastics, pigment use and probably ornamentation are documented in
Europe and western Asia as well as in sub-Saharan Africa. As discussed in Chapter 7,
levels of alpha (inter-assemblage) and beta (intra-assemblage) diversity in lithic
technology were probably higher in Eurasia than in Africa at this time. On the
other hand, there is currently little or no indication that mechanically propelled
projectiles or heat treatment of lithic raw materials were part of the technological
repertoire of Eurasian hominins. As discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, there is also less
evidence for transfer of artefacts and raw materials over substantial distances in
Europe than in Africa during the first half of the Upper Pleistocene. And although
a few cases for possible use of durable media as ornaments have been documented
304 Synthesis
for late Neanderthals in Europe during MIS 4 (Peresani et al., 2011; Romandini
et al., 2014), pigments rather than beads were still the main material medium for
expressing social messages. What this suggests is that Eurasian hominins were not
engaged as extensively in constructing broadly-distributed social networks as their
contemporaries in Africa during the early Upper Pleistocene. That doesn’t mean
they could not do it—just that they did not do so much of it.
Of course, all this leads to the question of why the social lives of hominins might
have expanded when they did, and why the emphasis on networking may have
differed regionally. I suspect that the social worlds of hominins had been growing
for a long time, perhaps facilitated by slow changes in neuro-physiology that
enhanced communicative abilities or tolerances for peaceful interaction. Certainly,
the recruitment of pigments for some kind of signalling during the late Middle
Pleistocene is suggestive of more complex interactions, perhaps with larger groups
of individuals. Hominin brain sizes had reached near-modern levels by the late
Middle Pleistocene, and no doubt hominins entered MIS 5 with the potential for
a whole range of sophisticated behaviours. In all likelihood we are seeing a for-
tuitous confluence of environmental, demographic and cognitive factors, in which
some populations simply reached a tipping point before others. Relatively severe
climatic and environmental shifts at the end of MIS 5 might have been a trigger in
some areas. Population stability may also have played a role, a topic to which I will
return below.
9.1.6 Peak: Specialization and loss of diversity (45–30 ka)

In discussing the interval between 45 ka and 30 ka it is important to keep in
mind its brevity. Earlier peaks and thresholds are placed in windows lasting between
60 ky and 300 ky, whereas this interval lasted “only” 15 ky. Equally important, the
earlier intervals all spanned at least two marine isotope stages, meaning that they
covered at least one full glacial and one interglacial cycle. In contrast, the interval
between 45 ka and 30 ka is confined to an interval of cooling and drying global
climates toward the end of MIS 3. This is not to say that conditions were uniform
throughout the period: this interval includes two Heinrich events, sharp declines in
Northern Hemisphere temperatures associated with interruptions of oceanic circu-
lation patterns. Nonetheless, in the broader scheme of Pleistocene global climates,
conditions were relatively cool and dry throughout.
This interval at least also corresponds more or less with a conventional transition,
between Middle and Upper Paleolithic in Eurasia and between MSA and LSA in
Africa.The trajectories of change are very different in Eurasia and Africa. It is by now
non-controversial that Europe and Asia were invaded by one or more populations
of Homo sapiens with recent African origins starting sometime after 120 ka. This was
not the first dispersal of H. sapiens, but it is the one that left the strongest genetic
and archaeological signals. While population dynamics in Africa during MIS 4 and
3 were considerably more complicated than was once thought (Lahr, 2016; Reyes-
Centeno et al., 2014; Scerri et al., 2014, 2018; Shriner et al., 2018; Skoglund et al.,
Synthesis 305
2017;Tishkoff et al., 2009), there is no evidence for a major influx of hominins from
outside Africa at this time. The archaeological records in sub-Saharan Africa and
western Eurasia reflect these differing population dynamics. In sub-Sharan Africa the
transition from MSA to LSA is an extension of long-established trends, an example
of gradual evolution rather than an abrupt revolution (McBrearty & Brooks, 2000;
cf. Klein, 1995; Klein & Edgar, 2002). In Eurasia, the appearance of some early Upper
Paleolithic assemblage-types or industries, most notably the proto-Aurignacian and
early Aurignacian, represents an abrupt discontinuity in material culture. Late Middle
Paleolithic populations in these areas may have been engaged in new forms of sig-
nalling or artefact production, but the newcomers were doing these and many other
things, differently. Whether or not early Upper Paleolithic technologies were mark-
edly more complex and sophisticated than late Middle Paleolithic ones is debatable.
What is not debated is that they differed in a great many details.
On the other hand, many of the novel artefact forms and ways of doing things
that arrived in Eurasia with the Upper Paleolithic were simply new variants on
technologies that had existed for tens if not hundreds of millennia. Hominins had
been making composite tools and hafting pointed tips onto the ends of weapons in
Europe and the Levant long before 45 ka.What changed were the ranges and kinds
of things they were hafting and the kinds of weapons they were putting points on.
Eurasian hominins had been using various substances and objects to create material
signals since at least 250 ka.What changed after 45 ka were the media they used and
the frequency with which they used them. Hominins had been scraping hides, pre-
sumably for clothing and shelter, since the middle of the Middle Pleistocene. What
changed after 45 ka is that some of them adopted new techniques for assembling
hides into finished garments and other artefacts, involving bone awls and needles.
Hominins had been producing stone artefacts using comparatively sophisticated
and demanding procedures long before the Aurignacian appeared. What changed
were the particular procedures they used. In fact, the most striking shift in lithic
technology across this interval is the abrupt loss of diversity in manufacture strat-
egies. With the appearance of the Upper Paleolithic in Eurasia, blades and bladelets
became dominant if not universal, and many forms of lithic production effectively
disappeared.
Whereas the technological developments manifest in Eurasia with the Upper
Paleolithic may have precedents in earlier time periods we should not dismiss their
significance, as some seem to have done (e.g.Villa & Roebroeks, 2014; Speth, 2004;
Hayden, 2012). The evolution of a species does not end with the first appearance
of an individual attributable to it, and the presence of similar elements in hominin
behaviour at two points in time is not evidence that no behavioural evolution
occurred in the interval between them.What is more important is variation in how
the technology in question was deployed by different hominins (Kuhn & Stiner,
2001; Shea, 2011). In many respects, one of the most striking features of the interval
between 45 ka and 30 ka is the expanded ranges of variation in artefact forms and
levels of elaboration. And in large part this expanded range reflects a raising of the
upper limits on investment in artefacts. It would be ridiculous to claim that all
306 Synthesis
implements and procedures dating to after 45 ka had more parts or were better
made than anything that came before. However, the upper limits of elaboration and
complexity do seem to have become higher than ever before.
By 30 ka, if not earlier, it is possible identify geographic variation in particular
elements of technology that are consistent with clinal adaptive variation. For
example, elaboration of projectile technologies, or at least projectiles, reached a
higher level in northern Europe than in southern Europe or the Levant during
MIS 3. The late Aurignaican and Gravettian of northern and eastern Europe are
characterized by locally abundant, well-made bone and antler artefacts, many of
which served as components of projectile weapons and other tools. Bone and antler
artefacts are less abundant and less elaborate in contemporaneous assemblages from
southern Europe and the Near East. On one hand, this is not surprising.The extent
to which recent hunter-gatherers invested in hunting technology increases with
latitude (M. Collard et al., 2011, 2005; Oswalt, 1976; Torrence, 1983). However,
this sort of latitudinal or climatic variation in foraging technology does not seem
to characterize earlier periods. Although late Middle and early Upper Pleistocene
hominins did create stone-tipped weapons the designs are comparatively “flat” and
unvarying across their vast ecological range (Kuhn, 2009; Kuhn & Stiner, 2001; Shea
& Sisk, 2010).
Many of the technological developments occurring after 45 ka must have some
cognitive underpinning. Assembling multiple components of several materials into
a composite projectile takes a great deal of planning and expertise (Ambrose, 2010).
Designing and making a successful bow-and-arrow or spearthrower-and-dart system
must be similarly demanding cognitively (Coolidge et al., 2016; Lombard & Wadley,
2016). Here again, the question which remains unanswered is whether the earliest
manifestations of these technologies mark the time when the requisite capacities
developed, or whether they simply represent the earliest detectable applications of
the requisite capacities to a durable medium.
The expanded range of geographic variation in the forms and elaboration of
material culture after 45 ka may also index changes in the organization of pro-
duction and in the socio-economics of late Upper Pleistocene groups. Much of
what we find so impressive about some Upper Paleolithic artefacts is a reflection of
the know-how and expertise of their makers. While many manufacture procedures
were not especially demanding and most artefacts are not terribly impressive, the
ceiling on the application of skill and expertise seem to have been raised. What this
points to is an increase in specialization of roles within Paleolithic groups through
the Upper Pleistocene and especially after 45 ka. I am not arguing for full-time
craft specialization. I suggest instead that we simply see evidence for greater appli-
cation of individual skill and expertise to making artefacts, sometimes. This is not
a new idea. Others have argued for changes in activity specialization across the late
Pleistocene, though it is often framed in terms of the Middle to Upper Paleolithic
transition (Gibson, 1982; Orquera et al., 1984).
Experts claim evidence for so-called “expert cognition” in the manufacture of
stone tools as far back as the Middle Pleistocene (Herzlinger et al., 2017; Wynn
Synthesis 307
& Coolidge, 2004). But having the capacity to acquire expertise, and actually
acquiring and using it, are different things. There are real costs to skill acquisition.
As Stout and colleagues observe “The key bottleneck in the social reproduction
of knapping is … the extended practice required to achieve perceptual-motor
competence” (Stout et al., 2017: 7862). Few actualistic studies of what it takes to
go from complete novice to full-on expert have been attempted (but see Roux,
Bril, & Dietrich, 1995; Stout, 2002), but it does seem to take years to amass the
knowledge, perceptual understanding, and motor skills needed to be even a mod-
erately competent flintknapper (Stout et al., 2015; Stout & Khreisheh, 2015; Stout
& Hecht, 2017). Of course, individuals take as long or longer to reach optimum
levels of performance in other skills, such as foraging, which are even more vital
to hunter-gatherers (Gurven, Kaplan, & Gutierrez, 2006; Lancaster et al., 2000;
Schniter et al., 2015).
There are real benefits to having experts make artefacts. They produce better,
more effective implements and waste less raw material in the process. But there are
real costs to skill acquisition as well, costs that must be borne by both the individual
and the group. While they are learning their craft, novice artisans produce sub-
standard (if functional) artefacts. As anyone who has tried to teach naïve students
to flake stone can testify, novices can also waste a great deal of raw material. Much
skill acquisition in small-scale societies takes place “on the job,” in the context of
performing daily activities. Nonetheless, some amount of “woodshedding,” practice
for the sake of practice, must be involved in achieving the highest levels of expertise.
And there are opportunity costs to practice: it takes an individual away from other
productive activities. To some extent, societies must underwrite the education and
training of expert artefact makers by allowing them time to practice. By that same
token it must be worth the individual’s time, in that they are later rewarded for
learning to craft outstanding skin clothing or particularly fine atl-atl darts.
Following this line of reasoning, the increased levels of skill and investment seen
in a range of technologies after 45 ka should reflect higher levels of both special-
ization (Hayden & Gargett, 1988; Orquera et al., 1984) and socio-economic inte-
gration. Although there are clear rewards to letting the most skilled individuals do
the things they are best at doing, it also requires a novel set of economic relations.
If skilled craftspersons spend more time developing skills and making things than
others, they must be compensated with all the other resources they need. So some
form of in-kind exchange or socially enforced reciprocity would seem to be
required for such a system to develop (reviewed by Winterhalder, 1997). This kind
of small-scale specialization and division of labour may be common among modern
foragers, but it does not seem to have developed among our ancestors until rela-
tively late in human evolution.
The interval after 45 ka also saw continued expansion of the signalling role
of material culture. The nature and range of signalling technologies expanded to
encompass more media. The use of durable, transferable media such as beads can be
traced back to MIS 5, but after 45 ka or so there was a fluorescence of technologies
of ornament production, especially in western Eurasia (Taborin, 1993; Vanhaeren
308 Synthesis
et al., 2006; R. White, 1992, 2007). Eventually, symbolic content was added to for-
merly utilitarian objects such as tools and weapons (White 1992). And of course
parietal art was added to the mix, though even this may not have been completely
novel (Hoffmann, Standish et al., 2018). Long-distance movement of artefacts and
raw materials continued to expand (Chapter 4) as well.
The growth and elaboration of signalling technologies and long- distance
exchange after 45 ka suggests a continuation of the trend towards larger and more
spatially extensive social networks. Hominins across the globe were working harder
at developing or fortifying relationships with other people, sometimes across large
areas. These kinds of relationships might have begun as part of “social insurance”
strategies (Cashdan, 1985; Wiessner, 1977), a distinct advantage under the gener-
ally deteriorating environmental conditions of late MIS 3 (e.g. Mitchell, 2002b).
Eventually, these social networks probably took on a life of their own as social
connectedness could be leveraged into other kinds of advantages. The remarkably
broad distributions of complexes of material cultural traits called “Aurignacian” or
“Gravettian” provide indirect testimony as to the scales and effectiveness of social
networks among late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in western Eurasia (Chapter 7).
The continued recruitment of material culture as signalling media also had
another long-term effect. As discussed in Chapter 5, when artefact form becomes
a signal, the limitations on design change radically. Constraints imposed by phys-
ical interactions with other materials are relatively constant and un-varying: the
mechanics of hide scraping or arrow flight are the same everywhere and at all
times. In contrast, culturally determined constraints on functionality are extremely
labile. A symbol works because people agree on conventions for symbolic expres-
sion. Over the short term, there may be very high pressure to conform to symbolic
norms. Over the longer term those norms can shift very quickly. Participation
in the realm of communication thus potentiates more rapid and seemingly dir-
ectionless change in material culture over the long term. Non-linear effects are
introduced when cultural choices about what is a good or a bad artefact form to
produce depend on past choices, such as with conformist or non-conformist trans-
mission (Boyd & Richerson, 1985; Kendal, Giraldeau, & Laland, 2009; McElreath
& Lubell, 2008), which may potentiate rapid and seemingly chaotic change. The
rapid turnover in artefact forms and archaeological “cultures” seen in many regions
in the latter part of the Upper Pleistocene could well be a partial consequence of
this expansion in the cultural and social roles of material culture.
9.1.7 Peak: Homogenization and diversification (25 ka–12 ka)

