Shaping Hominin Cognition: A Comparative Three-dimensional Shape Analysis of LCTs and Cores from the Early Acheulean at Kokiselei 4, West Turkana, Kenya

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The development of ‘shaping’ abilities in hominin lithic technology involved increases in higher-order cognition including forward planning, working memory, and spatial reasoning. Longstanding assumptions engrained in lithic typologies claimed that "Long Core Tools" (LCTs), such as "handaxes", were the earliest shaped lithics. LCTs first appear in eastern African contexts after 1.8 Ma alongside Homo erectus fossils, the first hominin species with significant increases in areas of the brain important for higher order cognition. Many studies about change in LCT shapes (both 2D and 3D) include cross-regional and diachronic comparisons, both in terms of assemblage-wide variation and typologically-meaningful forms. Few studies compare LCTs with contemporaneous cores to understand how their morphologies differ. This study applies two complementary 3D analyses of interior volume distribution (Riddle and Chazan 2014) and exterior surface (Fox 2016) to the world’s earliest known LCTs (1.76 Ma) and cores from Kokiselei 4 in West Turkana, Kenya. Results demonstrate meaningfully distinct artefact clustering. When paired, these analyses challenge long-held assumptions about best practices in lithic shape analysis and the typological classification of artefacts. These results will impact the way archaeologists use morphological variables to interpret variation in lithic assemblages and the evolution of hominin cognition during the Acheulean.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24751