Stone Tool Analysis and Human Origins Research:Some Advice from Uncle ScrewtapeJOHN J. SHEA

The production of purposefully fractured stone tools with functional, sharp cut-ting edges is a uniquely derived hominin adaptation. In the long history of life onearth, only hominins have adopted this remarkably expedient and broadly effec-tive technological strategy. In the paleontological record, flaked stone tools areirrefutable proof that hominins were present at a particular place and time.Flaked stone tools are found in contexts ranging from the Arctic to equatorialrainforests and on every continent except Antarctica. Paleolithic stone toolsshow complex patterns of variability, suggesting that they have been subject tothe variable selective pressures that have shaped so many other aspects ofhominin behavior and morphology. There is every reason to expect that insightsgained from studying stone tools should provide vital and important informationabout the course of human evolution. And yet, one senses that archeologicalanalyses of Paleolithic stone tools are not making as much of a contribution asthey could to the major issues in human origins research.

I have been making and using

stone tools, excavating them fromPleistocene contexts, and writingabout them for decades. Initially, myinterest in them was largely aestheticand an offshoot of a larger interestin ‘‘primitive technology.’’ Studyinglithic analysis as part of my trainingin archeology, stone tools became forme very much like animal tracks andsigns. They were tangible evidence ofthe people who came before us, ofthe things they carried, and whatthey left behind. I remain interestedin stone tools and continue to thinkof my ‘‘niche’’ in paleoanthropologyas a lithic archeologist. And yet,lately, when I read or listen to papersabout Paleolithic stone tools, I findmy interest wandering. I know I amnot alone in this. Time and again at

scientific meetings, colleagues volun-teer their opinion that the lithic evi-dence is just not providing answersto the interesting questions abouthuman evolution. Increasingly, I findmyself agreeing. There is a wideninggap between analyses of Paleolithicstone tools and the ‘‘big questions’’about human evolution, the issuesthat form a common ground in thelarger enterprise of paleoanthropol-ogy. Indeed, there are times whenwhat we archeologists do with stonetools in paleolithic archeology seemspurposefully designed to make themirrelevant to larger research ques-tions about human origins research.

HOW TO MAKE STONE TOOLSIRRELEVANT TO HUMAN

EVOLUTION

Not too long ago, rooting aroundfor something to read, I found acopy of C. S. Lewis’1 novella, TheScrewtape Letters, among my wife’sbook in our library. Christian apolo-getics is not the sort of thing I usu-ally read, but I had never read any-thing else by Lewis, so this book

seemed as a good place to start asany. The book is comprised of a se-ries of letters in which a demonnamed Screwtape advises hisnephew about how to corrupt thesoul of a human ‘‘patient.’’ This gotme wondering what advice Screw-tape would have given his nephew ifhe was embarking on a career inPaleolithic archeology.Dear Nephew,I am delighted to learn that you

have decided to take up the study ofstone tools. A wise choice. The talkingmonkeys have been dragging theseshiny objects back to their caves formillions of years. You will never be ata loss for things to write.To lend the appearance of authority

to your pronouncements, crack a fewrocks together and declare yourself aflintknapper. Assert that the tools youhave made are ‘‘replicas’’ of prehistoricartifacts and that through such ‘‘repli-cation’’ you have gained uniqueinsights into the minds of extincthumans. Don’t worry that even chim-panzees can make stone tools or thatreplication claims are unfalsifiable.Chimpanzees can’t talk or write anybetter than most archeologists can flint-knap. Furthermore, no revenant fossilhominin is going to contradict yourclaimed replication, accuse you of lithicplagiarism, or demand royalties.When you excavate, treat some

stone artifacts as more important thanothers, and selectively curate these‘‘tools.’’ Don’t worry if you have nei-ther made stone tools yourself norobserved them being made or used.Your intuition about which tools aremost important will be good enough.Pay special attention to artifacts thatare unusually big, symmetrical, andheavily retouched. These look nice inillustrations. Colleagues will go nutstrying to find the same kinds of arti-

ISSUES

Anthropology Department, Stony BrookUniversity, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4364USA. E-mail: John.Shea@sunysb.edu

VVC 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.DOI 10.1002/evan.20290Published online in Wiley Online Library(wileyonlinelibrary.com).

