Hilary Duke and Sonia Harmand—A New Approach to the Evolution of Early Pleistocene Hominin Cognition and Technological Change: Examining the Technological Context of LCT Emergence 1.8–1.76 Ma at Kokiselei, West Turkana, Kenya

Summary

The eastern African Early Pleistocene witnessed critical shifts in climate, environment, hominin anatomy and behavior. The lithic record shows change within this broader context. After 1.8 Ma, Large Cutting Tools (LCTs), such as bifaces, entered the hominin lithic repertoire. These artifacts are widely viewed as the first evidence of lithic shaping. Many archaeologists theorize both cognitive and practical differences between "flaking" and "shaping" among knapping strategies. Most of these cognitive models are based on our current understanding of living human cognition, not that of Early Pleistocene hominins. Little empirical evidence supports these concepts’ usefulness for Early Pleistocene archaeology and the study of hominin cognitive evolution. Further, we often lack holistic information about non-LCT components of Early Acheulean lithic assemblages. Early LCTs, and associated non-LCT lithics, occur in the Kokiselei Site Complex in West Turkana, Kenya (1.8 – 1.76 Ma). This project fills a gap in the empirical research necessary for testing hypotheses about "shaping" and LCT emergence through holistic technological analyses of both LCT and non-LCT lithics at Kokiselei and an experimental program that investigates the knapping strategies employed by hominins at Kokiselei. Here, non-LCT lithic components from Kokiselei are compared to data collected from an experimental lithic assemblage.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21574