Archaeological speculation about Plio-Pleistocene hominins’ motives for making stone tools asser... more Archaeological speculation about Plio-Pleistocene hominins’ motives for making stone tools asserts their need for cutting and percussive tools. This “Stone Cutting-and-Pounding Tools Hypothesis” generalizes from scarce and problematic evidence. Percussive stoneworking also creates loud noise and leaves behind durable and distinctively anthropogenic artifacts (“a mess”). Plio-Pleistocene archaeological sites feature stone tools scattered widely over site surfaces and not dense “lithic middens” like those modern-day craft/hobby stoneworkers create. Observing stoneworking noise and artifacts visible on landscape surfaces could have helped Plio-Pleistocene hominins identify prosocial allies, allies they would have needed to efficiently gather nutrients from large animal carcasses and plant underground storage organs requiring cooking. A signaling perspective on percussive stoneworking invites new interpretations of several “flagship” Plio-Pleistocene sites in Eastern Africa, Lomekwi 3, and five sites from Olduvai Gorge Beds I and II. The “Noise/Mess Hypothesis” explains aspects of Plio-Pleistocene lithic evidence that the Stone Cutting-and-Pounding Tools Hypothesis does not. The paper identifies lines of evidence by which archaeologists can test the Noise/Mess Hypothesis. If the Noise/Mess Hypothesis is correct, then pro-social signaling involving stone artifacts has been among hominins’ survival strategies since Plio-Pleistocene times, anticipating modern-day “social media” use for similar purposes by millions of years.
A comparison of Pleistocene handaxes and other long core-tools (LCTs) with modern-day portable pe... more A comparison of Pleistocene handaxes and other long core-tools (LCTs) with modern-day portable personal electronic devices supports the hypothesis that LCTs' sizes and shapes reflect design for ease of handcarrying. Occurrences of handaxes and other LCTs in the archaeological record after 1.6-1.8 Ma signal a novel strategy of habitual shaping stone tools for efficient transport, a strategy unique to the Genus Homo.
This paper argues against recognising a 'generic Middle Stone Age (MSA)' as a formal taxon for us... more This paper argues against recognising a 'generic Middle Stone Age (MSA)' as a formal taxon for use in African prehistoric archaeology. Surveying 46 Eastern African MSA stone tool assemblages reveals wild mismatches between what an undifferentiated or 'generic' MSA is supposed to do and what it almost certainly will do. A generic MSA will reduce African prehistoric archaeology’s potential contribution to human origins research. If one were searching for a way in which to make Africa’s stone tool evidence irrelevant to human origins research, then one could hardly do better than to offer archaeologists a generic MSA to which to assign lithic assemblages. At the editors’ invitation, the paper also comments briefly on several of the other contributions to this special issue of Azania.
Archeologists have long assumed that earlier hominins were obligatory stone tool users. This assu... more Archeologists have long assumed that earlier hominins were obligatory stone tool users. This assumption is deeply embedded in traditional ways of describing the lithic record. This paper argues that lithic evidence dating before 1.7 Ma reflects occasional stone tool use, much like that practiced by nonhuman primates except that it involved flaked-stone cutting tools. Evidence younger than 0.3 Ma is more congruent with obligatory stone tool use, like that among recent humans. The onset of habitual stone tool use at about 1.7 Ma appears correlated with increased hominin logistical mobility (carrying things). The onset of obligatory stone tool use after 0.3 Ma may be linked to the evolution of spoken language. Viewing the lithic evidence dating between 0.3-1.7 Ma as habitual stone tool use explains previously inexplicable aspects of the Early-Middle Pleistocene lithic record.
Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 2006
... News. Paleoanthropology in puerto rico. Matthew L. Sisk 1 ,; John J. Shea 2. Article first pu... more ... News. Paleoanthropology in puerto rico. Matthew L. Sisk 1 ,; John J. Shea 2. Article first published online: 22 DEC 2006. ... How to Cite. Sisk, ML and Shea, JJ (2006), Paleoanthropology in puertorico. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 15: 201–203. ...