Evolutionary Anthropology 20:48–53 (2011)

facts in their collections. Ship exam-ples of these artifacts out of theircountry of origin and deposit them insuch museums as will take them. Dis-card everything else in the field. Thiswill make it nearly impossible forfuture generations of researchers toexamine these tools and challengeyour findings.When you develop a stone tool

typology, rely on visually assessedmorphological analogy. Don’t measureanything. Publish your results interms of simple relative frequencies.That way, in comparisons, artifactsthat took seconds to make will havethe same statistical weight as onesthat were used and curated for pro-longed periods. If you and your col-leagues disagree about how to classifyparticular artifacts, create rival typolo-gies. These should be devised so thatit is difficult to convert data organizedin one typology into another.In comparing assemblages, pay no

attention to differences in samplingand excavation strategies. Don’t worrythat nearly all dimensions of ethno-graphic material culture are patchilyand nonrandomly distributed on liv-ing sites. Nobody will figure this outuntil long after you have publishedyour findings. If you really want tolock in your interpretations, don’tpublish maps showing artifact distri-butions. If you can, base your analy-sis on samples gathered from narrowtrenches excavated by unskilledlaborers or students with no formaltraining in geology.In making global comparisons of

stone-tool technology, use a series of‘‘modes’’ organized around the Euro-pean archeological record. This willkeep prehistorians working in Africa,Asia, Australia and the Americas onthe periphery of major discourse onhuman evolution.When you write about stone-tool

function, don’t waste time doingexperiments or ethnoarcheology towork out middle-range theory. Useyour intuition and embed yourhypotheses about stone tool functionin the tool names themselves (forexample, scraper, handaxe, chopper).If you must rely on evidence, makesure it involves subjectively assessedwear patterns and residues that

require hours of study with an expen-sive microscope. This will guaranteethat functional data remain smalljudgmental samples of little statisticaluse. In describing your observationsof wear patterns, use terms that rein-force your interpretations of them,(such as sickle polish, meat polish,bone polish).

Treat your assemblage groups as ifthey were equivalents of self-consciousgroups of actual people. Give themformal names, much as one wouldrecent human cultures. All you needto do is pick a site, add ‘‘the’’ beforeits name and the suffix ‘‘-ian,’’ andyou should be good to go. The resultwill be a thicket of named lithicindustries that will be all but incom-prehensible to nonspecialists. Narra-tives of these evolving, migrating, andinteracting industries can help you toconstruct a ‘‘prehistory’’ in which theimportant events in human evolutiontake place in your geographic area ofexpertise. Don’t let the fact that stonetools are inanimate objects bother you.If anybody challenges your prehistorywith fossils or molecular data, you canmake your arguments bulletproof byreminding them that language, culture,and human biology vary independentlyof one another, even though your owninterpretations imply they do not.

Once you have published your infer-ences about the lithic record, carefullyguard your raw data. Those data areyours, no matter who funded you orwhat the laws are in the countrywhere you did your research. Be charyof sharing your data with other schol-ars. If people cannot access yourobservations, it will be difficult forthem to prove you wrong.

Encourage your students to special-ize even more than you do. Be surethey focus on minutiae. If they canmake their thesis research comprehen-sible to a nonarchaeologist anthropolo-gist in less than three sentences, theirresearch is not specialized enough.Dissuade even the best students fromtaking courses in evolutionary biologyor physical anthropology; they defi-nitely should not study social or cul-tural anthropology. That way, they willremain blissfully ignorant of howhumans and other animals actuallydeploy tools in the service of their

adaptive strategies, and of the difficul-ties in studying human cultural vari-ability under optimal conditions, inwhich, you can observe your subjectsdirectly. Most importantly, you won’thave to worry about your studentsrunning away to pursue more anthro-pologically relevant and evolutionarilymeaningful research questions.Yours Affectionately,ScrewtapeThis is obviously satire; but Screw-

tape’s letter highlights some of

the things that, in my view, prevent

lithic analysis from making a fuller

contribution to paleoanthropology.

