EXPERIMENTAL PRIMATE ARCHAEOLOGY: DETECTING STONE HANDLING BY JAPANESE MACAQUES (MACACA FUSCATA)

Abstract

Non-human primates using stones in nature provide a rare opportunity to compare directly the behaviour of use with the resulting lithic artifacts. Wild Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) customarily do “stone handling” (SH = spontaneous, solitary, non-instrumental and seemingly playful manipulation of stones). Ten populations of monkeys show at least 48 behavioral variants, 13 of which entail repeated stone-on-stone or stone-on-substrate contact that is likely to yield recognizable wear patterns. We collected 10 assemblages of stones after seeing them being used, as well as “control” stones from a nearby hillside. In the first experiment, human subjects of varying degrees of knowledge of SH were asked to separate handled versus non-handled stones. Overall they were unable to do so, but the best-informed subjects were more accurate than the totally naïve ones. In the second experiment, another set of totally naïve subjects was tutored on key points derived from the first experiment. They scored significantly higher, showing that monkey artifacts are distinguishable and that discrimination can be easily taught. Nonhuman as well as human primates have lithic technology, which means that they too have an archaeological record. This complicates prehistory, at least in places in Africa where apes and hominins likely co-existed from the late Miocene onwards. Distinguishing between the hominin “pre-Oldowan” and its ape counterpart industries is a challenge only recently recognized in archaeology. Primate archaeologists tackling these issues in extant species have available not only the standard theory and methods of archaeology but also the behaviour of the makers and users of artifacts. But are non-human primate lithics discernable in the absence of their observed use? If so, then (in principle at least) we may infer multiple archaeological records, even if they coincide in space and time. If not, then our predicament may be compounded, not improved, by the advent of primate archaeology. The aim of the study reported here is simple: to see if stones used by monkeys can be detected, when the only evidence available is the stones themselves.

Keywords:

• monkey lithics
• external validity
• actualistic archaeology
• cultural primatology

Acknowledgements

We thank: 69 unpaid volunteers who took part in the two experiments; two anonymous reviewers for critical comments on the manuscript; Michael Huffman and Jean-Baptiste Leca for advice, photographs, and video footage; Julianne Joswiak for stimulating comments; Leverhulme Trust and European Research Council for financial support.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

William C. McGrew

Correspondence to: William C. McGrew, DPhil, Biological Anthropology, Henry Wellcome Building, Fitzwilliam St., Cambridge CB2 1QH, UK. Email: [email protected]

Takuya Matsumoto, PhD, Laboratory of Human Evolution Studies, Department of Zoology, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. Email: [email protected]

Takuya Matsumoto

Michio Nakamura, PhD, Wildlife Research Center, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. Email: [email protected]

Michio Nakamura

Caroline A. Phillips, PhD, Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Email: [email protected]

Caroline A. Phillips

Fiona A. Stewart, PhD, Division of Biological Anthropology, Department of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. Email: [email protected]