Recent advances in the study of ancient DNA recovered from fossils and cave sediments have profou... more Recent advances in the study of ancient DNA recovered from fossils and cave sediments have profoundly changed our views on the biological and cultural interactions between populations and lineages of fossil Homo in the Later Pleistocene of Eurasia. A spatiotemporally complex picture emerges, with multiple population admixture and replacement events. Focusing on the evidence from Western Eurasia, we consider here how the mapping out of between-species interactions based on fossil and material cultural evidence is being replaced by a broader approach. Traditional narratives about human migrations and the biological and/or cultural advantages of our own species over the Neanderthals are now giving way to the study of the biological and cultural dynamics of past human populations and the nature of their interactions in time and space.
The Unstoppable Human Species: The Emergence of Homo sapiens in Prehistory, 2023
The Unstoppable Human Species explains how humans became invulnerable to all but the most severe,... more The Unstoppable Human Species explains how humans became invulnerable to all but the most severe, biosphere-level, extinction threats. John Shea argues we owe our unstoppability to our global diaspora, a condition humans accomplished during prehistoric times. How did they do it? How did early humans survive long enough to become our ancestors? Long before agriculture allowed large-scale migrations, early humans dispersed in small numbers over short distances again and again over thousands of years. As they dispersed, they integrated a suite of Ancestral Survival Skills to overcome challenges they faced in new habitats. By placing “how did they survive?” questions front and center, The Unstoppable Human Species offers up an original, iconoclastic, and thought-provoking perspective on human evolution.
Toward the end of the Pleistocene, the world experienced a mass extinction of megafauna. In North... more Toward the end of the Pleistocene, the world experienced a mass extinction of megafauna. In North America these included its proboscideans—the mammoths and mastodons. Researchers in conservation biology, paleontology, and archaeology have debated the role played by human predation in these extinctions. They point to traces of human butchery, such as cut marks and other bone surface modifications (BSM), as evidence of human-animal interactions—including predation and scavenging, between early Americans and proboscideans. However, others have challenged the validity of the butchery evidence observed on several proboscidean assemblages, largely due to questions of qualitative determination of the agent responsible for creating BSM. This study employs a statistical technique that relies on three-dimensional (3D) imaging data and 3D geometric morphometrics to determine the origin of the BSM observed on the skeletal remains of the Bowser Road mastodon (BR mastodon), excavated in Middletow...
For the first two thirds of our evolutionary history, we hominins were restricted to Africa. Dati... more For the first two thirds of our evolutionary history, we hominins were restricted to Africa. Dating from about two million years ago, hominin fossils first appear in Eurasia. This volume addresses many of the issues surrounding this initial hominin intercontinental dispersal. Why did hominins first leave Africa in the early Pleistocene and not earlier? What do we know about the adaptations of the hominins that dispersed-their diet, locomotor abilities, cultural abilities? Was there a single dispersal event or several? Was the hominin ...
This paper asks why we expect to find standardization among prehistoric stone tools. It argues th... more This paper asks why we expect to find standardization among prehistoric stone tools. It argues this expectation results from early archaeologists' experience living in industrialized societies, a wild mismatch with the world their Pleistocene forebears inhabited. It further argues that in searching for evidence of lithic standardization, archaeologists must be alert for "mirages," things that can create the illusion of standardization. Pre-industrial lithic standardization seems most likely to have emerged from attaching stone tools to handles ("hafting"), and from using stone tools as "passive lithic social media."
In Stone Tools in Human Evolution John Shea argues that over the past three million years hominin... more In Stone Tools in Human Evolution John Shea argues that over the past three million years hominins’ technological strategies shifted from occasional tool use, much like that seen among living non-human primates, to a uniquely human pattern of obligatory tool use. Examining how the lithic archaeological record changed over the course of human evolution, he compares tool use by living humans and non-human primates, and predicts how the archaeological stone tool evidence should have changed as distinctively human behaviors evolved. Those behaviors include using cutting tools, logistical mobility (carrying things), language and symbolic artifacts, geographic dispersal and diaspora, and residential sedentism (living in the same place for prolonged periods). Shea then tests those predictions by analyzing the archaeological lithic record from 6500 years ago to 3.5 million years ago.
Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 2019
Lithic miniaturization was one of our Pleistocene ancestors' more pervasive stone tool produc... more Lithic miniaturization was one of our Pleistocene ancestors' more pervasive stone tool production strategies and it marks a key difference between human and non‐human tool use. Frequently equated with “microlith” production, lithic miniaturization is a more complex, variable, and evolutionarily consequential phenomenon involving small backed tools, bladelets, small retouched tools, flakes, and small cores. In this review, we evaluate lithic miniaturization's various technological and functional elements. We examine archeological assumptions about why prehistoric stoneworkers engaged in processes of lithic miniaturization by making small stone tools, small elongated tools, and small retouched and backed tools. We point to functional differences that motivate different aspects of lithic miniaturization and several instances where archeological systematics have possibly led archeologists to false negative findings about lithic miniaturization. Finally, we suggest productive avenues by which archeologists can move closer to understanding the complex evolutionary forces driving variability in lithic miniaturization.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Sep 20, 2018
Monumental architecture is a prime indicator of social complexity, because it requires many peopl... more Monumental architecture is a prime indicator of social complexity, because it requires many people to build a conspicuous structure commemorating shared beliefs. Examining monumentality in different environmental and economic settings can reveal diverse reasons for people to form larger social units and express unity through architectural display. In multiple areas of Africa, monumentality developed as mobile herders created large cemeteries and practiced other forms of commemoration. The motives for such behavior in sparsely populated, unpredictable landscapes may differ from well-studied cases of monumentality in predictable environments with sedentary populations. Here we report excavations and ground-penetrating radar surveys at the earliest and most massive monumental site in eastern Africa. Lothagam North Pillar Site was a communal cemetery near Lake Turkana (northwest Kenya) constructed 5,000 years ago by eastern Africa's earliest pastoralists. Inside a platform ringed by...
Archaeological speculation about Plio-Pleistocene hominins’ motives for making stone tools asser... more Archaeological speculation about Plio-Pleistocene hominins’ motives for making stone tools asserts their need for cutting and percussive tools. This “Stone Cutting-and-Pounding Tools Hypothesis” generalizes from scarce and problematic evidence. Percussive stoneworking also creates loud noise and leaves behind durable and distinctively anthropogenic artifacts (“a mess”). Plio-Pleistocene archaeological sites feature stone tools scattered widely over site surfaces and not dense “lithic middens” like those modern-day craft/hobby stoneworkers create. Observing stoneworking noise and artifacts visible on landscape surfaces could have helped Plio-Pleistocene hominins identify prosocial allies, allies they would have needed to efficiently gather nutrients from large animal carcasses and plant underground storage organs requiring cooking. A signaling perspective on percussive stoneworking invites new interpretations of several “flagship” Plio-Pleistocene sites in Eastern Africa, Lomekwi 3, and five sites from Olduvai Gorge Beds I and II. The “Noise/Mess Hypothesis” explains aspects of Plio-Pleistocene lithic evidence that the Stone Cutting-and-Pounding Tools Hypothesis does not. The paper identifies lines of evidence by which archaeologists can test the Noise/Mess Hypothesis. If the Noise/Mess Hypothesis is correct, then pro-social signaling involving stone artifacts has been among hominins’ survival strategies since Plio-Pleistocene times, anticipating modern-day “social media” use for similar purposes by millions of years.
A comparison of Pleistocene handaxes and other long core-tools (LCTs) with modern-day portable pe... more A comparison of Pleistocene handaxes and other long core-tools (LCTs) with modern-day portable personal electronic devices supports the hypothesis that LCTs' sizes and shapes reflect design for ease of handcarrying. Occurrences of handaxes and other LCTs in the archaeological record after 1.6-1.8 Ma signal a novel strategy of habitual shaping stone tools for efficient transport, a strategy unique to the Genus Homo.
This paper argues against recognising a 'generic Middle Stone Age (MSA)' as a formal taxon for us... more This paper argues against recognising a 'generic Middle Stone Age (MSA)' as a formal taxon for use in African prehistoric archaeology. Surveying 46 Eastern African MSA stone tool assemblages reveals wild mismatches between what an undifferentiated or 'generic' MSA is supposed to do and what it almost certainly will do. A generic MSA will reduce African prehistoric archaeology’s potential contribution to human origins research. If one were searching for a way in which to make Africa’s stone tool evidence irrelevant to human origins research, then one could hardly do better than to offer archaeologists a generic MSA to which to assign lithic assemblages. At the editors’ invitation, the paper also comments briefly on several of the other contributions to this special issue of Azania.