Happily, some of Screwtape’s re-

commendations are things of the

past, or fast becoming such. Increa-

sing use of computers and digital

data recording, including geometric

morphometry, will reduce the obser-

vational subjectivity that lies at the

core of some of these problems.2–4

But other problems remain very

much au courant. Researchers

(including, at times, this author) cite

‘‘personal experience’’ with flintknap-

ping or other experiments with prim-

itive technology as if these anecdotes

had the same value as replicable sci-

entific measurements. The recent and

seemingly interminable battles over

the nature of early Aurignacian and

Chatelperronian assemblages show

how crude excavation and selective

curation by earlier researchers con-

strains contemporary research.5–7

There also is neither rhyme norreason in the methods by which pre-historians name lithic industries. Ar-tifact types and lithic industriescoined in the late nineteenth andearly twentieth century remain verymuch in use today even though welong ago solved the chronstrati-graphic problems these namedindustries were intended to solve.8,9

Lithic microwear analysis retains aseemingly irreducible subjectivecomponent and judgmental samplingstrategies that severely limit its ana-lytical value.10 Grahame Clark’s11

technological ‘‘modes’’ are stillapplied at a global scale,12,13 eventhough the lithic assemblages ofentire continents, including Australiaand the Americas, resist being shoe-horned into one of these modes.

ISSUES Stone Tool Analysis and Human Origins Research 49

‘‘Transitions’’ and ‘‘continuity’’ con-tinue to be invoked for countlessregions where geographic and cli-matic factors make long-term homi-nin evolutionary continuity improb-able and in spite of enormous gapsin the paleoanthropological record.14

Screwtape’s advice regarding datasharing and educational advisingrecall familiar problems in humanorigins research.15

AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ONTHE PROBLEM

The root cause of many problemswith Paleolithic stone artifact analy-sis is a mismatch between the wayswe describe stone tools and organizethe lithic evidence and the kinds ofquestions that are major issues inpaleoanthropology. Many of themethods we use to describe stonetools today were developed inresponse to the theoretical concernsof late nineteenth- and early twenti-eth-century Paleolithic research.From ninetenth-century researchers,Paleolithic archeologists inherited aworld view in which various kinds ofstone tools were seen not just as chro-nostratigraphic ‘‘index fossils,’’ butalso as indicators of progress towardfully ‘‘modern’’ human behavior.16

Early twentieth-century concernsadded to this agenda a growinginterest in prehistoric cultural vari-ability.17 Stone tool assemblages withshared typological characteristicswere grouped together into named‘‘industries’’ with relationships to oneanother that were modeled, more orless, on the kinds of social relation-ships observed among named ethno-historic groups.18 These concernsremain part of the contemporaryresearch agenda in paleolithic arche-ology, but they are less and lesscentral to the major issues inpaleoanthropology. Paleoanthropo-logical research questions about whowas living when and where areincreasingly being augmented, evensupplanted, by questions about whatearly hominins were doing and why.The latter kinds of questions areincreasingly derived from behavioraland evolutionary ecology. For lithicanalysis to make a more substantive

contribution to human originsresearch, we need to become better ac-quainted with what the interestingquestions in human evolution are and,more importantly what they are not.

How many Paleolithic stone tool‘‘industries’’ there were in one regionor another is not one of these inter-esting questions. Named groups ofstone tool assemblages depositedover the course of tens of thousandsof years (or hundreds of thousandsof years) are no more likely to corre-spond to actual self-conscious groupsof humans than are hominin alpha-taxa or molecular haplogroups. Evenwhen the geographic and chronologi-cal distributions of these industriesapproximate those of ethnohistoriccultures, their variation is trackingpatterns of learned behavior, notnecessarily groups of people. Would

Would anyone amongus take seriously aproposal to track themigrations, dispersals,and cultural diffusion ofethnohistoric humansfrom variation in theirpens, pencils andpersonal digitalassistants?

anyone among us take seriously a pro-posal to track the migrations, disper-

sals, and cultural diffusion of ethnohis-

toric humans from variation in theirpens, pencils and personal digital assis-

tants? If one balks at such a proposal

for using modern-day material culture,the production history, functions, and

symbolic significance of which are all

either known or knowable, then one

ought to think twice about doing thesame kind of thing with Paleolithic

stone tools, the technological, func-

tional, symbolic, and stylistic proper-ties of which are unknown and per-

haps unknowable. Just because Paleo-

lithic stone tools are ancient does notmean that the forces governing their

variability were simple.