The final interval of global evolutionary change in Paleolithic technology coincides
more or less with MIS 2, the Last Glacial Maximum. It is marked by two major
developments: (1) a drawn-out process resulting in near-global adoption of micro-
lithic technologies; and (2) expansion into new technological domains, espe-
cially those related to food processing. Both trends can be seen as responses to the
Synthesis 309
particularly challenging environments of MIS 2. However, both trends were also

potentiated by prior expansions in the sizes and connectivity of hominin populations.
The consequences of forays into bladelet or micro-blade–based technologies
beginning around 25 ka were discussed extensively in Chapters 3 and 8. This near-
global phenomenon seems to have at least two separate geographic origins, one
leading to pressure micro-blade production in East and North Asia, the other to
percussion bladelet technologies in western Eurasia and Africa. It makes good sense
to attribute these near-simultaneous trends to the rapid and profound changes in
global climates during MIS 2. Subsistence regimes and diets were forced to adapt
quickly to changes in terrestrial habitats due to cooling and drying climates. At the
same time, human populations were forced to shift territories in response to loss of
land due to expanding glaciers and deserts as well as the opening up of new lands
with dropping sea levels. The remarkable flexibility afforded by the modular nature
of microlithic technologies (Elston & Kuhn, 2002; Clarke, 1976) could have solved
a range of technological problems for human populations during MIS 2. At the
same time, assembling edges from many small stone segments relaxed constraints on
raw material size and quantity (Ambrose, 2002), another advantage to populations
coping with rapidly changing habitats and territories.
We can also take the rapid expansion of micro-blade and bladelet technologies
during MIS 2 as an illustration of the difference between invention and innovation.
Very small blades or bladelets were produced sporadically as early as 70,000 years
ago. Over the next 50,000 years, the popularity of these particular technological
strategies waxed and waned. By 35–42,000 years ago, they appeared in southern
Europe and India, but they did not persist or become widespread. Apparently, the
many advantages offered by these artefact manufacturing strategies were insuffi-
cient to cause them to become fixed. However, by the end of the LGM people
were making blades and bladelets across most of Africa and Eurasia. Environmental
conditions were certainly deteriorating across the globe 20,000 years ago. But
people living in South Africa, the Maghreb, the Mediterranean Levant, the Russian
Plain, and Mongolia faced very different challenges in terms of climate, resource
availability, and lithic raw materials. In some areas habitats expanded, in other areas
they contracted; in some places aridity was the principle challenge whereas else-
where cold was the main adaptive problem. Yet people adopted microlithic tech-
nologies in one form or another all across these diverse parts of the world.
To understand the global distribution and persistence of bladelet and micro-
blade production, we have to look beyond their specific economic advantages
and think about phenomena such as social networks and the effects of population
retreats into ecological refugia, that affected how cultural information was acquired
by peoples across Eurasia and Africa. A key piece of the puzzle is existing long-
distance social relations. After all, no matter what its benefits may be, an inven-
tion cannot spread unless people learn about it from trusted sources. A thoroughly
interconnected meta-population is a necessary precursor to any cultural phenom-
enon becoming widespread.
310 Synthesis
The wholesale move into microlithic technologies also shifted the focus of arte-
fact design away from the stone components to the larger composite tools. Although
we suspect that the forms of artefacts might have diversified as hominins began to
exploit new or previously under-exploited resources to cope with the challenges
of MIS 2, the complete implements are seldom accessible to us. On the other hand,
this last period of technological change does contain evidence for marked expan-
sion into new domains such as fibre and cordage, grinding equipment, boiling and
even ceramics (reviewed in Chapter 7). Again, some of these elements may have
quite deep roots: all we can really say is that after 25 ka they were widely enough
used that a robust signal survives in the archaeological record.
9.2 Stasis or continuity? Rates of change and trajectories of

cultural evolution in the East and West
Paleolithic “cultural” entities typically lasted a very long time compared with any
cultural phenomenon of the recent past. Mode 1 assemblages were produced in
Africa for ca. 800 ky with comparatively little change. Mode 2 assemblages with
large cutting tools were made in one form or another for more than a million
years, albeit with more modification than the earlier technologies. Rates of change
accelerated over time but even during the Upper Paleolithic or LSA cultural turn-
over was much more gradual than we are accustomed to seeing in the past few
millennia. What is called the Gravettian, sensu lato, persisted as a recognizable trad-
ition of toolmaking and artistic expression for more than 5,000 years, a short interval
by Lower Pleistocene standards but far longer than any of the great civilizations of
the classical or modern era.Very gradual change was the rule throughout much of
the Pleistocene. In Europe at least, the time between the Metal Ages and the pre-
sent, with its dizzying progression of inventions and turnover of technology and
material culture, is the real historical anomaly.
There are several non-exclusive explanations for the long lifespans of Paleolithic
cultures and culture traits. At one extreme, lack of change would be considered a
form of stasis or entropy, brought on by the simple inability of some hominins to
invent or innovate.Things stayed the same because hominins, singularly or as groups,
could not invent their way out of the rut they were in. At the other extreme, the
remarkable persistence of some ways of doing and making things could indicate
continuity in populations and lines of cultural transmission through time. Things
were able to stay the same because there was an unbroken chain of cultural transmis-
sion from one generation to the next. A third possibility is that many of the similar-
ities we see over time and space are the result of repeated convergences on similar
solutions to common problems in making and using stone tools.While convergence
may be a viable explanation for the widespread occurrence of certain traits such as
Mode 1 flaking or Levallois, it cannot explain the persistence and distribution of
constellations of potentially independent characters such as the Gravettian.
It has been widely observed that while things generally changed slowly during
the Paleolithic, the pace of change increased over time. The important intervals
Synthesis 311
of change identified in this study are more closely spaced in the late Middle and
Upper Pleistocene than in the Lower Pleistocene. At the broadest scale, it seems
entirely reasonable to attribute gradual increases in rates of change in technology
over the past 3.3 million years to the evolving abilities of hominins to invent new
solutions and to retain and disseminate those inventions. Hominins did evolve
bigger, and presumably more complex, brains over the course of the Pleistocene,
and part of their raw intelligence ought to have been used for inventing new kinds
of artefacts and communicating the designs to relatives and neighbours. Regardless
of which features of cognition actually contributed to greater creativity and more
rapid build-up of cumulative culture, we are on safe ground in attributing some of
the 3-million-year trend of accelerated cultural change to the evolving mental cap-
acities of hominins, even if we remain uncertain about what those capacities were.
Cognitive evolution is less helpful for explaining variation over shorter time
intervals or differences among contemporaneous populations. Brief periods of
cultural turnover or stability, or differences among contemporaneous hominin
populations are less likely to reflect contrasting mental abilities. For example south-
west France boasts a dizzying diversity of Middle Paleolithic cultures and chaînes
opératoires during late MIS 4 and early MIS 3 (see Chapter 7).All of these assemblages
were made by Neanderthals as far as we know. Yet contemporaneous populations
in well-studied regions such as the Mediterranean Levant produced a much less
diversified set of assemblages. It makes little sense to claim that Neanderthals living
in southwest France were more clever and innovative than those living at the other
end of the Mediterranean. Environmental, demographic, or historical factors are
more likely to explain these differences.
A more extreme and historically more important case involves differences
between the Paleolithic records of East Asia, on the one hand, and of Europe
and Africa, on the other. As discussed in previous chapters, American archaeolo-
gist H. Movius observed that what were recognized as key cultural developments
in the Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic were missing from the records of
China and southeast Asia (Movius, 1948). At the time, bifacial handaxes and other
markers of the Acheulean, and good examples of Levallois method, were unknown
in China. Upper Paleolithic blade technologies were also very scarce. Inevitably,
Movius’s impressions of the East Asian Paleolithic were biased by the limited know-
ledge available at the time. In the intervening years, the excavation and publication
of dozens of sites has brought to light a number of localities in China yielding
handaxes and cleavers which date to the Middle and early Upper Pleistocene
(Dennell, 2016; H. Li et al., 2015; H. Li, Li, Kuman et al., 2014; Moncel et al.,
2018b; Shejiang & Peihua, 2001; W. Wang et al., 2014). Levallois and macro-blade
production are documented in a few sites as well, especially in the northwestern
parts of the country (Boëda et al., 2013; F. Li, Kuhn et al., 2013; F. Li, Gao et al.,
2013; F. Li et al., 2018). More detailed studies of larger numbers of assemblages
have also revealed regional differences in Early Paleolithic cultures across Eurasia as
well as subtle changes over time in technology (Bar-Yosef & Wang, 2012; Dennell,
2009; Gao, 1999, 2013; Qu et al., 2012). These developments notwithstanding, the
312 Synthesis
Chinese Paleolithic record is still more homogeneous than the records for compar-
ably well-studied parts of western Eurasia or Africa. For hundreds of thousands of
years hominins survived and prospered with the aid of simple cores and flake tools
in north and central China, and with cobble tools and flake tools in southern China.
And importantly, even when novel forms and procedures such as handaxes, Levallois
and macro-blade manufacture appeared in East Asia, they neither spread widely nor
persisted for hundreds of thousands of years.
Preferred explanations for the relative uniformity of the Chinese Paleolithic
have changed over time. Movius explicitly attributed the apparent simplicity and
stasis of the East Asian Paleolithic to an inherent “backwardness” of East Asian
hominins. Subsequently, researchers shifted their attention to other factors,
including a hypothetical lack of raw materials appropriate for making technically-
demanding artefact forms or the substitution of bamboo cutting edges for many
stone tool forms (Bar-Yosef et al., 2012; G. Pope, 1989; K. D. Schick, 1994). In
keeping with current trends in thinking about the Paleolithic, other researchers
have also argued that the comparatively simple and unchanging nature of Chinese
Paleolithic material culture is a reflection of demographic factors (Lycett & Bae,
2010; Lycett & Norton, 2010).
There are very real differences between the Paleolithic records of China and of
western Eurasia and Africa. However, for historical reasons we may be asking the
wrong question about them. The earliest work on the East Asian Paleolithic was
conducted by Western European scholars. Inevitably these pioneering researchers
brought to “the East” expectations formed by what they already knew from “the
West.” What struck them was the seeming absence of certain key type fossils
and technologies: the (then) familiar succession from Abevillian to Acheulean to
Mousterian to Aurignacian just did not seem to apply in East Asia. However, if we
look at Europe from the perspective of Asia, the nature of the question changes com-
pletely.Very gradual change and long-term continuity have been the rule through
much of human prehistory. In fact, what is remarkable in the later Paleolithic of
western Eurasia, Europe and southern Africa in particular, are their seeming cul-
tural fragmentation and instability. New ways of doing things became established
and disappeared in relatively short order compared to many other places. Perhaps
the question we ought to be asking is why the western Paleolithic record is so dis-
continuous and disjointed.
The words we use to describe the past really matter. Labelling the East Asian
record as “static” carries a strong negative connotation: stasis is often equated with
entropy and stagnation.Yet it would be equally valid to read the seeming homogen-
eity of the Asian Paleolithic record as evidence for continuity. After all, some degree
of cultural continuity is a necessary condition for the long-term persistence of any
cultural trait. If the traits in question are very simple or under very strong mech-
anical constraints it is possible that they would be re-invented repeatedly, such that
continuity would be a matter of repeated convergence (Tennie et al., 2016, 2017).
However, the persistent differences between North and South China (Bar-Yosef
& Wang, 2012; Gao, 2013) are evidence enough to conclude that social learning
Synthesis 313
and cultural transmission played some role in the long-term continuity of choices
among technological options. Interestingly, from this perspective the “dynamism”
of the European Paleolithic would be interpreted as evidence for discontinuity, for
frequent interruptions of cultural lineages.
Casting the East–West contrast as a difference between stable and unstable cul-
tural regimes points to different sorts of explanations. Rather than asking why some
hominin populations would be unable to or resist change, we can ask what might
encourage stability and instability in cultural adaptations. Experimental and theoret-
ical studies have shown that the degree to which a particular ecological community
is prone to invasion by new variants is influenced by many factors. Nonetheless, an
important variable is fluctuations in the availability of “free” (unexploited) resources.
In a now classic paper (Davis, Grime, & Thompson, 2000), Davis and colleagues
state, “A plant community becomes more susceptible to invasion whenever there
is an increase in the amount of unused resources.” Whether resource uptake goes
down for a time, or gross supply goes up, there are more resources available to
invaders, and this is when the community is particularly vulnerable to invasion (see
also Alpert, Bone, & Holzapfel, 2000; Davis & Pelsor, 2008).Two historical processes
might act to increase the supply of under-utilized resources: a rapid improvement of
conditions, or a rapid decline in indigenous consumer populations. A key implica-
tion of this theory is that environments subject to frequent fluctuations in resource
supply, due either to changing conditions or to unstable consumer populations,
are more open to invasion by new variants, whether indigenous or coming from
neighbouring areas (Davis, Grime, & Thompson, 2000: 532).
It is not difficult to imagine from this how broad, macro-scale differences in the
dynamism of cultural evolutionary trajectories might well be influenced by envir-
onmental stability. Where conditions fluctuated rapidly between extremes, periodic
resource windfalls due either to rapid onset of favourable environmental conditions
or a loss of local populations in very hard times, would provide prime oppor-
tunities for populations with different ways of doing things to take up residence.
Periodically reduced population numbers would also increase the effects of drift in
helping formerly rare variants to become dominant.
The different trajectories of technological evolution in Europe and China fit
well with this model. Europe is a geographic cul-de-sac. During cold glacial periods
large parts of northern and central Europe were either abandoned or very thinly
populated. Moreover, the potential refugia were comparatively small. Larger areas
immediately to the south (the Middle East and North Africa) were hyper-arid
and uninhabitable during full glacial periods. Environmental responses to climate
cycles in the Mediterranean peninsulas were quite patchy: conditions in some areas
remained favourable, making for good refugia, whereas other areas became quite
arid (González-Sampériz et al., 2010; Hewitt, 2011; Hofreiter & Stewart, 2009). As
a consequence of radical changes in conditions, European hominin populations
would have experienced profound fluctuations and more frequent local extinctions.
This would have interrupted some lineages of cultural inheritance, breaking up
long-established traditions. Furthermore, fluctuating populations would have made
314 Synthesis
it easier for allochthonous populations to become established as soon as conditions

