Overview
- Provides a unique perspective on early stone tool manufacture and use
- Describes the earliest known assemblages and their significance in understanding processes of cultural evolution and change
Part of the book series: Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology (VERT)
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Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
An understanding of the uniquely human behavior of stone tool making tackles questions about hominins’ ability to culturally transmit and expand their base of social and practical knowledge and their cognitive capacities for advanced planning. The appearance of stone tools has often been viewed as a threshold event, impacting directly and profoundly the later course of cultural and social evolution. Alternatively, it has been understood as a prelude to significant succeeding changes in behavioral, social and biological evolution of hominins. This book presents a series of recent enquiries into the technological and adaptive significance of Oldowan stone tools. While anchored in a long research tradition, these studies rely on recent discoveries and innovative analyses of the archaeological record of ca. 2.6–1.0 million years ago in Africa and Eurasia, dealing with the earliest lithic industries as manifestations of hominin adaptations and as expressions of hominin cognitive abilities.
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Erella Hovers focuses on Oldowan and Middle Stone Age archaeology in Africa and on the Middle Paleolithic of the Levant. She is the co-editor (with Steve Kuhn) of "Transitions Before the Tansition" (Springer 2006) and the author of "The Organization of Mousterian Lithic Technology in Qafzeh Cave, Israel" (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2009). She is a senior lecturer in the Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jersualem.
David R. Braun’s research is centered on the relationship between around the earliest stone artifact behavior and the ecology of our earliest ancestors. His research is conducted in Kenya, South Africa and China. He is a lecturer in the department of archaeology in the University of Cape Town.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Oldowan
Editors: Erella Hovers, David R. Braun
Series Title: Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9060-8
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental Science, Earth and Environmental Science (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4020-9059-2Published: 17 December 2008
Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-8059-2Published: 18 November 2010
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4020-9060-8Published: 08 March 2009
Series ISSN: 1877-9077
Series E-ISSN: 1877-9085
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 164
Number of Illustrations: 47 b/w illustrations
Topics: Social Sciences, general, Anthropology, Archaeology, Paleontology