The fact of behavioral variation inthe lithic record is not a major issuein human origins research. It isinteresting that prehistoric humansdevised two, three, or a dozen or sodifferent ways of knapping handaxesor preparing Levallois cores.19 It isinteresting that particular stone tooltypes exhibit functional variability20

and that they are curated (that is,resharpened and transported) in dif-ferent ways.21 But none of these dis-coveries should be surprising. Behav-ioral variability is as much a part ofour primate evolutionary heritage asstereoscopic color vision. Nearlyeverything we humans do, we doin more than one meaningfully dif-ferent way. Demonstrating behavioralvariation in the Pleistocene lithic re-cord is just not enough. We need toexplain how that variability relates tomajor issues in human originsresearch.Paleoanthropology is one of the

most interesting, dynamic, and inter-disciplinary fields in academia today.It brings together geologists, molecu-lar anthropologists, paleontologists,anatomists, primatologists, culturalanthropologists, archeologists, andother researchers. If Paleolithic arche-ologists who study stone tools want tojoin in the conversation about humanorigins, we have to spend more timefocusing on major issues, ones thatare shared concerns for the larger fieldof paleoanthropology.

MAJOR ISSUES IN HUMANEVOLUTION TO WHICH STONETOOLS COULD BE MORE

RELEVANT

The antiquity of stone-tool cuttingtechnology certainly ranks amongthese issues. Chimpanzees and otherprimates occasionally use stone toolsand occasionally fracture them in thecourse of that use, but they do notuse those fracture products to cutthings other than in contrived labora-tory conditions.22 Chimpanzees usestone tools mainly to crack open nuts.The stones in question are blocks andcobbles or pebbles typically usedwithout prior modification other thantransport. In this respect, chimpanzeelithic technology differs from not only

50 Shea ISSUES

the flaked-stone technology associ-ated with earlier hominins but alsofrom aspects of their own technologi-cal adaptations, such as termite‘‘fishing’’ sticks, which are carefullyshaped before use.Since early hominins also used

stones to pulverize nuts and seeds,23

functional cutting edges are clearlythe derived component of early hom-inin lithic technology. The oldest evi-dence of the use of stone tool edgesto cut things now dates to 3.5 Ma.24

The oldest evidence of systematicproduction of flaked stone toolsdates to around 2.6 Ma.25 There is agap of nearly a million years betweenthese dates, but this gap in the lithicrecord is not paralleled by a gap inthe fossil record. Can we reliablydetect early hominin use of unmodi-fied tools with naturally sharp edgesor minimally modified stone tools inPlio-Pleistocene contexts? This is nota simple issue. In nearly every partof the world other than Africa, arche-ologists struggle with the problem ofvery ancient but ambiguously anthro-pogenic lithic assemblages. There arewidely accepted and objective criteriafor winnowing out ‘‘eoliths’’ fromactual artifacts, but these criteria areonly rarely applied to stone toolsfrom Plio-Pleistocene contexts.26,27

Can we disentangle the artifactualsignatures of dietary and technologi-cal stone tool use? Cut-marks on boneshow that Early Paleolithic stone toolswere used as subsistence aids, but isthis all they were used for?28 It seemsreasonable to suppose they were usedto process soft plant foods as well,though evidence of such use mustawait conclusive microwear and resi-due analyses. Microwear also indi-cates that stone tools were used forcarving wooden tools.29 Although theoldest preserved wooden tools areMiddle Pleistocene in age, it is prob-ably safe to infer that the use of stonetools to make other tools extendedback in to Early Pleistocene times.Using stone tools to butcher animalcarcasses or to process soft plant mat-ter results in very little wear or edge-attrition. Stone tools used as aids tocarpentry, on the other hand, dull rap-idly and require frequent retouch.Retouched flake tools become some-

what more common among AfricanEarly Paleolithic assemblages around1.6–1.7 Ma. Might this shift be relatedto increased production of woodentools? To clarify this issue, we needfocused microwear and residue analy-ses carried out in such a way that theirobservations can be evaluated inde-pendently of their interpretations.

Nonhuman primates do not habit-ually transport stone over greatdistances. Indeed, few documentedtransfers exceed 5–10 Km.22,30

Recent stone-tool-using humans rou-tinely moved stone tools over hun-dreds of kilometers,31 as did earlierHomo sapiens populations.32 Around1.8 Ma, the achievement by Homoergaster and later hominins, of near-modern skeletal proportions, which

The rapid andsubstantial enlargementof the hominin brainfrom mid-MiddlePleistocene timesonward (<500 Ka) is aspecific anatomical shiftthat many physicalanthropologists believeought to be reflected inthe cognitive bases ofstone tool technology.34

Is it?