Archeologists have long assumed that earlier hominins were obligatory stone tool users. This assu... more Archeologists have long assumed that earlier hominins were obligatory stone tool users. This assumption is deeply embedded in traditional ways of describing the lithic record. This paper argues that lithic evidence dating before 1.7 Ma reflects occasional stone tool use, much like that practiced by nonhuman primates except that it involved flaked-stone cutting tools. Evidence younger than 0.3 Ma is more congruent with obligatory stone tool use, like that among recent humans. The onset of habitual stone tool use at about 1.7 Ma appears correlated with increased hominin logistical mobility (carrying things). The onset of obligatory stone tool use after 0.3 Ma may be linked to the evolution of spoken language. Viewing the lithic evidence dating between 0.3-1.7 Ma as habitual stone tool use explains previously inexplicable aspects of the Early-Middle Pleistocene lithic record.
Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 2006
... News. Paleoanthropology in puerto rico. Matthew L. Sisk 1 ,; John J. Shea 2. Article first pu... more ... News. Paleoanthropology in puerto rico. Matthew L. Sisk 1 ,; John J. Shea 2. Article first published online: 22 DEC 2006. ... How to Cite. Sisk, ML and Shea, JJ (2006), Paleoanthropology in puertorico. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 15: 201–203. ...
Recent advances in the study of ancient DNA recovered from fossils and cave sediments have profou... more Recent advances in the study of ancient DNA recovered from fossils and cave sediments have profoundly changed our views on the biological and cultural interactions between populations and lineages of fossil Homo in the Later Pleistocene of Eurasia. A spatiotemporally complex picture emerges, with multiple population admixture and replacement events. Focusing on the evidence from Western Eurasia, we consider here how the mapping out of between-species interactions based on fossil and material cultural evidence is being replaced by a broader approach. Traditional narratives about human migrations and the biological and/or cultural advantages of our own species over the Neanderthals are now giving way to the study of the biological and cultural dynamics of past human populations and the nature of their interactions in time and space.
The Unstoppable Human Species: The Emergence of Homo sapiens in Prehistory, 2023
The Unstoppable Human Species explains how humans became invulnerable to all but the most severe,... more The Unstoppable Human Species explains how humans became invulnerable to all but the most severe, biosphere-level, extinction threats. John Shea argues we owe our unstoppability to our global diaspora, a condition humans accomplished during prehistoric times. How did they do it? How did early humans survive long enough to become our ancestors? Long before agriculture allowed large-scale migrations, early humans dispersed in small numbers over short distances again and again over thousands of years. As they dispersed, they integrated a suite of Ancestral Survival Skills to overcome challenges they faced in new habitats. By placing “how did they survive?” questions front and center, The Unstoppable Human Species offers up an original, iconoclastic, and thought-provoking perspective on human evolution.
Toward the end of the Pleistocene, the world experienced a mass extinction of megafauna. In North... more Toward the end of the Pleistocene, the world experienced a mass extinction of megafauna. In North America these included its proboscideans—the mammoths and mastodons. Researchers in conservation biology, paleontology, and archaeology have debated the role played by human predation in these extinctions. They point to traces of human butchery, such as cut marks and other bone surface modifications (BSM), as evidence of human-animal interactions—including predation and scavenging, between early Americans and proboscideans. However, others have challenged the validity of the butchery evidence observed on several proboscidean assemblages, largely due to questions of qualitative determination of the agent responsible for creating BSM. This study employs a statistical technique that relies on three-dimensional (3D) imaging data and 3D geometric morphometrics to determine the origin of the BSM observed on the skeletal remains of the Bowser Road mastodon (BR mastodon), excavated in Middletow...
