The Invention of Technology

Analyses of everyday objects (from pottery, flint, stone, osseous materials) form the basis of all archaeological research, regardless of the period, region, methodological approach or theoretical framework. Although methodology went through significant changes in past decades, especially regarding the importance of experimental and ethnoarchaeological methods, many of these analyses still relied on typology, and the theoretical discussions were less diverse and much slower. In recent years, a concept of technology as a cultural-driven phenomenon has become more widely accepted, largely influenced by the technological approach from the French anthropological and archaeological school. The conceptual paradigm of chaine operatoire is today a commonplace in almost every analysis of artefact manufacture, and it also triggered the creation of numerous different models for analyses from raw material managing through to the use and discard of artefacts. This paper discusses past and current approaches towards technology and its role within the given society. The combination of technological and contextual approach may not only improve our understanding of the artefacts in the context of a given society, their value, importance, function, and meaning, but also can help in starting the discussion on the creation of new theoretical frameworks for social phenomena such as raw material procurement, the organisation of craft production, the labour division, etc. The case studies on the bone industry in the Neolithic Balkans will be used as examples of the possibilities of such approach.

AWRANA, 2021

Historically, European Lower Paleolithic cultures have been divided according the presence or the absence of bifacial tools. In order to go beyond this typotechnological classification of Homo heidelbergensis groups, we now question socio-economic behaviors. These are identified by territorial, functional and technical analysis. That involves the study of the whole lithic production chaine operatoire from raw material gathering to the making and use of stone tools and how they are abandoning or carry away from the site. Also, we confront the results from lithic studies to other data from pluridisciplinary studies (archaeozoology, paleoenvironment…). Here we present a techno-morphological and functional approach of bifacial tools, flakes, flake-tools, and small flakes resulting from resharpening. Functional studies on Lower Palaeolithic tools are rare because of the difficulties to work on such an old material. We chose to apply this combined approach on the main archeological level ...

Developments in experimental and cognitive archaeology in the last two decades, together with those of comparative psychology, allow us to determine in more detailed how the mind of hominids worked right from the beginning of human evolution. This is done through the study of the only artefacts they left behind: stone tools; and the study of great apes cognitive behavior. While all approaches acknowledge the existence of boundaries in the cognitive abilities of the great apes in respect to humans, there is a lack of agreement about which of those abilities make us really human or when they appear. Partly because of their inability to understand the nature of cognition.

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2002

I claim that the increase in complexity in the (known) trace of Paleolithic stone tools can be parsimoniously explained by postulating the emergence of effective mechanisms for the social transmission of representations. I propose that Paleolithic tools, similar to more contemporary tools, were subject to a process of evolution by artificial selection based on functionality.

This paper was written to study the development of stone tools technology throughout the Paleolithic. It finds the technology developed with the simplest discoveries being made first and more complex discoveries being made later. The chemical structure and the properties of the raw materials determined that stone tools could be useful to humans and over time people learnt to make better and better stone tools. The improvements occurred in an order that was necessary and inevitable, with later improvements building upon earlier improvements, and is an illustration of how increasing human knowledge changes technology and human social and cultural history.

Oldowan: Rather more than smashing stones

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2020

The beginning of the Middle Palaeolithic in Western Europe is traditionally associated with the emergence of new, more complex and standardised debitage technologies, such as Levallois technology. These changes occurred in the archaeological record between MIS 9 and MIS 6. This paper aims to evaluate the processes of technical change at work in Southern France, tracking innovations and persistent behaviours and potential shifts, to describe the process of transition and compare the Southeast and Southwest of France. We revised several major sites from Ardèche and Dordogne through the technological analysis of seven lithic assemblages in areas rich in good-quality raw materials, mostly flint. Technological analysis shows common features in lithic strategies and industries that can all be attributed to the Early Middle Palaeolithic. The features are a diversity of debitage methods and spatiotemporal management of the chaînes opératoires (ramification and artefact mobility). At the same time, algorithmic methods ( Système par Surface de Débitage Alternées : SSDA) continue to be used, in the same way as large cutting tools (LCTs), although they are rare (pebble tools, bifaces and ‘mixed matrices’). These LCTs are persistent technologies from the Acheulean technocomplex. Gradual mosaic-type changes in the lithic record are particularly well demonstrated through the sequence of Orgnac 3, where a local onset of Levallois technologies appears to occur. Both in the Southeast and Southwest of France, the Lower to Middle Palaeolithic transition records gradual and asynchronous behavioural changes as early as MIS 9 to MIS 6. These shifts are not only due to increased hominin cognition. Abilities of human groups to adapt to diversified environments and regional cultural processes may also have played a key role. Several lithic technocomplexes coexisted between MIS 9 and 6 in these two areas and although differences in local strategies are obvious, similar trajectories towards MP behaviour can be detected.

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 2000

The artifact typology of François Bordes has been universally applied to European Middle Paleolithic assemblages for the past half-century. Although its utility as a common descriptive language is acknowledged, it is argued that Bordes' type definitions are inadequate for use in modern quantitatively and technologically oriented studies of lithics because they are overly subjective and are an uncontrolled mixture of technological and functional variables acted on by raw material constraints. They also incorporate untested assumptions about the cognitive abilities of Middle Paleolithic hominids. This paper proposes to replace the Bordes typology with a method based on attribute combinations in which artifact descriptions will contain more behaviorally significant information than is afforded by the current system. The last years have seen a strong development of dissatisfaction among lithic typologists. The feeling that Bordes method has achieved a particular task but did not allow further progress . . . has led researchers working in this field to try new directions.

2020

This paper was written in order to study the development of stone tool technology throughout the Paleolithic. It finds the technology developed, with the simplest discoveries being made first and more complex discoveries being made later. The chemical structure and the properties of the raw materials determined that stone tools could be useful to humans and over time people learnt to make better and better stone tools. The improvements occurred in an order that was necessary and inevitable, with later improvements building upon earlier improvements, and is an illustration of how increasing human knowledge changes technology and human social and cultural history.