enabled efficient striding and run-

ning around, ought to have shifted

the costs and benefits associated

with artifact transport.33 The seem-

ingly correlated appearance of

‘‘Acheulian’’ large cutting tools might

reflect such diminished transport

costs. If stone is less energetically

demanding to transport, one ought

to expect hominins to have increas-

ingly moved lithic raw materials

from areas where it occurred natu-

rally to areas where it was scarce but

desirable to have close at hand. Stud-

ies of variation in contemporary tool

provisioning behavior by humans

and nonhuman primates might ena-

ble one to develop a way of testing

this hypothesis.The rapid and substantial enlarge-

ment of the hominin brain frommid-Middle Pleistocene timesonward (<500 Ka) is a specific ana-tomical shift that many physicalanthropologists believe ought to bereflected in the cognitive bases ofstone tool technology.34 Is it? Wesimply don’t know. One could arguethat the increased use of prepared-core and prismatic blade techniquesthroughout much of Africa and Eur-asia during this period reflects a cog-nitive shift such as enhanced workingmemory.35,36 However, accepting thisargument assumes links among brainsize, cognitive complexity, and tech-

nological skill.37 As matters stand

today, these links are more articles of

faith than a hypothesis based on

solid middle-range research.38 This is

an area where lithic analysts could

deploy methods focused on evaluat-

ing the costs and benefits of different

modes of lithic tool production.

Instances of increased ‘‘benefits’’ for

lithic production correlated with ei-

ther stable or decreased ‘‘costs’’ (for

example, striking platform area and

tool mass) and more complex proce-

dural chains might be plausible evi-

dence of such increased behavioral

complexity. If such developments are

evolutionary trends, they ought to

vary in a directional fashion and

track the origin and dispersal of

increasingly encephalized Middle and

Late Pleistocene hominins.Stone and bone projectile arma-

tures begin to appear in the Africanarcheological record between 50–100Ka, and they become regular fea-tures in Eurasia following dispersalsof Homo sapiens after 50 Ka.Although evidence of the use ofprojectile weapons against otherhumans is rare in Pleistocene con-texts,39 it seems reasonable to sup-pose that being able to deliver ‘‘deathat a distance’’ significantly alteredsocial relations among human popu-lations.40 In particular, one mightreasonably expect habitual use ofprojectile weapons to dramatically

ISSUES Stone Tool Analysis and Human Origins Research 51

reduce variation in male robustness,particularly craniofacial robustness.In the absence of projectile weap-onry, and much as one can seeamong living primates, male facialrobustness serves as a reasonable ad-vertisement for individuals’ actualhealth, ferocity as reproductiverivals, and fitness as possible mates.With projectile weaponry, the signal-ing value of such craniofacial signalsought to have declined. Lithic ana-lysts could work closely with physicalanthropologists to see if variation inthe timing and occurrence of reliablyidentifiable stone projectile points iscorrelated with variation in malehuman craniofacial robusticity.This brief list emphasizes topics

that lithic analysts and physicalanthropologists might both findinteresting. It does not encompasswhat other researchers might con-sider the major issues and mostinteresting questions in human ori-gins research, but it is a startingpoint. Waiting for the larger field ofpaleoanthropology to start caringmore about the traditional concernsof lithic analysis in Paleolithic arche-ology is simply not going to work.

CONCLUSION

For lithic analysis in Paleolithic ar-cheology to become more relevant topaleoanthropology, its practitionershave to adopt more evolutionaryapproaches.17,41,42 Three of the morepopular methodologies currentlybeing practiced by Paleolithic archeol-ogists can be adapted to this purpose.Chaıne operatoire analysis, trans-

lated as either ‘‘operational chain’’ or‘‘operational sequence,’’ investigatesthe procurement of and transforma-tion of raw materials through use,discard, and recycling.43–47 Compari-sons of chaınes operatoires empha-size differences in the choices prehis-toric toolmakers made at differentcrucial junctures in tool production,such as the preparation of a coresurface or strategies for resharpeningbroken tools. Chaıne operatoire analy-ses of Paleolithic tools can be thicklydescriptive but, within an evolution-ary approach, such thick descriptionis a necessary first step toward

hypotheses that strive to explainselective pressures responsible forpatterns of lithic variability.48

The ‘‘technological organization’’approach unites studies that try toelucidate selective pressures affectingthe cost and benefits involved in par-ticular technological strategies. Manystudies using this approach focus ontime, energy, and risk as key varia-bles in stone tool technology.49–51

