An Experimental Examination of the Potential Function of Early Stone Age Tool Technology and Implications for Subsistence Behavior

Abstract

This paper presents; an experimental examination of the potential function of Early Stone Age (ESA) stone tool technology. The discussion situates the behavior associated with ESA technology within the context of evidence for subsistence activities from faunal remains. On the basis of this experiment, I argue that: (I) many tasks associated with carcass processing in situations of secondary carcass access could have been carried out with equal efficiency with unmodified cobbles rather than modified stone tools; (2) core tools offer no major advantages over unmodified cobbles in bone breaking; and (3) flakes are generally more effective than core tools in cutting tasks such as defleshing and joint disarticulation. Therefore, I argue that defleshing and joint disarticulation were the primary uses of stone tool technology within the context off carcass processing I also propose that a great deal of early hominid carcass processing was done without modified stone tools, leaving neither lithic nor faunal evidence of these activities. Stone tools may have been infrequently required for regular subsistence activities, but they take on such importance because of their visibility relative to other remains. Finally, the paper suggests that stone tool manufacture may have emerged from a pattern of marginal scavenging that required no stone tool manufacture and left no archaeological evidence.