Detecting Skill Level and Mental Templates in Late Acheulean Biface Morphology: Archaeological and Experimental Insights

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Despite the extensive literature focusing on Acheulean bifaces, especially the sources and meaning of their morphological variability, many aspects of this topic remain elusive. Archaeologists cite many factors that contribute to the considerable variation of biface morphology, including knapper skill levels and mental templates. Here we present results from a multidisciplinary study of Late Acheulean handaxe-making skill acquisition involving thirty naïve participants trained for up to 90 hours in Late Acheulean style handaxe production and three expert knappers. We compare their handaxe to the Late Acheulean handaxe assemblage from Boxgrove, UK. Through the principal component analysis of morphometric data derived from images, our study suggested that knapper skill levels and mental templates have a relatively clear manifestation in different aspects of biface morphology. The former relates to cross-sectional thinning (PC1), while the latter refers to handaxe elongation and pointedness (PC2). Moreover, we also evaluated the effects of training using the data from a 90-hour-long knapping skill acquisition experiment. We found that reaching the skill level of modern experts requires more training time than was permitted in this extensive and long-running training program.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35830.0