Mobility, in particular, is seen as akey factor in determining whetherprehistoric humans provisioned pla-ces (habitation sites) in bulk withlithic raw materials or whetherthey equipped personnel with effi-ciently transportable general-purposetools.52,53 Other studies focus on thecountervailing selective pressures fordevising artifact maintainability ver-sus reliability in artifact design54–56

and the optimal design of mobiletoolkits.57–60

Evolutionary archeology (or Dar-winian archeology) focuses on thehistorical, quasi-phylogenetic dimen-sion of lithic variation. Its propo-nents are interested in discoveringhistorical relationships between arti-facts.42,61,62 Evolutionary or Darwin-ian approaches to the lithic recorddraw heavily from dual-inheritancetheory63,64 in that they attempt totrack the specific origin and spreadof particular artifact design variationby human ‘‘transmitters.’’ This usu-ally involves detailed attribute-basedcharacterizations of artifacts that arethen mapped out over time andspace. The next analytical step pro-poses a maximum parsimony sce-nario for the spread of particulardesign variation from earlier to latercontexts.65

Stone tools are relevant to humanorigins research. They have tremen-dous potential to shed light on changeand variability in hominin behavioracross wide ranges of time and geog-raphy. If one is interested in long-term patterns of hominin behavioralvariability, the lithic record is a logi-cal focus for that interest. In nearlyevery region and every phase of Pleis-tocene prehistory, stone artifacts out-number hominin fossils by severalorders of magnitude. The lithic recordinforms us about different aspects ofhominin behavior than does the pale-

ontological record. However, thereare many areas where the lithic andfossil records conjoin one anotherand where, like the blind men in theAfrican proverb, Paleolithic archeolo-gists and other paleoanthropologistsare each holding onto a different partof the same elephant.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For their constructive commentson an earlier version of this paper, Ithank John Fleagle, Russell Greaves,Fred Grine, Richard Leakey, DanielLieberman, Curtis Marean, David Pil-beam, Richard Potts, ChristopherStringer, Ian Wallace, Milford Wolp-off and Richard Wrangham. An ear-lier draft of this paper was substan-tially improved by comments fromGeoffrey Clark, Michael O’Brien, andthree anonymous reviewers. Theopinions expressed in this paper aresolely those of its author.

REFERENCES1 Lewis CS. 2001. The screwtape letters. SanFrancisco: Harper.

2 Clarkson C, Vinicius L, LahrMM. 2006. Quanti-fying flake scar patterning on cores using 3Drecording techniques. J Archaeol Sci 33:132–142.

3 Lycett SJ, von Cramon-Taubadel N, Foley RA.2006. A crossbeam co-ordinate caliper for themorphometric analysis of lithic nuclei: adescription, test and empirical examples ofapplication. J Archaeol Sci 33:847–861.

4 Lycett S. 2009. Quantifying transitions: mor-phometric approaches to Palaeolithic variabilityand technological change. In: Camps M, Chau-han P, editors. Sourcebook of Paleolithic transi-tions. New York: Springer. p 72–92.

5 Mellars P. 2006. Archeology and the dispersalof modern humans in Europe: deconstructingthe ‘‘Aurignacian.’’ Evol Anthropol 15:167–182.

6 Zilhao J. 2006. Neandertals and modernsmixed, and it matters. Evol Anthropol 15:183–195.

7 Bar-Yosef O, Bordes J-G. n.d. Who were themakers of the Chatelperronian culture? J HumEvol. In press.

8 Bisson MS. 2000. Nineteenth-century toolsfor twenty-first century archaeology? Why theMiddle Paleolithic typology of Francois Bordesmust be replaced. J Archaeol Method Theory7:1–48.

9 Clark GA, Riel-Salvatore J. 2006. Observationson systematics in Paleolithic archaeology. In:Hovers E, Kuhn SL, editors. Transitions before thetransition. NewYork: Plenum/Kluwer. p 29–57.

10 Shea JJ. 1992. Lithic microwear analysis inarchaeology. Evol Anthropol 1:143–150.

11 Clark G. 1977. World prehistory in new per-spective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12 Foley R, Lahr MM. 2003. On stony ground:lithic technology, human evolution, and the emer-gence of culture. Evol Anthropol 12:109–122.

52 Shea ISSUES

13 Barham L, Mitchell P. 2008. The first Afri-cans: African archaeology from the earliest tool-makers to most recent foragers. New York:Cambridge University Press.

14 Shea JJ. 2010. Neandertals and early Homosapiens in the Near East. In: Garcea E, editor.South-Eastern Mediterranean peoples between130,000–10,000 years ago. Oxford: OxbowBooks. p 126–143.