began to improve.
China and neighbouring parts of East Asia are very different geographically
and climatically. The parts of China where monsoons were active should have
been comparatively warm and humid, and thus relatively hospitable to hominins,
even during the colder phases of the Pleistocene. Although the strengths of the
summer and winter monsoons were affected by global and local factors, the East
Asian monsoon has been active since at least the times in which hominins took
up residence there in the early Pleistocene (reviewed by Dennell, 2009: 47), and
probably since the Miocene (An Zhisheng et al., 1990; Z. Ding et al., 1995; Z. L.
Ding et al., 2001; Qiang et al., 2001; Zhisheng et al., 2001). Even when conditions
in the cold northern and arid western parts of China were less favourable, the
large area south of the Qinling Mountains, which mark the approximate limits
of regular East Asian monsoon activities, remained relatively humid. The com-
parative stability of many East Asian environments, the tropical and sub-tropical
areas in particular, would have led to greater stability and continuity in hominin
populations. The presence of large, well-established populations would also have
made these areas harder to invade. The earliest Chinese handaxes are from the
Bose Basin in southern China, well within the area with constant monsoons,
but these are very distinctive from western Acheulean artefacts and may be a
local development (see Chapter 7). The Luonon Basin and Dingcun, where more
Acheulean-like Middle Pleistocene assemblages with handaxes and cleavers made
on large flakes have been documented (Lu, Sun et al., 2011; Moncel et al., 2018a;
Yang, Hou, & Pelegrin, 2016), are outside the area of the most constant mon-
soonal activity. Likewise, fairly uncommon examples of “Western” technological
elements such as macro-blade production and Levallois first appear at the arid
western and northwestern margins of China (Kuhn & Zwyns, 2014; F. Li et al.,
2013; Feng Li et al., 2018; X. Wang et al., 2010). These areas would have been
most susceptible to population loss during cold, dry climatic events, and hence
most easily invaded. Interestingly, these technological “advances” never spread
far into areas to the east and south. This is certainly not because the hominins
living there were too dim to handle the new procedures. A more viable hypoth-
esis is that the large and entrenched local populations simply absorbed the small
numbers of migrants that might have arrived from the more thinly populated
areas to the west and north, and that the new groups’ cultural practices were
swamped by the numerically dominant, local ways of doing things. Modelling
exercises show that, depending on learning biases, cultural practices of invading
populations may be easily lost when local populations are comparatively large
(Kobayashi, Kadowaki, & Naganuma, 2015)
Questions of environmental stability and cultural dynamism are not confined
to the old East–West dichotomy. Some areas of western Eurasia and Africa appear
to have been pockets of stability at times when things were changing rapidly in
other areas. The coastal Levant shows a high level of continuity in lithic tech-
nology between roughly 250 ka and 50 ka. After the abrupt appearance of Levallois
Synthesis 315
and non-Levallois laminar reduction methods, some form of Levallois production

dominated western Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel for the next 200 ky, despite
the appearance of at least one new hominin population (Neanderthals) late in the
sequence. Compared to southern Europe, with its successions or alternations of
Mousterian assemble types (see Chapter 7), this is a remarkable degree of stability. It
is no accident that the greatest continuity in material culture over this period occurs
in the areas closest to the Mediterranean, as these were also the places where cli-
matic fluctuations were buffered by marine effects (Hovers & Belfer-Cohen, 2013).
The record of the more arid, inland parts of the Levant is much more fragmented,
both chronologically and culturally, during the same interval (Pagli, 2013). It is also
possible that the persistence of the Aterian along the western and northern margins
of North Africa reflects a similar continuity of populations in the narrow strip of
comparatively well-watered habitat along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. It
is easy to imagine how large parts of South and Southeast Asia as well as West and
Central Africa might have supported large and fairly stable populations during the
Pleistocene, leading to greater levels of continuity than in surrounding areas with
less stable environments.
More broadly, it is important to recognize that our understanding of change and
continuity in the evolution of Paleolithic cultures is deeply entangled with our own
cultural biases and expectations. One person’s stasis may be another’s continuity, and
what one person sees as cultural inventiveness may seem like instability to another.
Rapid turnover of technology and other culturally-mediated behaviours is not the
rule in human evolution, it is the exception. A very interesting exception, to be sure,
but still an exception. We certainly need to understand why behaviour changed or
diversified very rapidly in some times and places but remained more constant in
other circumstances. But we should not necessarily interpret gradual change or
homogeneity as evidence that some essential element was missing from the minds
or cultures of hominins.
9.3 Bushiness in the trajectories of evolutionary change and

pathways toward “modernity”
One of the legacies of 19th-century views of evolution as progress (Chapter 2) is
the assumption that human cultural development ought to converge on a single
optimal form, “modernity” (however that is defined). Back in the early 20th
century, scholars were surprised that handaxes or Levallois never got to China.
These techniques and objects were thought to be rungs on the ladder of pro-
gress toward an single developmental peak, which was the northern European late
Upper Paleolithic for Stone Age foragers. Their assumption that there should be
one optimal outcome to human cultural evolution begs a single question: why
did some populations achieve the optimum while others never got there? Initial
attempts to answer this question focused on factors that would have prevented East
Asian hominins from progress, whether these were internal (primitive minds) or
external (lack of suitable raw materials).
316 Synthesis
I sincerely doubt that many paleoanthropologists today would explicitly advo-

