What novice knappers have to learn to become expert stone toolmakers

The aim of this paper was to determine what technical gestures must be learned in order to produce stone tools. To identify these gestures, we compared the performance of expert knappers and complete novices. We hypothesised that the differences between novices and experts would indicate which technical gestures experts had learned to successfully produce stone tools. Participants were video recorded while attempting to produce a crude handaxe. The recordings were analysed according to ethological methods used to study animal and human behaviour. The knapping performance of each participant was segmented and scored into units in order to identify the technical gestures being used. The results showed considerable differences between experts and novices in three technical gestures: the type of percussion support, the position of the blank and the angle of blow. Therefore, these three technical gestures appear to be crucial in learning to knap stone at the level of bifacial stone toolmakers. By studying how modern knappers gradually master these three technical gestures we may begin to understand how stone knapping is acquired, how bifacial stone tools emerged and what cognitive challenges early handaxe makers had to face.

[1]  N. Toth.  The oldowan reassessed: a close look at early stone artifacts , 1985 .

[2]  E. Carbonell,et al.  From Homogeneity to Multiplicity: A New Approach to the Study of ArchaicStone Tools , 2009 .

[3]  M. Tomasello,et al.  Chimpanzee and Human Cultures , 1998, Current Anthropology.

[4]  Richard W. Byrne,et al.  Evolution of primate cognition , 2000, Cogn. Sci..

[5]  M. Maget,et al.  Guide d'étude directe des comportements culturels , 1954 .

[6]  Dietrich Stout,et al.  Knapping skill of the earliest stone toolmakers: insights from the study of modern human novices. , 2006 .

[7]  P. Renne,et al.  2.5-million-year-old stone tools from Gona, Ethiopia , 1997, Nature.

[8]  Blandine Bril,et al.  Stone knapping : the necessary conditions for a uniquely hominin behaviour , 2005 .

[9]  Yukimaru Sugiyama,et al.  Tool-using and -making behavior in wild chimpanzees at Bossou, Guinea , 1979, Primates.

[10]  Andrew W. Pelcin.  The Formation of Flakes: The Role of Platform Thickness and Exterior Platform Angle in the Production of Flake Initiations and Terminations , 1997 .

[11]  Anne Delagnes,et al.  Late Pliocene hominid knapping skills: the case of Lokalalei 2C, West Turkana, Kenya. , 2005, Journal of human evolution.

[12]  Robin I. M. Dunbar,et al.  Neocortex Size, Group Size, and the Evolution of Language , 1993, Current Anthropology.

[13]  M. Mauss,et al.  Manuel d'ethnographie , 2002 .

[14]  Gilles Dietrich,et al.  The role of expertise in tool use: skill differences in functional action adaptations to task constraints. , 2010, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[15]  Christophe Boesch,et al.  Different hand postures for pounding nuts with natural hammers by wild chimpanzees , 1993 .

[16]  Hansjürgen Müller-Beck,et al.  A History of Flint-Knapping Experimentation, 1838-1976 [and Comments and Reply] , 1978, Current Anthropology.

[17]  Grant S. McCall,et al.  Behavioral ecological models of lithic technological change during the later Middle Stone Age of South Africa , 2007 .

[18]  Satoshi Hirata,et al.  Tool use as a way to assess cognition: how do captive chimpanzees handle the weight of the hammer when cracking a nut? , 2009, Animal Cognition.

[19]  Xosé Pedro Rodríguez-Álvarez,et al.  Les premiers comportements funéraires auraient-ils pris place à Atapuerca, il y a 350 000 ans ? , 2003 .

[20]  Dora Biro,et al.  Tool-composite reuse in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): archaeologically invisible steps in the technological evolution of early hominins? , 2009, Animal Cognition.

[21]  J. C. Redmond,et al.  Early hominid brain evolution: a new look at old endocasts. , 2000, Journal of human evolution.

[22]  G. Dietrich,et al.  Skills and learning difficulties involved in stone knapping: The case of stone‐bead knapping in Khambhat, India , 1995 .

[23]  John C. Whittaker,et al.  Flintknapping: Making and Understanding Stone Tools , 1994 .

[24]  Michael J. Rogers,et al.  Landscape-scale variation in hominin tool use: Evidence from the Developed Oldowan. , 2008, Journal of human evolution.

[25]  Javier Baena Preysler,et al.  Tecnología Lítica Experimental: Introducción a la talla de utillaje prehistórico , 2010 .

