MAKING AND USING STONE TOOLS: ADVICE FOR LEARNERS AND TEACHERS AND INSIGHTS FOR ARCHAEOLOGISTS

Abstract

Gaining experience with stone tool technology can be an important part of professional archaeological training as well as a valuable learning experience in its own right. This paper summarizes its author's insights gained from making and using stone tools and from teaching these skills to college students for more than two decades. It argues that teaching stone tool production and use to a wider audience will, in the long term, provide a baseline against which to measure archaeological lithic variation.

Keywords:

• Stone Tools
• Teaching
• Learning

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John J. Shea

John J. Shea is Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University. He is a paleoanthropologist whose research investigates the stone tool evidence for human evolution in Southwest Asia and Eastern Africa. Shea is the author of Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic of the Near East: A Guide (2013) and numerous other books and shorter papers. His forthcoming book, Stone Tools in Human Evolution, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2016.

Correspondence to: John J. Shea, Department of Anthropology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4364, USA. Email: [email protected].