cate this sort of progressivist perspective on human evolution. Nonetheless, some
of the ways we continue to ask questions about the past carry forward the intel-
lectual legacies of Morgan and Spencer. A prime example of this is the concept of
“modern human behaviour.” In practice, this consists of a list of behavioural traits/
archaeological indicators that are thought to mark a threshold between archaic and
modern. As discussed in Chapter 2, the composition of this list is essentially post-hoc.
It is not based on some prior understanding of what made Homo sapiens different
from earlier humans and what its material signatures might look like. Instead, it is
based mainly on the material culture of presumably advanced (northern European)
Upper Paleolithic foragers. And despite many critiques (Henshilwood & Marean
2003 Hiscock, 2014b.; Kuhn & Stiner, 2001; Shea, 2011), the search for evidence
of “behavioural modernity” remains a major focus of research and publication in
Paleolithic archaeology and paleoanthropology.
If there is anything to be learned from the preceding six chapters, it is that
contemporaneous Paleolithic technologies could follow different evolutionary tra-
jectories, even when they were produced by the same kind of human. The period
from 120 ka to 60 ka saw diversification and recombination of lithic technologies in
many different parts of the world, associated with Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and
probably Denisovans as well. Not surprisingly, the forms of artefacts and techniques
of production varied across the globe. Equally important, the pace and rhythms
of change differed markedly from place to place. South Africa and adjoining areas
were particularly dynamic (or unstable). The record of East Africa, presumably also
inhabited by Homo sapiens during this time, seems to show less evidence for whole-
sale replacement of one set of technological solutions with another. North Africa,
home to the earliest Homo sapiens fossils described to date (Richter et al., 2017),
exhibits a remarkable degree of continuity across this period, and indeed through
the next interval of change between 45 ka and 30 ka. The Mediterranean Levant
also exhibits great continuity in lithic technology between 120 ka and 60 ka, even
though this area also contains some of the earliest evidence for use of durable
objects (shells) as personal ornaments, and despite the fact that the archaeological
evidence reflects the behaviour of two different hominin taxa, Neanderthals and
Homo sapiens. Looking farther afield to Europe, it now appears that late Neanderthals
were on their own trajectory toward increasing complexity, reflected among other
things in the development of distinctive but recognizable forms of signalling tech-
nology (Peresani et al., 2011; Romandini et al., 2014), novel configurations of lithic
technology (Quina Mousterian and Mousterian of Acheulean Tradition) and, it
now appears, perhaps even parietal art (Hoffman et al., 2018). Meanwhile in East
Asia, lithic technology from this interval appears to have changed quite slowly,
especially within the tropical and monsoonal zones. On the other hand, there are
important indications of other behavioural developments with less obvious material
signatures, albeit somewhat later. The most important of these was the ability to
navigate successfully across significant expanses of open ocean (Hiscock, 2014b;
O’Connell et al., 2018; O’Connell & Allen, 1998). As Peter Hiscock has observed
Synthesis 317
(2014b: 231), the overarching lesson from the varied traces of technological change
and variation over the first part of the Upper Pleistocene should be that there are
“not one, but many modernities.”
A great many factors may contribute to the multiplicity of cultural evolutionary
trajectories. Obviously, the geographic dispersal of hominin populations had an
important influence on the evolution of material culture, although this was must
strongly expressed after 60 ka with the last major expansion of Homo sapiens. A large
part of the variation in what people did and how these habits changed can be
productively understood as responses to local conditions: environment matters. It
should not be a surprise that the most dynamic and rapidly changing records come
from the southern tip of Africa and continental Europe. These places represent
the latitudinal extremes of the inhabited world 100,000 years ago. This is where
fluctuations in global climate would have been most strongly expressed, eliciting
more pronounced cultural and demographic responses from hominins. History
matters too. At the beginning of MIS 5, hominins in different parts of the world
benefitted from very different inventories of cumulative culture. Diversification of
methods of stone tool production began during the mid-Middle Pleistocene in
Africa and western Eurasia. Not unexpectedly, hominins continued to build on
this diversity in coping with the necessities of survival through the first part of
the Upper Pleistocene. Middle Pleistocene hominin populations in the wetter and
warmer parts of Asia had developed very different patterns of response to changing
requirements for artefacts. While we are still not certain what these were, we can
be fairly certain they did not involve a wide range of techniques for producing and
shaping stone tools. Not unexpectedly, they continued along this same track until
the final 10,000–15,000 years of the Pleistocene. Other influences on trajectories
of macro-evolution are less well understood and explored. The mechanical “design
space” (e.g. Lake & Venti, 2009) for lithic technology (and other forms of technology
as well) is not isomorphic and infinite, but structured and bounded. Some solutions
are possible, some are impossible. Beginning from one part of that design space it
may be quite easy, or instead very difficult, to get to another part of the space. For
example the transition from bifacial thinning to Levallois may be a comparatively
simple and direct one (M. White & Ashton, 2003). What this means is that groups
of hominins already using bifacial façonnage would be more likely to converge on
the Levallois method than groups not familiar with bifacial shaping, regardless of its
potential advantages or their capacities to execute it successfully. Even more abstract,
but probably equally important, are interactions among different elements of tech-
nology or of culture more generally. An overarching lesson from genetics, develop-
mental biology, and complexity science is that interactions among components of a
system can determine its evolvability, sometimes leading to “entrenchment” within
a particular pathway of adaptive or developmental response (Schank & Wimsatt,
1986; Wimsatt, 2006, 2015).
Understanding the factors that influenced the development of diverse “modern-
ities” will help us understand the history of humans in different places. And that is
one of the principal goals of archaeology. More importantly, understanding the full
318 Synthesis
spectrum of “modernity” and the various routes to it will help us understand the
species. And that is one of the principal goals of anthropology, paleoanthropology,
and the human sciences more generally. To answer the question of what makes
modern humans unique, and how it came about, we need to integrate the full
range of behavioural evidence. Just thinking about the European Upper Paleolithic
or the late Middle Stone Age of South Africa will not do the job. Coming to terms
with the diversity of evolutionary trajectories followed by human cultures is key
to studying behaviour as facultative (rather than autonomic) responses to a chan-
ging world. Thinking about modernity as a spectrum of behaviours expressed as
responses to various internal and external influences, rather than as a threshold
defined by a static list of traits, will someday result in a more nuanced understanding
of both our species’ cognitive niche and the conditions that gave rise to it.
This effort should not stop with “modern human behaviour.” The origins of
“non-modern human behaviour” are equally interesting. Homo erectus did not do
the same things everywhere, nor did H. heidelbergensis or Neanderthals. Coming to
grips with the range and nature of behavioural responses among extinct hominins
is equally crucial to understanding what made them successful.The study of extinct
forms of hominin behaviour may be a steeper mountain to climb, but it too has
great payoffs. Most obviously it provides a clearer perspective on what is unique
about our own species. At present, we have a very limited array of intelligent social
animals to compare to humans. And very few of these non-human animals make
and use tools and create durable archaeological records. Humans are always outliers
in any comparative analysis of this sort. For better or for worse, our own ancestors
may be the best examples of other successful, long-lived intelligent tool users
available to us.
9.4 The evolving role of technology

One great arc within the story of the evolution of Pleistocene technologies is the
changing role of technology in the adaptations of hominins. At some point in
the remote past tools were but an adjunct to our ancestors’ survival: they made
some tasks easier or more efficient but the species as a whole could get along fine
without them. Somehow, we (and our closest ancestors) ended up being species
that were dependent on material culture for survival. Humans’ entanglements with
technology are not just important, they are all pervasive. At some point in our
remote past tools contributed to a single dimension of hominin life: the earliest
artefacts probably helped hominins get food, and not much else. Somehow, tech-
nology ended up colonizing almost every domain of existence, aiding, amplifying,
or even replacing many basic biological functions.
The first material evidence we have of technology, stone tools dating to the end
of the Pliocene or earliest Pleistocene, were extraordinarily important. They likely
helped early Homo to access resources that would otherwise have been unavailable,
potentiating new regimes of energy acquisition and somatic growth. In doing so
they also allowed hominins to enter new competitive arenas, such as the guild of
Synthesis 319
carnivores, thereby altering the evolutionary pressures on the lineage(s) of tool

users. Nonetheless, the earliest artefacts of stone probably played a minor role in
the adaptive repertoires of early Pleistocene hominins. They were helpful in cer-
tain situations but likely not essential for survival. Most early Pleistocene hominins
could probably do without stone tools or the resources that tools helped to procure
if they had to. Several lines of evidence point to the earliest tools being opportun-
istic and optional. The earliest Pleistocene stone tool makers invested very little
time or energy in producing any single artefact: no more than a minute or two was
needed to pick up a stone cobble and knock off a few flakes. The limited range of
artefact forms, basically sharp-edged flakes, suggests that hominins had a similarly
limited range of uses for their stone tools. They also seldom went to much trouble
to keep artefacts on hand. Early Pleistocene tool users sometimes carried artefacts
to or away from sites, but seldom moved their tools more than a few kilometres,
probably within the limits of their daily foraging ranges. And as far as we can tell
they did not keep individual artefacts around very long, preferring to make new
tools when needs arose. Finally, although they did show preference for particular
kinds of stone (Chapter 6), the earliest tool users were not inclined to travel more
than a few hundred metres to get raw material. Investing so little in the production
and transport of artefacts, and depending so much on finding raw materials when
tools were needed, are not the marks of a strongly tool-dependent hominin (Shea,
2017; Toth,  1985).
The Lower Pleistocene witnessed a number of important developments in stone
tool technology. Artefact forms and functions became more diverse and hominins
began doing different things with stone tools in different places (see Chapter 7).
By the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene there is convincing evidence that
hominins habitually, or at least regularly, carried certain kinds of artefact with them
as they moved across the landscape. Large cutting tools, handaxes, and cleavers seem
to have been the transported toolkit of choice for hominins in large parts of the
world after around 1.0 ma.We don’t have a very good idea of what they were doing
with those LCTs, but whatever they were using tools for, it was common enough
and important enough to make large, renewable artefacts and keep them on hand.
Interestingly, the other components of late Lower Pleistocene and early Middle
Pleistocene toolkits were fairly simple and show relatively low levels of invest-
ment –evidence that hominins took special care to make effective and durable
tools is limited to the LCTs. Shea (2017) places the beginnings of such “habitual”
(as opposed to occasional) tool use at 1.7 ma, coincident with the origins of Mode
2 technology in Africa but, as discussed above, some of the most significant changes
in artefacts and manufacture processes took place somewhat later, around 800 ka.
At the same time, other lines of evidence suggest that technology in the most gen-
eral sense was beginning to assume a more central role in the lives of hominins.The
earliest forays outside of tropical Africa began by 1.8 my, if not earlier, and hominins
had reached parts of temperate Europe and Asia by the beginning of the Middle
Pleistocene.We don’t know how persistent those early colonizing populations were.
However, by 400 ka, hominins seem to have established persistent populations across
320 Synthesis
large parts of temperate Eurasia and North Africa (Dennell, Martinón-Torres, &
Bermúdez de Castro, 2010; Gamble, 1999: 119–125; Rolland, 2014). Survival in the
temperate zone must have required material assistance of various kinds, especially
clothing, shelter, and fire. Interestingly, while life in the temperate zones would have
required a substantial degree of dependence on hunting, there is little evidence for
production of more elaborate weapons at this time. Nonetheless, it is safe to argue
that hominins could not have survived in the temperate zones, even during rela-
tively mild intervals, without some artificial means to keep hypothermia at bay.
After 400 ka or so, a range of evidence points to hominins’ growing reliance on
various forms of technology across the Old World. As documented in Chapters 5
and 8, raw material economies became increasingly complex and diversified in
Africa and Eurasia after roughly 400 ka. The fluorescence of methods for making
small tool blanks as well as continued reliance on large core tools shows that
hominins were responding to a wide array of tactical challenges related to making
sure they had the right tool for the job. It was no longer enough to just carry
around a general-purpose tool such as a bifacial handaxe. As McNabb (2005) so
succinctly states, “The Acheulean was a generalized hand-held processing tech-
nology for a generalized hominin.” But post-Acheulean assemblages were some-
thing more. Depending on the situation, hominins could produce an array of
different blanks suitable for different purposes. Importantly, use-wear evidence
suggests that they were not just using these artefacts in the food quest. Although
there are plenty of points and butchery knives, by the later Middle Pleistocene
hominins were increasingly using stone tools to work skins and plant tissues. In
other words, they were using stone tools to make other artefacts. Expanding ranges
of raw material movement beginning in the early Upper Pleistocene also testify
to the efforts of hominins to get better raw materials for the jobs at hand, and to
keep supplied while moving over substantial distances. The making of artefacts
was less and less a local business. And by the late Middle Pleistocene (MIS 8 and
6), populations of Homo were able to persist in temperate Europe even during
full glacials, something which would have been impossible without ready access
to fire and some kind of clothing. By the second half of the Middle Pleistocene
we can be fairly confident that some forms of technology were requisite for
hominin survival across much of their global range. In other words, hominins had
become obligate rather than just habitual makers and users of artefacts (see also
Shea, 2017).
The story does not end 400,000 years ago.While methods of artefact production
and strategies of raw material provisioning became both diverse and increasingly
complicated through the end of the Middle Pleistocene, artefacts still operated
mainly in a material realm. Tools and other constructions helped hominins cap-
ture energy or modify materials more efficiently and effectively. In Schiffer’s terms
they had only techno-functions. The next big great change was marked by the
co-option of material culture for carrying information, for signalling. Possibly as
early as 500 ka, and certainly by 250 ka, hominins began utilizing pigments, and
Synthesis 321
various colourful oxides soon became widespread if not ubiquitous in both Africa
and Eurasia. By roughly MIS 5a, 100 ka or before, hominins in North Africa and
West Asia had begun to use another medium, small shell beads, for signalling. The
early Upper Pleistocene witnessed a fluorescence in the use of other media to
transmit social signals: various traditions of bead making, feather use, and so on
arose in different parts of Africa and Eurasia.
It is interesting that the initial forays into signalling with materials involved
things that had no other purpose. Pigments and beads have socio-functions and
perhaps ideo-functions, but no known techno-function. Of course, it may be the
case that we simply do not recognize the signals in more mundane artefacts such as
scrapers and points. As discussed in Chapter 5, researchers have made claims about
the potential signalling function of stone artefacts back into the Middle Pleistocene
or even the Lower Pleistocene. Still, the fact that it is so difficult to establish whether
symmetrical handaxes or pretty points also carried information means that, if they
were used this way, the signals are very subtle and not overwhelmingly effective.
Meanwhile, there is little contention over the role of shell beads or red ochre.
I have no ready answer for why signalling functions seem to have been separate
from more mundane applications of artefacts in the late Middle and early Upper
Pleistocene. It could be a matter of extreme cognitive modularity (Mithen, 1996),
in that hominins were unable or not disposed to treat artefacts as both tools and sig-
nalling media. Another, more likely possibility concerns the nature of the messages.
If the recent past is a good analogue, pigments and body ornaments probably began
as media for broadcasting social information, for conveying information about a
person’s identities beyond a small audience of close acquaintances. Social identities
are a property of individuals, not of things. It would make sense to express identity
in media such as paints and beads, which are closely tied to the body. Other kinds
of artefacts are much less closely associated with individuals, and so may be less
effective in sending out social information.
Eventually, however, hominins did start adding obvious information value to
utilitarian objects. Formerly prosaic implements began to function in multiple
spheres: objects with techno-functions took on ideo-or socio-functions as well.
The earliest clear examples are the decorated ostrich eggshell fragments –prob-
ably originally parts of canteens or other vessels –from South African Howiesons
Poort sites (Henshilwood, 2012; Texier et al., 2013, 2010). This tendency was not
ubiquitous, but this is no surprise: the ability to create meaningful embellishment
on durable artefacts is a human capacity but not a human imperative. Still it was
strongly expressed at some times and places, the fluorescence of decorated objects
in the European Gravettian and Magdalenian being two examples. The existence
of possible counting tools (“tally marks”) from the Upper Paleolithic of Europe
(Marshack, 1970), and the localized but spectacular phenomenon of rock art, fur-
ther suggest that by the second half of the Upper Pleistocene hominins in some
parts of the world were even leaning on material objects and facilities to enhance
their individual or social memories. At this point, technology had entered almost
322 Synthesis
every domain of human life: people were using artefacts to get food and keep
warm, and also to communicate and help them recall important information.These
Upper Paleolithic and LSA humans were not full-fledged cyborgs quite yet, but
they had had at least one foot on the slippery slope that led to the state we find
ourselves in today.
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INDEX
Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures and in bold indicate table on the
corresponding pages.
Abou Sif (Israel) 235 East Africa; Kombewa (Africa); Mahgreb

