Retouching the Palaeolithic: Becoming Human and the Origins of Bone tool Technology (Abstract Book) (original) (raw)
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This volume is a collection of papers from the conference titled “Retouching the Palaeolithic: Becoming Human and the Origins of Bone Tool Technology” held in October 2015 at Schloss Herrenhausen in Hannover, Germany. With major funding from the Volkswagen Foundation’s Symposia and Summer School initiative, the conference brought together an international group of scientists from an array of research backgrounds to explore the origins and development of bone tool technologies in prehistory, specifically retouchers, compressors and percussors used in various lithic knapping activities. The diverse conference attendance generated an assortment of perspectives on bone tool use covering western Europe to the Levant, from the Lower Palaeolithic to Neolithic times. Collectively, these papers provide an overview on how the integration of bone tools with other Palaeolithic technologies influenced human subsistence and other socio-economic behaviours over time and space. In the end, this volume is not just about bone tools. Rather, this compilation is intended to stimulate broader ideas on technology and innovation, for the ability and desire to create new tools truly lies at the core of what makes us human.
The earliest evidence for the use of human bone as a tool
Journal of Human Evolution, 2011
We report on the analysis of three human cranial fragments from a Mousterian context at the site of La Quina (France), which show anthropogenic surface modifications. Macroscopic and microscopic analyses, including SEM observation, demonstrate that the modifications visible on one of these fragments are similar to those produced on bone fragments used experimentally to retouch flakes. The microscopic analysis also identified ancient scraping marks, possibly resulting from the cleaning of the skull prior to its breakage and utilisation of a resulting fragment as a tool. The traces of utilisation and the dimensions of this object are compared to those on a sample of 67 bone retouchers found in the same excavation area and layer. Results show that the tool size, as well as the dimensions and location of the utilised area, fall well within the range of variation observed on faunal shaft fragments from La Quina that were used as retouchers. This skull fragment represents the earliest known use of human bone as a raw material and the first reported use of human bone for this purpose by hominins other than modern humans. The two other skull fragments, which probably come from the same individual, also bear anthropogenic surface modifications in the form of percussion, cut, and scraping marks. The deliberate versus unintentional hypotheses for the unusual choice of the bone are presented in light of contextual information, modifications identified on the two skull fragments not used as tools, and data on bone retouchers from the same layer, the same site, and other Mousterian sites.
The importance of retouching tools in the post-Palaeolithic period
Retouching the Palaeolithic: Becoming human and the origins of bone tool technology
is professor at the Georg-August Universität Gottingen and is responsible for the section " Jägerische Archäologie/Schöningen" at the Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege in Hanover since 2013.
The origin of bone tool technology and the identification of early hominid cultural traditions
2005
A number of natural processes occurring during the life of an animal or after its death can produce pseudotools, mimics of human-made objects. A number of purported bone tools from Lower and Middle Palaeolithic sites have been published without any validating microscopic analysis of the bone surfaces showing possible traces of manufacture and use. This paper discusses the evolutionary significance of bone tool technology and summarises results of research on the use of bone tools by early hominids between one and two million years ago (Mya). It attempts to establish formal criteria for the identification of minimally modified bone tools by characterising the modifications produced by known human and non-human agents, and applying these criteria to the purported bone tool collections from Swartkrans, Sterkfontein and Olduvai Gorge. A number of experiments involving a variety of tasks were conducted in order to increase the range of diagnostic features available. New analytical techniques have been developed for the quantification of microscopic use-wear, and a wide range of taphonomic and morphometric variables have been used to isolate idiosyncratic populations of specimens for which a robust argument can be made for their identification as tools. South and East African early hominid From Tools to Symbols 240 les outils en os d'Afrique du Sud, suggèrent que les auteurs de ces outils avaient une claire compréhension des propriétés de l'os, qu'ils pouvaient prévoir le résultat de leur actions sur la matière et qu'ils ont, dans les deux cas, été capables de développer des traditions techniques bien adaptées à la matière première disponible dans le but d'obtenir une efficacité optimale dans les tâches pour lesquelles ces outils étaient utilisés.
Evolutionary Anthropology, 2011
The production of purposefully fractured stone tools with functional, sharp cutting edges is a uniquely derived hominin adaptation. In the long history of life on earth, only hominins have adopted this remarkably expedient and broadly effective technological strategy. In the paleontological record, flaked stone tools are irrefutable proof that hominins were present at a particular place and time. Flaked stone tools are found in contexts ranging from the Arctic to equatorial rainforests and on every continent except Antarctica. Paleolithic stone tools show complex patterns of variability, suggesting that they have been subject to the variable selective pressures that have shaped so many other aspects of hominin behavior and morphology. There is every reason to expect that insights gained from studying stone tools should provide vital and important information about the course of human evolution. And yet, one senses that archeological analyses of Paleolithic stone tools are not making as much of a contribution as they could to the major issues in human origins research.
Older than the Oldowan? Rethinking the emergence of hominin tool use
… : Issues, News, and …, 2002
Using information from primatology, functional morphology, phylogeny, archeology, and paleoanthropology, we argue that before 2.5 mya hominins may have used tools, including unmodified and possibly modified stone tools . We consider several scenarios to explain why stone tool manufacture and use might not have left archeological traces prior to 2.5 mya and conclude by suggesting means to test our hypotheses.