For the first two thirds of our evolutionary history, we hominins were restricted to Africa. Dati... more For the first two thirds of our evolutionary history, we hominins were restricted to Africa. Dating from about two million years ago, hominin fossils first appear in Eurasia. This volume addresses many of the issues surrounding this initial hominin intercontinental dispersal. Why did hominins first leave Africa in the early Pleistocene and not earlier? What do we know about the adaptations of the hominins that dispersed-their diet, locomotor abilities, cultural abilities? Was there a single dispersal event or several? Was the hominin ...
This paper asks why we expect to find standardization among prehistoric stone tools. It argues th... more This paper asks why we expect to find standardization among prehistoric stone tools. It argues this expectation results from early archaeologists' experience living in industrialized societies, a wild mismatch with the world their Pleistocene forebears inhabited. It further argues that in searching for evidence of lithic standardization, archaeologists must be alert for "mirages," things that can create the illusion of standardization. Pre-industrial lithic standardization seems most likely to have emerged from attaching stone tools to handles ("hafting"), and from using stone tools as "passive lithic social media."
In Stone Tools in Human Evolution John Shea argues that over the past three million years hominin... more In Stone Tools in Human Evolution John Shea argues that over the past three million years hominins’ technological strategies shifted from occasional tool use, much like that seen among living non-human primates, to a uniquely human pattern of obligatory tool use. Examining how the lithic archaeological record changed over the course of human evolution, he compares tool use by living humans and non-human primates, and predicts how the archaeological stone tool evidence should have changed as distinctively human behaviors evolved. Those behaviors include using cutting tools, logistical mobility (carrying things), language and symbolic artifacts, geographic dispersal and diaspora, and residential sedentism (living in the same place for prolonged periods). Shea then tests those predictions by analyzing the archaeological lithic record from 6500 years ago to 3.5 million years ago.
Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 2019
Lithic miniaturization was one of our Pleistocene ancestors' more pervasive stone tool produc... more Lithic miniaturization was one of our Pleistocene ancestors' more pervasive stone tool production strategies and it marks a key difference between human and non‐human tool use. Frequently equated with “microlith” production, lithic miniaturization is a more complex, variable, and evolutionarily consequential phenomenon involving small backed tools, bladelets, small retouched tools, flakes, and small cores. In this review, we evaluate lithic miniaturization's various technological and functional elements. We examine archeological assumptions about why prehistoric stoneworkers engaged in processes of lithic miniaturization by making small stone tools, small elongated tools, and small retouched and backed tools. We point to functional differences that motivate different aspects of lithic miniaturization and several instances where archeological systematics have possibly led archeologists to false negative findings about lithic miniaturization. Finally, we suggest productive avenues by which archeologists can move closer to understanding the complex evolutionary forces driving variability in lithic miniaturization.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Sep 20, 2018
Monumental architecture is a prime indicator of social complexity, because it requires many peopl... more Monumental architecture is a prime indicator of social complexity, because it requires many people to build a conspicuous structure commemorating shared beliefs. Examining monumentality in different environmental and economic settings can reveal diverse reasons for people to form larger social units and express unity through architectural display. In multiple areas of Africa, monumentality developed as mobile herders created large cemeteries and practiced other forms of commemoration. The motives for such behavior in sparsely populated, unpredictable landscapes may differ from well-studied cases of monumentality in predictable environments with sedentary populations. Here we report excavations and ground-penetrating radar surveys at the earliest and most massive monumental site in eastern Africa. Lothagam North Pillar Site was a communal cemetery near Lake Turkana (northwest Kenya) constructed 5,000 years ago by eastern Africa's earliest pastoralists. Inside a platform ringed by...
Prehistoric Stone Tools of Eastern Africa: A Guide, 2020
Stone tools are the least familiar objects that archaeologists recover from their
excavations and... more Stone tools are the least familiar objects that archaeologists recover from their excavations and, predictably, they struggle to understand them. Eastern Africa alone boasts a 3.4 million-year-long archaeological record, but its stone tool evidence still remains disorganized, unsynthesized, and all-but-impenetrable to nonexperts, and especially so to students from Eastern African countries. In this book, John J. Shea offers a simple, straightforward, and richly illustrated introduction in how to read stone tools. An experienced stone tool analyst and an expert stoneworker, he synthesizes the Eastern African stone tool evidence for the first time. Shea presents the EAST Typology, a new framework for describing stone tools specifically designed to allow archaeologists to do what they currently cannot: compare stone tool evidence across the full sweep of Eastern African prehistory. He also includes a series of short, fictional, and humorous vignettes set on an Eastern African archaeological excavation that illustrate the major issues and controversies in research about stone tools. John J. Shea is Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University, New York. He is the author of Stone Tools in Human Evolution (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic of the Near East: A Guide (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
IMPORTANT: This is only the front matter. I posted it to help colleagues decide if they want the book or not. An electronic version of the book is available for purchase now (April 2020), hard copies available in May 2020. Don't have a heart attack over the price, paperbound copies will assuredly be less expensive. -JJS
Cambridge University Press.