Acheulean assemblages (East Africa): artefact (Africa); North Africa; Olduvai Gorge
complexity 265, 266, 270; artefact design (Africa); Rift Valley (Africa); South Africa;
174, 179–180, 188–189; artefact diversity sub-Saharan Africa; Tavelbala-Tachengit
235; bifacial artefacts 177, 178, 179; (Africa);Victoria West (Africa)
composite artefacts 48; India/South Asia Ahmarian assemblages: artefact diversity
247; Middle Pleistocene 188–189, 235, 237; non-stone tools 60
247; raw material evidence 90–91 alpha diversity 203–204; affecting factors
Acheulo-Yabrudian assemblages: artefact 204–206; China, Late Middle/Upper
design 190; diversified flake production Pleistocene 244–245; early Pleistocene
92–93; flake production increase 93; Mode 1 assemblages 216–217; Eurasia vs.
handaxe design 181, 182; Middle/Upper Africa 303–304; example 205; Middle/
Pleistocene artefact diversity Upper Pleistocene artefact diversity
233–234; see also Tabun Cave (Israel) 235, 236; Mode 2 assemblages 219–220;
adhesives: appearance of 298; composite Upper Pleistocene 226
tools 44, 44 Ambrose, S. H. 42
Africa: bifacial handaxes 91; Border Cave Amud Cave (Israel) 99–100
228; flake production increase 91–92; Amudian assemblages: artefact complexity
Lupemban assemblages 52; macro- 275, 276; flake production increase
blade technology 60–61; Mali, Middle 92–93; Middle Pleistocene artefact
Pleistocene artefact diversity 230; design 188–189; Middle/Upper
Mauritania, Middle Pleistocene artefact Pleistocene artefact diversity 233; scraper
diversity 230; microlithization 65; Middle design 189, 189–190
Stone Age 212; Mode 2 industries first anticipation: repurposing/reworking and
appearance 90; Niger, Middle Pleistocene 195
artefact diversity 230; obsidian artefacts artefact complexity 10–11, 252–285, 288;
99, 166; Plio-Pleistocene sites 80; points definitions 252–259; development of
in composite artefacts 52; raw material 259–261; scale of 255; trends of 261–285,
economics 108–110; Sahara 52; see also 284; see also composite artefacts
Index 409
artefacts: analysis and aggregate phenomena Eurasia vs. Africa 303–304; example of
27; class frequency 87; classification of 8; 206; incremental changes in 240–241;
typologies 8; see also composite artefacts; India/South Asia, Middle Pleistocene
design of artefacts; diversity 247; Middle/Upper Pleistocene artefact
Asia: diversity (Late Middle/Upper diversity 233–234, 244–245; Mode 2
Pleistocene 500 ka–10 ka) 244–247; assemblages 219–220; North African
Dyuktai complex 62; micro-blade Palaeolithic sites 231
production 281; projectile tips, Upper Bezez cave (Lebanon) 233–234
Paleolithic 60; see also China; East Asia; bifacial artefacts: artefact design 177, 178;
Korea; South Asia; Southwest Asia cognitive/behavioural significance
assemblage: diversity within 204–205; as 294; foliates in composite artefacts 52;
units of analysis 33–34 information content 123; lanceolate
Aterian assemblages: composite artefacts 52, artefacts 52; Large Cutting Tools 233;
54, 54; hafting 46; North Africa Middle Middle Paleolithic 238; monofacial
Pleistocene 230–231 with, Middle Pleistocene Europe
Attirampakkam (India) 222 222–223; North Africa Middle
Aurignacian: appearance of 239; artefact Pleistocene artefact diversity 230; points
design 198–199; distribution of 308; in Solutrean assemblages 198; shaping
geographical coverage 243; non-stone 270–272; thinning flakes 186, 187;
tools 60; see also proto-Aurignacian Upper Pleistocene Europe 242; Upper
assemblages (Europe) Pleistocene symmetry 193
Aurignacian assemblages 60–61, 104, 137, bifacial handaxes: artefact design 186–187,
144, 197–198, 239, 305–307; distribution 187; first appearances of 218
243, 250; Levantine 237–238 bifacial thinning: appearance of 288; raw
Australia: Madjedbebe Rockshelter 109; material economics 295
hafted Lelira blades 45; spinifex gum on Bilzingsleben (Germany) 223
composite tools 45 Binford, L. R. 69–70, 77–78, 156, 206–207
Australopithecine: possible makers of stone Binford, S. 156
tools 218 biological evolution: cultural evolution vs.
29–30
baby name frequency 118 bipolar technique: China, Late Middle/
backed-bladelet-based technologies: Upper Pleistocene 245; early artefact
appearance of 238; North Africa, Upper complexity 264
Palaeolithic 232 bitumen 44
Baichbal valley (India) 247 Bizmoune Cave (Morocco) 54
Barham, L. S. 40, 45 bladelets: Africa, artefact diversity 228;
beads 122, 321; signalling 132–133; social Mesolithic arrow 47; micro-blade
network expansion 303 technology vs. 61–65, 62; multiple
Beck, C. 75 composite tools 40, 41; production
bedding 300 309–310; ubiquity of 107; Upper
behaviour: capacity vs. motivation 21; Pleistocene North Africa 142–143;
complexity vs. raw material movement widespread adoption of 61, 197, 309
97, 99; dating of general adoption 32–33; blade production: artefact complexity 273,
evolutionary change 18; group behaviour 274; widespread adoption of 197
28–29; isochrestic style 121; modernity blank production 108–109, 159; artefact
315; non-modern human behaviour 318; complexity 265; flake-tool assemblages
passive style 121; variation, understanding 188; laminar blanks 93; method type
of 21 changes 107; Middle Pleistocene 270;
behavioural ecology 15 Middle/Upper Pleistocene artefact
behavioural time scales 25–31 complexity 277; North Africa Middle/
beta diversity 204, 206–208; affecting Upper Pleistocene artefact diversity 229;
factors 206–207; China, Late Middle/ signalling 130
Upper Pleistocene 244–245; early body decoration 135, 142
Pleistocene Mode 1 assemblages 217; body symmetry 125
410 Index
Boëda, E. 274 see also Bose Basin (China); Luonan Basin

Boker Tachtit (Israel) 164 (China); Zhoukoudian (China)
bone see osseous raw materials choice: in design 146–147, 163–171;
Border Cave (Africa) 228 hierarchical organization 256–257;
Bordes, F. 148, 149–150, 152–153, 196, 241 individual 26–27; signalling media
Bose Basin (China) 225, 314; Late Middle/ 117–118
Upper Pleistocene 244 chopping tools: artefact design 172–173
boundary maintenance: spatial patterning Clactonian assemblages (England) 275;
122 artefact diversity 222; see also Acheulean
bow-and-arrow 54, 280, 288; appearance assemblages (East Africa)
of 240 Clark, Gr. 10, 273
bower birds 116–117 Clarke, D. 40
Boxgrove (England) 223 classification systems 8, 148
Boyd, R. 27, 28 cleavers 91–92, 176, 183–186, 218, 229,
burins 158, 196–198 247; and expert cognition 266–267;
bush turkey mounds 116–117 initial appearance 288
butchery 297 Close, A. E. 142
byproducts: chaîne opératoire 163; clothing technology 39, 72, 94, 279, 281,
product vs. 164 285, 306; and identity 131–132
Côa Valley (Portugal) 78
Callahan, E. 256 cognition: artefact complexity 259,
Campitello Quarry site (Italy) 57 260–261, 263; changes in 301–302;
Camps, M. 17 complexity vs. raw material movement
capacity: technology as indicator of 97–98; composite tools and 5–6; cross-
19–21 species variation 23; economics and 6–7;
Casablanca (Morocco): Levallois production evolution 18, 24, 311; gamma diversity,
229–230; Middle/Upper Pleistocene effects on 209; pigments in signalling
artefact diversity 229; Thomas Quarry 132; raw material economies and 71;
222 shaped bone tools 20; task types 20;
Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. 27 technological changes 306–307; see also
caves: first use of 296–297; paintings 113 knowledge
ceramic technology 7, 246, 251, 281, 310 Cole, J. 130
chaîne opératoires: artefact complexity Collard, M. 212, 213–214
255–256; artefact diversity 214; blades colonization: technology and 319–320
and bladelets 239; concerns about Columbanien industry (Brittany, France) 224
159–160; designs as 160–161, 163; combinatorial evolution 40
diversity 202; dominant methodology composite artefacts 5–6, 11, 288; adhesives
159–160; end-products and byproducts 44, 44; advantages 39–40; appearance of
163; Neanderthals 311; raw material 296; change in types 306; cognition and
extraction 10, 278 5–6, 42; complexity 258; dating of 48–65;
cheap-but-honest signals 119 dominance of 310; drawbacks 40, 42;
chimpanzee tool use 22, 35, 42, 291; economic constraints 6; evolution of 40;
cultural variation 218 frequency and abundance 66–67; global
China: artefact design, Middle Pleistocene patterns 65–67, 66; importance of
190; artefact diversity, Early Paleolithic 38–67; numbers and elaboration
225; artefact diversity, Middle/Upper 42–43; preservation and taphonomy
Paleolithic 225–226; artefact diversity, 50–51; recognition from isolated parts
Middle/Upper Pleistocene 244–245; 43–45; size basis 54–55; technology used
artefact diversity, Upper Pleistocene 300; traces left behind 47–48
245–246; Dingcun 314; loess plains 68; concentric zones of exploitation 75–76, 76
Nihewan Basin 220–221; north-central, conformist bias 28
artefact diversity 220; Paleolithic records connectedness: information and 209, 303,
of Europe vs. 312; Shuidonggou 245; 308
technological uniformity 312; cooking 36
Index 411
Coolidge, F. L. 259 diversity 9–10, 202–251; Asia (Late Middle/