15 White TD. 2000. A view on the science:physical anthropology at the millennium. Am JPhys Anthropol 113:287–292.

16 Binford LR. 1983. In pursuit of the past:decoding the archaeological record. New York:Thames and Hudson.

17 Clark GA. 2009. Accidents of history:conceptual frameworks in paleoarchaeology.In: Camps M, Chauhan P, editors. Source-book of Paleolithic transitions. New York:Springer.

18 Sackett JR. 1991. Straight archaeologyFrench style: the phylogenetic paradigm inhistorical perspective. In: Clark G, editor.Perspectives on the past: theoretical biasesin Mediterranean hunter-gatherer research.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.p 109–139.

19 Boeda E. 1991. Approche de la variabilitedes systemes de production lithique des indus-tries du paleolithique inferieur et moyen:chronique d’une varabilite attendue. Techniqueset Culture 17/18:37–79.

20 Juel Jensen H. 1988. Functional analysis ofprehistoric flint tools by high-power micros-copy. J World Prehist 2:53–88.

21 Dibble HL. 1995. Middle Paleolithic scraperreduction: background, clarification, and reviewof the evidence to date. J Archaeol MethodTheory 2:299–368.

22 Haslam M, Hernandez-Aguilar A, Ling V,Carvalho S, de la Torre I, DeStefano A, Du A,Hardy B, Harris J, Marchant L. 2009. Primatearchaeology. Nature 460:339–344.

23 Goren-Inbar N, Sharon G, Melamed Y,Kislev M. 2002. Nuts, nut cracking, and pittedstones at Gesher Benot Yaaqov, Israel. ProcNatl Acad Sci 99:2455–2460.

24 McPherron S, Alemseged Z, Marean CW,Wynn JG, Reed D, Geraads D, Bobe R, BearatH. 2010. Evidence for stone tool-assisted con-sumption of animal tissues before 3.39 millionyears ag at Dikika, Ethiopia. Nature 466:857–860.

25 Plummer T. 2004. Flaked stone and oldbones: biological and cultural evolution atthe dawn of technology. Yearb Phys Anthropol47:118–164.

26 de la Torre I. 2004. Omo revisited: evaluat-ing the technological skills of Pliocene homi-nids. Curr Anthropol 45:439–467.

27 Shea JJS. 2010. Stone Age visiting cardsrevisited: a strategic perspective on the lithictechnology of early hominin dispersal. In:Fleagle JG, Shea JJ, Grine FE, Baden AL,Leakey R, editors. Out of Africa 1: the firsthominin colonization of Eurasia. New York:Springer. p 47–64.

28 Shea JJ. 2007. Lithic archaeology, or whatstone tools can (and can’t) tell us about earlyhominin diets. In: Ungar P, editor. Evolution of

the human diet: the known, the unknown andthe unknowable. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress. p 321–351.

29 Keeley LH, Toth NP. 1981. Microwear pol-ishes on early stone tools from Koobi Fora,Kenya. Nature 293:464–465.

30 McGrew WC. 1992. Chimpanzee materialculture: implications for human evolution.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

31 Gould RA. 1980. Living archaeology. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.

32 McBrearty S, Brooks AS. 2000. The revolu-tion that wasn’t: a new interpretation of the ori-gin of modern human behavior. J Hum Evol39:453–563.

33 Lieberman DE, Bramble DM, Raichlen DA,Shea JJ. 2007. The evolution of endurance run-ning and the tyranny of ethnography: a reply toPickering and Bunn (2007). J Hum Evol53:439–442.

34 Potts R. 1998. Variability selection and hom-inid evolution. Evol Anthropol 7:81–96.

35 Coolidge FL, Wynn T. 2009. The rise ofHomo sapiens: the evolution of modern think-ing. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

36 Barham LS. 2010. A technological fix for‘‘Dubar’s dilemma’’. Proc Br Acad 158:367–389.

37 Nowell A, Davidson I, editors. 2010. Stonetools and the evolution of human cognition.Boulder CO: University Press of Colorado.

38 Martin-Loeches M. 2010. Uses and abuses ofthe enhanced-working-memory hypothesis inexplaining modern thinking. Curr Anthropol51:S67–S75.

39 Churchill SE, Franciscus RG, McKean-Per-aza HA, Daniel JA, Warren BR. 2009. Shanidar3 Neandertal rib puncture wound and paleo-lithic weaponry. J Hum Evol 57:163–178.

