Gestures During Knapping: A Two-perspective Approach to Pleistocene Technologies

ABSTRACT

Understanding the evolution of technological complexity is a major goal in the study of prehistoric lithic industries. This has led to the development of different methods to examine both archaeological items and their production processes. These methods have attempted to segment the actions that form an operational sequence, usually with the aim of quantifying the complexity involved in lithic knapping. However, to date, no study has been capable of cataloguing these actions to the point of characterizing the elements that comprise them. In this work, we propose an approach to identify the smallest unit of any knapping action: the manual gesture. Our goal is to provide a homogeneous language allowing the characterization and quantification of 1) the variability between lithic industries, and 2) the evolution of technological complexity, from both synchronic and diachronic view. As a proof-of-concept, we designed a pilot experiment to characterize the manual gestures involved in making choppers, chopping-tools and handaxes. Our results confirm the reliability of this approach. In addition, it points to the existence of a gestural primordial core that lasted throughout the Oldowan and the Acheulean –as knapping sequences increased in complexity- and the potential to identify some specific traits of the individual knappers.

KEYWORDS:

• Manual gestures
• Pleistocene technology
• lithic knapping
• Oldowan
• Acheulean
• knapping sequence

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the expert knappers that participated in our experimental program. We also thank José Ramón Rabuñal for their assistance with the statistical procedures, Amelia Bargalló for her help with the MatchVision data management software and John C. Willman for his help with the English review. The authors would also want to thank the editor and reviewers for their comments on an early version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Compliance with ethical standards

The authors declare that each participant was briefed on the experimental procedure and their consent for the participation in the study and the publication of images of the procedure was required to proceed. All the experiments were performed following the institutional guidelines and regulations for ethical approval (IPHES-URV sim. PGPRL-04-01).

Notes on contributors

Arturo Cueva-Temprana (MA, 2017, Universitat Rovira i Virgili) is a PhD candidate at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) (Tarragona, Spain). His main research interests are related with the evolution of human cognition and the characterization of technological complexity throughout the Pleistocene. He is currently working at archaeological sites such as Gran Dolina at Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain) and El Barranc de la Boella (Tarragona, Spain).

Diego Lombao (MA, 2016, Universitat Rovira i Virgili) is a PhD candidate at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) (Tarragona, Spain). His main research interest is focused on the study of the volumetric management in lithic knapping as a proxy of cognitive evolution in the Early and Middle Pleistocene. He is currently working at at archaeological sites such as Gran Dolina at Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain) and El Barranc de la Boella (Tarragona, Spain).

Nuria Geribàs (MA, 2008, Universitat Rovira i Virgili) collaborates with the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) (Tarragona, Spain). Her research interests are focused on experimental lithic technology and learning processes in Pleistocene contexts.

Juan Ignacio Morales (PhD, 2015, Universitat Rovira i Virgili) is a Juan de la Cierva (IJCI-2017-31445) Postdoctoral Researcher at Universitat de Barcelona. His main research interests are related with lithic technology and Paleolithic archeology in Iberia and North Africa. He leads fieldwork at several Middle and Upper Paleolithic archaeological sites at Catalonia (Spain).

Marina Mosquera (PhD, 1995, Universidad Complutense de Madrid) is Researcher at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili and Researcher associated to the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution Social (IPHES) (Tarragona, Spain). Her main research interest is the Early to Middle Pleistocene technologies and hominin dispersions. She also has developed since 2008 research on Cognitive Technology based on actualistic experimental programs and archaeological records such as those from Sierra de Atapuerca.

ORCID

Arturo Cueva-Temprana http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2753-8949

Diego Lombao http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8991-7947

Juan Ignacio Morales http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8253-414X

Marina Mosquera http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4823-6154

Additional information

Funding

This work has been carried out with the financial support of the Generalitat de Catalunya, AGAUR agency, the 2017SGR1040 Research Group, URV project 2016PFR-URV-B2-17, and the Atapuerca-MINECO project CGL2015-65387-C3-1-P. D.L. is the beneficiary of Ph.D. research fellowship AGAUR/FSE (2018-FI-B-00364). J.I.M. is beneficiary of a Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación (IJCI-2017-31445) MICINN fellowship.