cordage 238, 281, 285, 310 Upper Pleistocene 500–10 ka) 244–247,
cores: giant-core technologies 185; 289; demography and 211–214;
preparation of 269; shaping 255–256; diversification and socio-economic
worked artefacts from 101 structures (500–300 ka) 295–297; entity
cosmogenic isotope dating 278–279 size 203–204; global developments
cost/benefit perspective: raw materials 69, 215–247; loss of (45–30 ka) 304–310;
74–78 non-African countries (1.8my-500ka)
costly signalling 116–117; animals 116–117; 220–226; North Africa (Late Middle/
stone tools 118–199, 260 Upper Pleistocene 500–10 ka) 223–232,
cultural evolution: biological evolution vs. 228–247; scale of 202–211; sub-Saharan
29–30; East vs. West 310–315; long spans Africa (2.5 my–500 ka) 215–220, 289;
of 310; Morgan’s reconstruction 23; sub-Saharan Africa (Late Middle/Upper
signalling 118 Pleistocene 500–10 ka) 226–229, 289;
cultural transmission (dual-inheritance technological developments (1.8–1.5 ma)
theory) 15, 27–28, 310; artefact 292–293; technological developments
complexity 272–273; artefact design 174; (500–300 ka) 295–297; technological
genetic transmission vs. 27–28 developments (120–60 ka) 298–304;
cumulative culture 148, 253, 258, 284, technological developments (25–12
300–302, 310 ka) 308–310; western Eurasia (Middle/
curation: raw material economics 69–70; Upper Pleistocene 500–10 ka) 232–244,
varieties of 70 289
division of labour: manufacturing 72,
Dabban assemblages (Haua Fteah, Libya) 307–308
231–232 Dmanisi (Georgia) 86, 89, 220
daily foraging radius 86 domestic spaces 234–235, 297
Dalton points 155, 155 dominance systems 24–25
dates of first appearance, uncertainty 31–33 drift: spatial patterning 121–122, 129, 136,
Davis, M. A. 313 218, 313
decisions: artefacts as witness 26; nodes of dual-inheritance theory see cultural
artefact complexity 256; technology and transmission (dual-inheritance theory)
26 Dunnell, R. 15
decoration: non-stone artefacts 135; Dyuktai complex (Asia) 62
symbols 141
demography: artefact design effects 184, early Pleistocene: artefact diversity 223–224;
283; diversity and 109–214; raw material artefact movement 86–87; information
movement 97 content 123; local material evidence 89;
design of artefacts 8–9, 145–201, 288; Mode 1 assemblages 216–218
constraints on 168, 168–170, 170; Early Stone age: definitions 2; Middle Stone
definition 145–148; emerged design Age transition 16
146, 146–147; four dimensions East Africa: artefact production 316;
152–156; function inequality 156–159; Middle Pleistocene artefact complexity
identification of 148–152; imposed 266; Plio-Pleistocene sites 80; Upper
redundancy as 145–146; limitation Pleistocene artefact diversity 227
changes 308; procedures as 159–165; East Asia: decorated articles 135; geography
raw material as design choice 165–167; and climate 314–315; Lower/Middle
specificity and form–function connection Paleolithic artefact diversity 225–226;
158; trends in 170–199, 200 Middle/Upper Pleistocene (500–10 ka)
design space 147, 181, 317 artefact diversity 250, 250–251
de Waal, Francis 22 eastern Europe: artefact diversity in Upper
Dibble, H. L. 9, 152–153, 153, 193–194 Pleistocene 241–242
Dingcun (China) 314 eastern Mediterranean: flake production
discoid technology 107, 160–163, 242, 275; increase 92–93; Middle Pleistocene
in China 245; predetermination 186 artefact diversity 233, 236–237; raw
412 Index
material distribution 68; Upper flintknapping: energetic costs 75;

Pleistocene artefact diversity 233 performative aspect of 122–123
Edward’s Plateau (Texas) 83 fluctuating asymmetry 124–125
efficiency: in Oldowan 172; selection for fluted points 256, 257
213; upper limits 35 Foley, R. A. 202–203
embedded procurement 77–78 Folsom (North America) 83–84
emergent design 146, 146–147 food processing: appearance of 238;
end-products: chaîne opératoire 163 developments in 308–309
environment: gamma diversity, effect on food resources: and artefact diversity 213
209–210; species distribution across 204; foraging activity: beta diversity and 240; daily
stability, Europe vs. east Asia 313–314; foraging radius 86; raw materials and 73
25–12 ka 309 function: form and 156, 158
Epi-Paleolithic cultures 238; hafting 61; Functional Argument 156
micro-blade technology 63 functional constraints: design 168, 169, 170
entame flakes 293 functional neuronal imaging experiments
ethnoarchaeology 164 272
Europe: artefact diversity in Upper
Pleistocene 241–242; bifacial foliates Gamble, C. 3–4, 18
52; damage of hafted artefacts 57; Final gamma diversity 204, 208, 208–211;
Middle Paleolithic 242; geographical affecting factors 209–211; early
problems in glacial periods 313–314; Pleistocene Mode 1 assemblages
late Pleistocene 141–142, 203; 217–218; Middle Pleistocene eastern
microlithization 65; Middle/Upper Mediterranean 236; Middle Stone Age/
Pleistocene retouched pieces 95–96, 96; Late Stone Age 229; North African
obsidian transport 99; Paleolithic records Palaeolithic sites 231; Upper Pleistocene,
of China vs. 312; projectile tips, Upper assessment of 241–242
Paleolithic 60; Pyrenees mountains Gao, X. 245
242; Southwestern Europe 68; Upper Gargas (France) 77
Paleolithic artefact design 196–197; Garrod, D. A. E. 236
Upper Paleolithic cultures 137, 138, 139; Geneste, J.-M. 75, 85–86, 97
see also Gravettian assemblages (Europe); genetic transmission: cultural transmission
Magdelenian assemblages (Europe); vs. 27–28
proto-Aurignacian assemblages (Europe) geography: Homo sapiens projectile design
evolutionary aesthetics 115 59–60; sampling and representation
evolutionary milestones fallacy 18–22 11–12; variation in signalling identity
evolutionary theory 13–17 129; variation in technology 306
exchange networks: hunter-gatherers 106 Gesher Benot Ya’acov (GBY) (Israel):
executive function 268, 272, 294, 301–302 artefact complexity 266; composite
expediency: opportunistic production vs. artefacts 48–49; hierarchical production
70; raw material economics 69–70 system (850–700 ka) 294
extensional typology system: intensional La Geste et la Parole (Leroi-Gourhan) 35
typology system vs. 149 Göllüdağ volcano (Anatolia) 80; handaxe
design 180
facial rugosity reduction 302 Gona (Ethiopia): artefact design 171; flake
facial symmetry 125 production 217
failure risk: artefact complexity 260 Gowlett, J. 179–180
Féblot-Augustins, J. 75, 97 Gravettian assemblages (Europe) 310;
ficron handaxes 156, 157 artefact diversity 243; distribution of 308;
field processing: food resources 85 geographical coverage 243; non-stone
finished artefact fallacy 271–272 tools 60; Upper Paleolithic 240
fire 243, 296, 299 Grotta di Fumane (Italy) 61
flake tools: artefact complexity 275, 277; ground-edge tools 108–110, 109
assemblages 188; North Africa Middle/ group identity signalling 137, 138, 139
Upper Pleistocene artefact diversity 229 guided variation 28
Index 413
hafting/hafted tools 45–48; appearance of hunting: artefact complexity 42, 50, 60,
296; artefact complexity 277; Barham 213–214, 260, 305, 320
typology 45; damage patterns 55, 57–58, hyper-symmetry 123, 124
58; design in Middle Pleistocene 196; Hxaro exchange system 106, 106
development of 5; global patterns 65–67,
66; Middle Pleistocene 238–239; Modes Iberia: Middle/Upper Pleistocene artefact
A, B and C 45–48; pigments and, in diversity 235
Africa 57; stone tool shapes 43; Upper Ibero–Maurusian assemblages 232
Pleistocene artefact design 191, 193; identity: group identity signalling 118–119,
widespread adoption of 298–299 138, 144, 227, 308, 321
hammer-and-anvil technique: early artefact ideo-functions: techno-/socio-functions
complexity 264 vs. 37
handaxes: allometry in 179; appearance of impact damage 43, 49, 55, 57, 58, 150, 191,
288; artefact design 174–176, 175, 179, 280, 296
180–181, 183, 184–185; China, Late imposed forms 145, 170–199; artefact
Middle/Upper Pleistocene 244–245; design 177; redundancy 145–146
group identity signalling 128–129; Mode indexes: symbols vs. 112
2 industries first appearance 90; size individual actions: group behaviour vs. 29
variation 127; symmetry 180–181, 183 information (artefacts as) 7–8, 111–144,
handicap principle 116 288, 320–321; identification as 111–115;
Hayonim cave (Israel): Aurignacian 238; symbols as 115–120; trends in 123–143;
blade assemblage 235 Upper Pleistocene 142; retention and
heat treatment 105, 193, 226, 248, 277–278, transmission 302
300, 303 Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP) 237
Heinrich, J. 211, 212 innovation: invention vs. 309
hierarchical production systems 257–258, intensional typology system: extensional
293–295 typology system vs. 149
Hill, K. R. 303 inter-assemblage variation: Middle
Hiscock, P. 125 Pleistocene 239
Holon (Israel): Middle/Upper Pleistocene internal constraints: artefact design 170
artefact diversity 234 Inuit 214; raw material economics 72
Homo erectus 318; cranial capacity 24 invention: innovation vs. 309; rates of 30
Homo ergaster: Mode 2 technology 90 investment 6, 107, 255, 259–260, 305–307;
homogenization: technological artefact complexity 259–260; composite
developments (25–12 ka) 308–310 tools 42; heat treatment 105
H. heidelbergensis 318 Iovita, R. P. 193
Homo sapiens: cultural evolution 316–317; Isaac, G. L. 90, 216, 234, 256
culture vs. Neanderthals 23; Neanderthals Isampur (India) 247
generalisations vs. 103; prismatic blade Isenya (Kenya) 294
technology 19–20; projectile design and Isimila (Tanzania) 295; cleavers 183; LCTs
geographic spread 59–60; retouched concentrations 91
pieces 96 isochrestic style 121
horizontal transmission 28
Hours, F. 196 Jelinek, A. J. 164
housing: appearance of 238, 281 Jinsitai (Inner Mongolia, China) 245
Howiesons Poort (HP) assemblages
(South Africa) 54–55, 56, 61, 105; Kakuniyama (Japan) 281
backed geometric segments 193, 194; Kalambo Falls (Zambia) 55
hafted artefacts 59; hafting 55; ostrich Kaletepe Deresi (Turkey) 80, 81; handaxe
egg fragment decoration 134, 135; 187
ostrich egg shell canteens 133; Upper Katanda 9 (Zaire) 58
Pleistocene artefact diversity 227–228 Kathu Pan (South Africa) 49, 50
Hunsgi valley (India): artefact diversity, Kebaran industry 238
Middle Pleistocene 247 Kelly, R. L. 210
414 Index
Kilombe (Kenya) 295; LCTs concentrations LCTs see Large Cutting Tools (LCTs)
91 Leakey, L. 216
knowledge: artefact complexity 253; Leakey, M.D. 172, 175, 216
composite tool manufacture 42; Leroi-Gourham, A. 34–35
diversity of design 211; transmission and Levallois technology 95, 107; aesthetic
composite tools 5–6; see also cognition qualities 166; appearance of 295; artefact
Kokkinopolos (Greece) 223 complexity 273; artefact diversity 226;
Kombewa (Africa): artefact complexity Casablanca 229–230; design as 161–163,
266, 267; biconvex flakes 186; Middle 162; design of flakes 147; Europe vs.
Pleistocene techniques for handaxes and China 311; flakes as signals 130, 131;
cleavers 185 flake-tool assemblages 188; increase
Koobi Fora (Kenya) 265–266 in 238–239; India/South Asia, Middle
Korea: artefact diversity 225; tanged pieces Pleistocene 247; Lower Paleolithic roots
54 273–274; Middle Paleolithic 164–165;
Korolevo I 2B (Ukraine) 164 Middle Pleistocene 236; uni-and
Krukowski, S. 193 bi-directional laminar production 192
life history of artefacts 26, 87, 93, 190, 198,
landscapes: scale variation in artefact 272; relation to design 152–154
diversity 219; symbolic use of 240–241 Lin, S. C. 95
land-use systems: beta diversity and Lincombian–Ranisian–Jerzmanowician
206–207, 240; changes in 296–297; cultures 203
differentiated 239; Middle/Upper Lokalalei 2C (Kenya) 261, 262
Pleistocene artefact diversity 234 Lovejoy, C. O. 234
language 112, 120, 209–210, 272, 301 Lower Paleolithic: Bordes classification
Large Cutting Tools (LCTs): appearance system 148–150, 152–153; British
of 292–293; artefact complexity 265; handaxes 184–185; definitions 2; East
artefact design 174, 183–185, 200; bifacial Asia artefact diversity 225–226; Middle
artefacts 233; China, Late Middle/Upper Paleolithic transition to 238–239, 273;
Pleistocene 244–245; concentrations 91; re-use and reworking 102
Eurasia 188; information content 123; Lower Pleistocene: artefact design 173,
large flakes 185; reduction in Middle 173, 187–188; artefact development
Pleistocene 91–92; regional variation of 319; artefact diversity 219, 220; point
184; resharpening 184 classification 150, 152; raw materials/
large flake/giant-core Acheulean 185–186, technology in artefact complexity 264;
188, 222 working edge reworking 195–196
Last Glacial Maximum 308–309 LSA see Late Stone Age (LSA)
late Middle Pleistocene: artefact diversity in luminescence dating 298
Asia 244–247; artefact diversity in North Luonan Basin (China) 314; artefact diversity
Africa 229–232; artefact diversity in 225, 244; Late Middle/Upper Pleistocene
sub-Saharan Africa 226–229; hafting 55; 244
reworking of artefacts 100–101 Lupemban assemblages (Africa) 52, 226,
late Pleistocene: artefact design reduction 231
197–198; composite tools 42; micro- Lycett, S. 126
blade technology 61, 62; sub-Saharan Lyman, R. L. 149
Africa and Europe 141–142
late Pliocene: artefact movement 86–87; Madjadbebe Rockshelter (Australia) 109
information content of assemblages 123 Magdelenian assemblages (Europe): artefact
Late Stone Age (LSA): African artefact design 198–199, 199; backed bladelets
diversity 228; definitions 2; hafting 55, 38, 39
61; Middle Stone Age to 304–305; Maghreb (Africa): Aterian assemblages
morphological redundancy of 197; raw and composite artefacts 52; Middle
material economics 110; retouching and Pleistocene artefact diversity 231
diversity 197 manuports 89–90
laurel-leaf bifaces 135, 136 Marks, A. E. 242
Index 415
Masloukh cave (Lebanon) 233–234 reduction of 91–92; mono-and

