Silcrete (Other Keyword)
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Silcretes from Nearby Sources Display Different Responses to Rapid Heating: Implications for Models of Early Human Heat Treatment (2017)
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Heat treatment of silcrete in the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa has been taken to indicate cognitive complexity. This inference is based on the argument that silcretes require well-regulated heating and cooling rates to avoid thermal fracture. Alternative arguments have been made that silcrete can be heat treated with limited control over temperature gradients, and thus that heat treatment may have been a relatively simple process. These apparently contrasting positions elide the fact that...