[26]  Robert J. Blumenschine,et al.  Origins and Adaptations of Early Homo: What Archeology Tells Us , 2009 .

[27]  Hélène Balfet,et al.  Observer l'action technique : des chaînes opératoires, pour quoi faire? , 1991 .

[28]  Julie C. Stout,et al.  Stone Tool-Making and Brain Activation: Position Emission Tomography (PET) Studies , 2000 .

[29]  Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo,et al.  The Oldowan industry of Peninj and its bearing on the reconstruction of the technological skills of Lower Pleistocene hominids. , 2003, Journal of human evolution.

[30]  J. Pelegrin,et al.  Remarks about archaeological techniques and methods of knapping : elements of a cognitive approach to stone knapping , 2005 .

[31]  Paul S. Martin,et al.  Measuring Behaviour: An Introductory Guide , 1986 .

[32]  Agnès Roby-Brami,et al.  The organization of arm kinematic synergies : the case of stone –bead knapping in Khambhat. , 2006 .

[33]  Nathan Schlanger.  Understanding Levallois: Lithic Technology and Cognitive Archaeology , 1996, Cambridge Archaeological Journal.

[34]  André Leroi-Gourhan,et al.  Le Geste et la Parole - tome 1 : Technique et langage , 1992 .

[35]  D. Teti,et al.  Handbook of Research Methods in Developmental Science , 2004 .

[36]  E. Biryukova,et al.  Organization of goal-directed action at a high level of motor skill: the case of stone knapping in India. , 2008, Motor control.

[37]  R. Byrne.  The Evolution of Thought: The manual skills and cognition that lie behind hominid tool use , 2004 .

[38]  I. de la Torre,et al.  Omo Revisited: Evaluating the Technological Skills of Pliocene Hominids , 2004 .

[39]  G. Dietrich,et al.  Stone knapping : Khambhat (India), a unique opportunity ? , 2005 .

[40]  Harold L. Dibble,et al.  Introducing a new experimental design for controlled studies of flake formation: results for exterior platform angle, platform depth, angle of blow, velocity, and force , 2009 .

[41]  P. Tobias.  Evolution of the Human Brain , 2000 .

[42]  R. Holloway,.  Culture: A Human Domain , 1969, Current Anthropology.

[43]  Peter Ditchfield,et al.  Raw material quality and Oldowan hominin toolstone preferences: evidence from Kanjera South, Kenya , 2009 .

[44]  R. Milo,et al.  Tools, language and cognition in human evolution , 1995, International Journal of Primatology.

[45]  Roger Bakeman,et al.  Analysis of Behavioral Streams , 2008 .

[46]  T. Wynn.  Archaeology and cognitive evolution. , 2002, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[47]  R. Leakey,et al.  The First Humans – Origin and Early Evolution of the Genus Homo , 2009 .

[48]  B. Bril,et al.  How do stone knappers predict and control the outcome of flaking? Implications for understanding early stone tool technology. , 2010, Journal of human evolution.

[49]  Robert A. Foley,et al.  On stony ground: Lithic technology, human evolution, and the emergence of culture , 2003 .

[50]  T. Chaminade,et al.  The evolutionary neuroscience of tool making , 2007, Neuropsychologia.

[51]  Bernard Wood,et al.  Older than the Oldowan? Rethinking the emergence of hominin tool use , 2003 .

[52]  Holger Preuschoft,et al.  Hands of Primates , 1993 .

[53]  David R. Braun,et al.  Interdisciplinary approaches to the Oldowan , 2009 .

[54]  T. Chaminade,et al.  Neural correlates of Early Stone Age toolmaking: technology, language and cognition in human evolution , 2008, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[55]  D. Stout.  Skill and Cognition in Stone Tool Production , 2002, Current Anthropology.

[56]  N. Pigeot,et al.  Technical and Social Actors. Flintknapping Specialists and Apprentices at Magdalenian Etiolles , 1990 .

[57]  Thomas Wynn,et al.  An Ape's View of the Oldowan , 1989 .

[58]  C. R. Peters,et al.  Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution , 1998 .

[59]  Ronald K. Hambleton,et al.  Encyclopedia of psychological assessment , 2002 .

[60]  Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo,et al.  Were Olduvai Hominins making butchering tools or battering tools? Analysis of a recently excavated lithic assemblage from BK (Bed II, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania) , 2009 .

[61]  Dietrich Stout,et al.  Technological variation in the earliest Oldowan from Gona, Afar, Ethiopia. , 2010, Journal of human evolution.