mastics 280 bi-facial concurrent assemblages
material culture: communication and 222–223; pigments in signalling 132;
112–113; diversity of 202–203, point classification 150, 151, 152;
211–212; evidence for, symbolic raw materials/technology in artefact
behaviour 112; pseudo-quantitative complexity 264; raw material transport
assessment 36; quantitative assessment 36; 94–95; retouched pieces 95–96, 96;
signals 119–120; social identity signalling small blanks production 270; specialized
120; spatial variation 121–122 techniques for handaxes and cleavers 185,
McNabb, J. 129, 320 185; see also late Middle Pleistocene
mechanical functions: design constraints Middle Stone Age (MSA): Africa 212;
168, 169 assemblage diversity 226–227; bifacially-
Meged rockshelter (Israel) 63 worked lanceolate artefacts 52, 53;
Mesolithic 40, 47, 108; technological composite artefacts 52; definitions 2;
“degeneration” 258 hafted artefacts 57, 58–59; Late Stone Age,
micro-blade production 309; artefact 304–305; North vs. South Africa 231;
complexity 281, 282; bladelets vs. 61–65, pigments and hafting in Africa 57; raw
62, 63, 64; Chinese artefact diversity, material transport 94–95, 97, 98; South
Upper Pleistocene 246–247; ubiquity of African artefact diversity 228; symbols
107 121; temporal artefact diversity 227;
microburin technique 64 weapon tips of composite weapons 59
Middle Paleolithic: assemblage long- minimalist perspective: early artefact
distance transport 99–100, 100; bifacial complexity 263–264
artefacts 295; bifacial foliates 52; Misliya Cave (Israel) 233–234, 235
bifacially-worked lanceolate artefacts 52, Mithen, S. J. 23, 123–124
53; Bordes classification system Mode 1 assemblages 310; artefact
148–150, 152–153; clothing 279; complexity 261, 265; artefact design 174;
composite artefacts 52; damage of hafted artefact diversity 220–221, 224
artefacts 57–58; definitions 2; East Asia Mode 2 assemblages 292, 310; artefact
artefact diversity 225–226; Eurasia, complexity 265, 270; artefact design
raw material transport 99; Europe 242; 174–175; artefact diversity 218–220, 222,
hafted artefacts 58; hafting 55; Levallois 224; first appearance 90; large cutting
production 164–165; Lower Paleolithic tools, information content 123
transition from 238–239, 273; product vs. Mode 3 assemblages 273
byproduct 164; raw material extraction modelling by subtraction 22–25; definition
278; re-use and reworking 102; Upper 23
Paleolithic generalisations vs. 103, 105; modern human behaviour 212, 316–317;
Upper Paleolithic transition 16, 237, definition 19; multiple modernities
304–305; weapon tips of composite 317–318
weapons 59 modernity 315–318
Middle Pleistocene: artefact design modularity 5; advantages of, 40; artefact
187–189, 190–191, 192; artefact design complexity 256
in Near East 189; artefact development Moffet, M. W. 120
319; artefact diversity 223–224; artefact Morgan, Lewis Henry 14–15, 18–19, 23,
diversity, western Eurasia 232–244; 24, 316
Aterian assemblages and composite Mousterian assemblages (France) 85–86;
artefacts 52; bifacially-worked lanceolate bifacial handaxes 91; early types 190;
artefacts 52; blank production 277; Middle/Upper Pleistocene artefact
clothing 279; composite artefacts 49, diversity 235; see also Quina Mousterian
49–50, 51; diversification and socio- assemblages (France)
economic structures (500–300 ka) Movius, H. 225, 312
295–297; flake tools complexity 275, MSA see Middle Stone Age
277; hafted tools 66, 196, 277; inter- (MSA)
assemblage variation 239; LCTs, Mumba Cave (Tanzania) 227
416 Index
Nachuku Formation, Lake Turkana (Kenya) Olorgesaile “Catwalk” site (Kenya) 124,
90 219; artefact diversity 219; LCTs
Nadaouiyeh Aïn Askar (Syria): Middle/ concentrations 91
Upper Pleistocene artefact diversity 234 Omo (Ethiopia) 217–218
Neanderthals 318; body art 144; chaîne opportunistic production: expediency vs. 70
opératoires 311; cultural evolution 315; osseous raw materials: artefact complexity
culture vs. Homo sapiens 23; hafted 281; artefact diversity 240; Chinese
artefacts 59; Homo sapiens generalisations artefact diversity, Upper Pleistocene 246;
vs. 103; ornamentation 303; retouched shaped bone tools 20; time-consuming
pieces 96; shaped bone tools 20; effort 40, 42; Upper Pleistocene
technology range 20–21 198–199; widespread use of 299; see also
Nelson, M. 70 antlers
neo-cortex 79–81; raw material sourcing ostrich egg: decorated vessel fragments 133,
81–82 134, 135, 321; shell beads 106, 228, 246
Neo-Evolutionary framework 23; critics Oswalt, W. 212, 213, 253
of 15
Neolithic 62, 80, 108, 246; interest in Paleoindian 21, 114, 155, 183–184, 195,
obsidian 105, 165 256, 257
netting: appearance of 238 Paleolithic age: cave paintings 113;
niche-construction 15 European obsidian transport 99; material
Nihewan Basin (China) 220–221 signals 122; see also Lower Paleolithic;
non-analogue communities 22 Middle Paleolithic; Upper Paleolithic
non-human primates: models of early Paleolithique intermediare (Syria) 61
humans as 22 passive style: behavioural choice 121
Nor Gehgi 1 site (Armenia) 190 performance characteristics 113
North Africa: artefact diversity (Late Perreault, C. 255
Middle/Upper Pleistocene 500–10 ka) Perrot, J. 148, 196
248; artefact production 316; Aterian personal ornaments 7; artefact diversity 226;
assemblages and composite artefacts 52; signalling 132–133, 133
bifacially-worked lanceolate artefacts 52; picks: artefact design 176, 176–177
diversity (2.5 my–500 ka) 248; diversity pigments 7, 122, 144, 321; appearance
(Late Middle/Upper Pleistocene of 296, 299; hafting and, in Africa 57;
500–10 ka) 229–232; Upper Pleistocene signalling in 130–132, 132, 304
microlithic technologies 142–143 plant resins: adhesives 280; composite tools
44
oblique cultural transmission 28 platform angle: as evidence of decisions;
O’Brien, M. J. 149 blade production, 275; Levallois
obsidian: aesthetic properties 165–166; technology 147, 162
Africa 99; central Anatolia 83; signals 141; points: composite artefacts 52–54; earliest
sourcing of 80; transport of 105–106 examples of 49–50; evidence for
ochre 130–132, 144, 238, 280, 296, 321; in 43–45; Lower and Middle Paleolithic
composite mastics 55 classification 150, 151, 152; osseous
Ohalo II (Israel) 238 materials 59; role of serrations 114;
Oldowan assemblages 292; artefact signalling 135-141
complexity 261, 262; artefact design population structure: gamma diversity 209
171–173; artefact diversity 216–218; early portable art 142, 199
artefact complexity 264; raw material Potts, R. 89, 219, 301
choice 87; secondary deposits 87–88, 88 pounding tools 216, 231, 292
Olduvai Gorge (Africa); artefact design Powell, A. 212
172, 175; over-transport of material 89; Pradnik cycle 193
raw material movement 88; symmetrical predetermination 60, 185–185
artefacts 127–128 pre-Mousterian assemblages (France)
Olduvai Landscape Paleoanthropology 190
Project 88 pre-Oldowan assemblages 221
Index 417
pressure flaking 108; appearance of 298; recombination: technological developments

artefact diversity 226 (120–60 ka) 298–304
prestige bias 28 recycling 71; economic consequences
prismatic blades 60, 167, 280, 285; 101–102; economization of raw material
appearance of 50, 295–296; artefact 100
complexity 274; China, Upper reduction models 154
Pleistocene 246; Homo sapiens 19–20 redundancy: imposed 145–146
procedural hierarchy: artefact complexity refitting 87, 122, 159, 197, 261, 262
256 Renfrew, C. 83
product: byproduct vs. 164 re-purposing: anticipation and 195;
production constraints: design 168–169; economization of raw material 100
organizational changes 306 resharpening 54, 89, 93, 108, 184, 193, 200;
progressive evolution 14–15; reversal of 287; burins 197; design for 154–156; LCTs
technological evolution 34–37 184–187; and planning 102; serration 114
projectiles: appearance of 50, 240; design residues 52, 55–57, 150, 298
constraints 127, 158; Homo sapiens Reti, J. S. 172
geographic spread 59–60, 213, 240 Revadim Quarry (Israel) 234
projectile tips: signalling and 136–137 Richerson, P. J. 27, 28
proto-Aurignacian assemblages (Europe) Rift Valley (Africa): artefact design 173–174;
61, 61, 305; artefact diversity 242–243; hierarchical production system (850–700
Europe 61, 61 ka) 293–294
proto-Levallois systems 273–274; artefact risk 5, 28, 116–117, 212–213, 259–260
complexity 270; see also Levallois Rogers, E. M. 90, 219
technology rotating platform reduction 163
Qafzeh Cave (Israel) 236 Sackett, J. R. 121

Qesem Cave (Israel) 94; artefact complexity Sahlins, M. 15, 23
276; composite artefacts 50; flake sampling 11–12; alpha diversity effects 205
production increase 92–93; Middle/ Santonja, M. 235
Upper Pleistocene artefact diversity Schiffer, M. 100
233–234 Schöningen (Germany) 300; artefact
quarrying 278–279 diversity 223; composite artefacts 50, 51;
quarry workshop 247, 336 wood artefacts 50
Quina Mousterian assemblages (France) 95, scrapers: artefact design 189, 189–190;
107, 194, 275; appearance of 295 Bordes classification system 149
secondary sources: raw material sourcing
raw material economics 6–7, 108–110, 81–82
110, 288, 295; cost assessment 74–78; seed grinding 240
diversification and complexity 108–110 selective sweeps 107; artefact diversity
raw materials 68–110; artefact complexity 237–238
in Lower/Middle Pleistocene 264–265; Service, E. 15, 23
design effects 9, 167; distribution of 6; Shannon–Wiener index 204
effects of 73–74; extraction of in Middle Sharon, G. 185
Paleolithic 278; gamma diversity, effect Shea, J. 4, 226
on 210–211; identification of sources Shennan, S. 211, 212
87–88; LCTs design 184; local vs. Shuidonggou (China) 245
exotic 84–86; paleoeconomics 68–73; Sibbudu Cave (South Africa) 300; tongatis
quality effects 73–74, 165, 166; scale of 155–156, 156
movement 141–142; source attribution Sibilo School Road Site (Kenya) 98
78–84; technology and 166–167; signalling 143, 321; artefact size 127–128;
treatment in Upper Pleistocene 277–278; audience for 120–123; cheap signals 119;
trends in 86–108; zone of acquisition fake signals 119; group identity signalling
85–86 137, 138, 139; handaxe size/symmetry
received knowledge: design and 147–148 127–128; identity of 300; implement
418 Index
type 129–130; material objects 119–120; Stiner, M. 21, 120