40 Bingham PM, Souza M. 2009. Death at adistance and the birth of a humane universe.Charleston, NC: Booksurge.

41 Kuhn SL. 2004. Evolutionary perspectiveson technology and technological change. WorldArchaeol 36:561–570.

42 O’Brien MJ. n.d. Future of Paleolithic stud-ies: a view from the new world. In: Lycett S,Chauhan P, editors. New perspectives on oldstones. New York: Springer.

43 Lemmonier P. 1986. The study of materialculture today: towards an anthropology oftechnical systems. J Anthropol Archaeol 5:147–186.

44 Lemmonier P. 1992. Elements for an anthro-pology of technology. Ann Arbor MI: Universityof Michigan Museum of Anthropology PaperNo. 88.

45 Boeda E, Geneste J-M, Meignen L. 1990. Iden-tification de chaines operatoires lithiques duPaleolithique ancien et moyen. Paleo 2:43–80.

46 Sellet F. 1993. Chaine operatoire: the conceptand its applications. Lithic Technol 18(1/2):106–112.

47 Bleed P. 2001. Trees or chains, links orbranches: conceptual alternatives for considera-tion of stone tool production and other sequentialactivities. J Archaeol Method Theory 8:101–127.

48 Tostevin GB. 2007. Social intimacy, artefactvisibility and acculturation models of Neander-

thal-modern human interaction. In: Mellars P,Boyle K, Bar-Yosef O, Stringer C, editors.Rethinking the human revolution. Cambridge:McDonald Institute for Archaeological ResearchMonographs. p 341–358.

49 Nelson MC. 1988. The study of technologicalorganization. In: Schiffer MB, editor. Archaeo-logical method and theory. Tucson: Universityof Arizona Press. p 57–100.

50 Torrence R. 1983. Time-budgeting andhunter-gatherer technology. In: Bailey G, editor.Hunter-gatherer economy in prehistory: a Euro-pean perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press. p 11–22.

51 Torrence R. 1989. Re-tooling: towards abehavioral theory of stone tools. In: Torrence R,editor. Time, energy, and stone tools. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. p 57–66.

52 Parry WA, Kelly RL. 1987. Expedient coretechnology and sedentism. In: Johnson JK,Morrow CA, editors. The organization of coretechnology. Boulder CO: Westview Press. p285–304.

53 Kelly RL. 1988. The three sides of a biface.Am Antiquity 53:717–734.

54 Bleed P. 1986. The optimal design of hunt-ing weapons: maintainability or reliability? AmAntiquity 51:737–747.

55 Shea JJ. 1998. Neandertal and early modernhuman behavioral variability: a regional-scaleapproach to the lithic evidence for hunting inthe Levantine Mousterian. Curr Anthropol 39:S45–S78.

56 Elston RG, Brantingham PJ. 2002. Micro-lithic technology in northern Asia: a risk-mini-mizing strategy of the Late Paleolithic andEarly Holocene. In: Elston RG, Kuhn SL, edi-tors. Thinking small: global perspectives onmicrolithization. Washington DC: American An-thropological Association (Archaeological PaperNo. 12). p 103–116.

57 Kuhn SL. 1994. A formal approach to thedesign and assembly of mobile toolkits. Am An-tiquity 59:426–442.

58 Kuhn SL. 1996. The trouble with hamsteaks: a reply to Morrow. Am Antiquity61:591–595.59 Morrow TA. 1996. Bigger is better: com-ments on Kuhn’s formal approach to mobiletoolkits. Am Antiquity 61:581–590.

60 Wallace IJ, Shea JJ. 2006. Mobility pat-terns and core technologies in the MiddlePaleolithic of the Levant. J Archaeol Sci33:1293–1309.

61 O’Brien MJ, Lyman RL. 2002. Evolutionaryarchaeology: current status and future pros-pects. Evol Anthropol 11:26–36.

62 Shennan S. 2002. Genes, memes and humanevolution. London: Thames and Hudson.

63 Boyd R, Richerson PJ. 1985. Culture and theevolutionary process. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

64 Richerson PJ, Boyd R. 2005. Not by genesalone: how culture transformed human evolu-tion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

65 Lycett SJ. 2008. Acheulean variation andselection: does handaxe symmetry fit neutralexpectations? J Archaeol Sci 35:2640–2648.

VVC 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

ISSUES Stone Tool Analysis and Human Origins Research 53