media recruitment 308; post-45 ka stone cache hypothesis 89–90
307–308; shape variation 129; use of 299 Stout, D. 171, 217, 264–265, 272
Simpson’s Index 204 stratigraphy: temporal dimensions 33–34
size: composite tools 44; signalling in sub-Saharan Africa: archaeology vs.
127–128 population density 305; artefact
skill: acquisition of 272, 307; indicators of design 173–174; artefact diversity (2.5
123–125 my–500 ka) 215–220, 247–248, 248;
“smash and select” model 163–164 artefact diversity (Late Middle/Upper
social insects 120, 146–147 Pleistocene 500–10 ka) 226–229, 248;
social learning 28, 221, 312 flake production increase 92; hafted
social networks: expansion 303; post-45 ka artefacts 58–59; late Pleistocene 141–142;
308 Middle Stone Age 95, 105; stone tools,
socio-functions: techno-/ideo-functions adoption of 291–293
vs. 37 subsistence risk: artefact complexity 43,
soft-hammer production 108, 222, 258 213, 260
Solutrean assemblages (Iberia) 244; bifacial/ symbolic language: development of 112;
unifacial points 198; chronological gamma diversity, effect on 209
divisions 139, 140, 141; laurel-leaf bifaces symbols 115–120, 143; audience of
135, 136 120–123; decoration 141; definition of
de Sonneville-Bordes, D. 148, 196 115–116; design constraints 168, 169,
source attribution: epistemology 78–84; 170; identification problems 113; indexes
techniques of 69 vs. 112; landscapes 240–241; material
South Africa: artefact production 316; culture evidence 112; raw materials
heat treatment of raw materials 105; 105–106; stone tools 113–114, 114;
Kathu Pan 49, 50; Late Stone Age visual appeal 114–115
artefact diversity 228; Middle Stone symmetry: appreciation of 127; handaxes
Age artefact diversity 228; raw material 126–127; high level of 125–126; human
treatment in Upper Pleistocene 277–278; responses to 125; unnecessary symmetry
Wonderwerk Cave 130–131, 234–235, 125–126; Upper Pleistocene bifacial
296; see also Howiesons Poort (HP) artefacts 193
assemblages (South Africa); Sibbudu Cave
(South Africa); Stillbay Industry (South Tabun Cave (Israel) 94; artefact diversity
Africa) 233–234, 235, 236; flake production
South Asia: artefact diversity 225, 247, 250; increase 92–93, 93; handaxe design
Early Paleolithic 225; Middle Pleistocene 181, 182; handaxe size variation 127,
247; Middle/Upper Pleistocene 500–10 128; Levallois production 164–165;
ka 250 retouching/artefact density 96–97;
Southwest Asia: artefact diversity (Middle/ scraper design 189; see also Acheulo-
Upper Pleistocene 500–10 ka) 249; Yabrudian assemblages
obsidian aesthetic properties 165–166 tanged pieces: Aterian assemblages and
spear-throwers 39, 39–40, 59, 72, 280; composite artefacts 54, 54; Aterian
appearance of 240 assemblages and composite artefacts 52;
specialization: manufacturing 72; North Africa Middle Pleistocene artefact
technological developments (45–30 ka) diversity 230
304–310 Tavelbala-Tachengit (Africa): Middle
Spencer, H. 14, 316 Pleistocene techniques for handaxes and
spider diagrams: raw material economics cleavers 185, 185; proto-Levallois systems
75–76, 77 273–274
stage systems: critiques of 18 taxonomy: attempts of standardization 203;
Stillbay Industry (South Africa): bifacially- problems with 203
worked lanceolate artefacts 52, 53; late Tayacian assemblages (France) 222
Pleistocene artefact design 193; Upper techno-functional approach 8,
Pleistocene artefact diversity 227–228 179–180
Index 419
techno-functions: artefact design 179, 180, 281; diversification and recombination

181, 182; socio-/ideo-functions vs. 37 (120–60 ka) 298–304; early 100–101;
Tennie, C. 147, 221 extension of methods 106–107; group
testosterone reduction 302 identity signalling 137; North African
thermoregulation 279 microlithic technologies 142–143;
Thomas Quarry (Casablanca, Morocco) 222 raw material transport 94–95, 97; raw
throwing sticks 253, 254 material treatment 277–278; retouched
tongatis 155–156, 156 pieces 95–96, 96; whole-artefact design
topography: gamma diversity, effect on 210; 198–199
raw material economics 75–76, 78 use-wear analysis 43–44, 157–158; “waste”
Tor Faraj (Jordan) 164 being used 163
Torrence, R. 212
Toth, N. 87, 172 Verri, G. 278–279
transferability: decorated articles 135 Vértesszőlős (Hungary) 223
transitions 3, 16–18, 286 vertical cultural transmission 28
transport costs 7; minimization of 85 Victoria West (Africa): artefact complexity
typology: artefact design problems 196–197; 266, 268; Middle Pleistocene techniques
extensional vs. intensional 149; form over for handaxes and cleavers 185; proto-
design 150; temporal effects on 152–153, Levallois systems 273–274
153 Villa, P. 235
visual appeal (aesthetics): symbols 114–115
Ubeidiya (Israel) 222
Umm el Tlel (Syria) 58 waste: flakes/chips interpretation as 44; raw
Upper Paleolithic: artefact diversity material abundance 73
reduction in Europe 242–243; artefact Whitaker, R. H. 203–204
retouching and diversity 197; artefacts White, J. P. 154, 163, 164
as signals 118–119; assemblage long- White, Leslie 15, 222
distance transport 99–100; bifacial White’s Law 15
shaping 135–136; clothing 279–280; Wiessener, P. W. 121
definitions 2; Eurasia 212; European Wilson, L. 165
artefact design 196–197; European Wobst, H. M. 120
cultures 137, 138, 139; Gravetian Wonderwerk Cave (South Africa) 130–131,
populations 240; hafting 55, 61; Middle 234–235, 296
Paleolithic generalisations vs. 103, woodworking: artefact complexity 277
105; Middle Paleolithic transition 237, working memory: artefact complexity 259,
304–305; morphological redundancy 268–269, 281, 294, 301–302
of 197; projectile tips 60; raw material Wurz, S. 227
economics 110; reprovisioning strategies Wynn, T. 259, 271
103; resins 280; de Sonneville-Bordes and
Perrot classification 148–149; symbols Xiaogushan (China) 246
121; tanged pieces 54; western Eurasia X-ray fluorescence (XRF): obsidian
103, 104, 239 sourcing 80
Upper Pleistocene: alpha diversity 226;
artefact design 191–194, 192; artefact Yabrud (Syria) 94
development 320; artefact diversity in Yabrudian assemblages: flake production
Asia 244–247; artefact diversity in North 92–93; Middle Pleistocene artefact design
Africa 229–232; artefact diversity in 188–189; Middle/Upper Pleistocene
sub-Saharan Africa 226–229; artefact artefact diversity 233; scraper design 189,
diversity in western Eurasia 232–244; 189–190; technical innovations 295
artefact retouching diversity 198; Aterian
assemblages and composite artefacts 52; Zhoukoudian (China): artefact diversity,
bifacial artefact symmetry 193; bifacial Upper Pleistocene 246; composite
foliates 52; blank production 277; artefacts 50
clothing 279; cultural understanding zonation: raw materials 85–86

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THE EVOLUTION OF PALEOLITHIC

The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies provides a novel perspective on long-​term

Steven L. Kuhn is Riecker Distinguished Professor in the School of Anthropology,

2 Thinking about technological evolution 13

3 Parts and wholes 38

4 Raw material economies 68

5 Artefacts as information 111

6 Identifying design 145

8 Artefact complexity 252

9 Synthesis –​trends, tendencies and entrenchments 286

3.1 Schematic diagram showing the role of a Magdalenian backed

3.15 Pressure micro-​blades and cores, late Pleistocene Dyuktai complex,

5.9 Solutrean shouldered point; cast of largest known Solutrean laurel

7 .1 Schematic illustration of alpha diversity. 205

5.1 Summary of “basal” Upper Paleolithic assemblage types

This book is a product of the evolution of my own thinking about Paleolithic

You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things,

1.1 Stone tools and our understanding of human evolution

provided more-​or-​less reliable independent timelines for human behavioural evo-

up the vast sweep of archaeologically-​documented behaviour based on changes

1.2 The six dimensions

1. the number of parts that comprise finished implements;

In focusing on six general dimensions in lithic technology I have made the

1.2.1 Parts and wholes: Composite tools

1.2.2 Raw material economy

1.2.3 Artefacts as information

Its importance notwithstanding, it is no easy thing to extract information about

1.3 Organization of the book

1.4 Sampling and representation

1.5 What about the hominins?

2.1 Different flavours of evolution

human evolution entails the active collaboration between biological anthropologists,

2.1.1 Why do we care so much about transitions?

2.1.2 Evolution by milestone

developed metallurgy because they lacked whatever it took –​social infrastructure,

2.1.3 Modelling by subtraction

colonize and flourish in a range of environments. Thinking about early humans

2.2 Methodological challenges of studying long-​term change

2.3 Age is just a number, and probably an incorrect one

Estimates of when a particular behaviour became common, locally or globally, are

2.4 Assemblages as units of analysis

2.5 Trends, tendencies, and progress

example. In his seminal book, La Geste et la Parole (Leroi-​Gourhan, 1964), he argued

artefacts as non-​functional, which is an error. They have functions, important ones,

3.1 The importance of composite artefacts

FIGURE 3.1 Schematic diagram showing the role of a Magdalenian backed bladelet

FIGURE 3.2 Some of the diverse applications for microlithic inserts based on

3.2 Recognizing composite tools from their isolated parts

3.3 What about the handles?

FIGURE 3.4 Examples of hafting Mode A. Ethnographic Leilira blades from

FIGURE 3.5 Examples of hafting Mode B; experimental versions of tanged Aterian

FIGURE 3.6 Examples of hafting Mode C. Remarkable find of Mesolithic arrow with

are exceedingly rare.The increasingly fragmentary nature of evidence as one moves

FIGURE 3.9 Bifacial “leaf ” points

FIGURE 3.10 Sample of tanged artefacts from Aterian deposits at Bizmoune Cave,

FIGURE 3.11 Hypothetical hafting positions for backed segments from Howiesons

FIGURE 3.15 Pressuremicro-​blades and cores, late Pleistocene Dyuktai complex,

micro-​blade technologies and bladelet technologies of western Eurasia and Africa

(Figure 3.16). Bladelets were sometimes segmented using the micro-​burin tech-

FIGURE 3.17 Schematic illustration of microburin “notch and snap” technique for

The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies provides a novel perspective on long-term

9 Synthesis –trends, tendencies and entrenchments 286

3.15 Pressure micro-blades and cores, late Pleistocene Dyuktai complex,

provided more-or-less reliable independent timelines for human behavioural evo-

up the vast sweep of archaeologically-documented behaviour based on changes

1.2.1 Parts and wholes: Composite tools

1.3 Organization of the book

developed metallurgy because they lacked whatever it took –social infrastructure,

2.2 Methodological challenges of studying long-term change

example. In his seminal book, La Geste et la Parole (Leroi-Gourhan, 1964), he argued

artefacts as non-functional, which is an error. They have functions, important ones,

3.2 Recognizing composite tools from their isolated parts

FIGURE 3.15 Pressuremicro-blades and cores, late Pleistocene Dyuktai complex,

micro-blade technologies and bladelet technologies of western Eurasia and Africa

(Figure 3.16). Bladelets were sometimes segmented using the micro-burin tech-

FIGURE 3.18 Summary of developments in hafting and composite tools.

FIGURE 4.1 Schematic version of “concentric-r ing” model of raw material

4.5 The local and the exotic

FIGURE 4.6 The diverse life histories of Acheulo-Yabrudian artefacts: (1) “scrapers”

FIGURE 4.8 Example of early long-distance movement of obsidian. Some raw materials

Hunter-gatherers often create extensive networks of exchange relationships.

FIGURE 4.11 Ju/’hoansi “zem” or tortoise-shell compact case, decorated with ostrich

extensive social networks. In so far as long-distance movement of raw materials

FIGURE 4.12 Earlyground-edge tools from Madjedbebe Rockshelter, Australia (photo

5.2 What is the message? Different sorts of symbol

TABLE 5.1 Summary of “basal” Upper Paleolithic assemblage types from Europe

Chatelperronian Southern and central France, Elongated arched-backed

lowlands. Inevitably human populations would have re-organized themselves on