Abstract
Stone Tools In Human Evolution examines how the evolution of... more Cambridge University Press. Abstract Stone Tools In Human Evolution examines how the evolution of behavioral differences between humans and non-human primates influenced the lithic archaeological record. Traditional archaeological approaches to the lithic evidence are poorly matched with major issues in human origins research. In their place, this book develops a new analytical framework based on comparisons of human and non-human primate tool use. Individual chapters develop and test hypotheses about how qualities that distinguish human from non-human primates, stone cutting tool production, logistical mobility, language and speech, dispersal an diaspora, and residential sedentism, are reflected in the stone tool evidence. Stone Tools In Human Evolution argues that over the course of human evolution an ape-like pattern of occasional stone tool use developed into a more human pattern of obligatory technologically-assisted adaptation. This book is now available in hardcover, paperback, and as an electronic book. Any errata will be posted on my personal website, together with pdfs of artwork and data files.
A "fixed" pdf version of Figure 4.3 showing chimpanzee distributions, tool use sites, and Plio-Pleistocene sites is attached below. I noticed this mistake (wrong version of figure) after the book had gone to press.
Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Near East: A Guide surveys the lithic record for the... more Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Near East: A Guide surveys the lithic record for the East Mediterranean Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, and adjacent territories) from the earliest times to 6,500 years ago. It is intended both as an introduction to this lithic evidence for students and as a resource for researchers working with Paleolithic and Neolithic stone tool evidence. Written by a lithic analyst and professional flintknapper, this book systematically examines variation in technology, typology, and industries for the Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic; the Epipaleolithic; and Neolithic periods in the Near East. It is extensively illustrated with drawings of stone tools. In addition to surveying the lithic evidence, the book also considers ways in which archaeological treatment of this evidence could be changed to make it more relevant to major issues in human origins research. A final chapter shows how change in stone tool designs point to increasing human dependence on stone tools across the long sweep of Stone Age prehistory.
Just published in UK, April 26, 2013.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In order to render Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic of the Near East: A Guide into an affordable 23 x 16 cm format, it was necessary to reduce some of the figures significantly. To preserve the value of these figures as aids to the analysis and identification of stone tools from Southwest Asian archaeological sites, and with the permission of Cambridge University Press, the pdf files below reproduce these figures as they were originally submitted to the publisher. The numbering of the figures follows that in the book.
Additional figures that were excised from the final version of the book can be viewed and downloaded from the Cambridge University Press website for Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic of the Near East: A Guide ."""
This is an article by Bill Gates from his website explaining the Big History Project.
I have bee... more This is an article by Bill Gates from his website explaining the Big History Project.
I have been working with David Christian and colleagues from Flight 33 Productions in filming segments for this project and for a television documentary, "Little Big History," that will air in the Fall of 2013.
This is a three-part documentary about human evolution in which I am featured making stone tools.... more This is a three-part documentary about human evolution in which I am featured making stone tools.
Sections of this program are apparently viewable on Youtube.
This is the homepage of Alan Alda's Human Spark project.
The television program aired a few year... more This is the homepage of Alan Alda's Human Spark project.
The television program aired a few years ago. My students and I are in it, demonstrating flintknapping and primitive weapon use.
There are a lot of links to educational materials and guidance for teachers on this website.
This is the site for the HHMI 2011 Holiday Lecture Series. Tim White, Sarah Tishkoff and I delive... more This is the site for the HHMI 2011 Holiday Lecture Series. Tim White, Sarah Tishkoff and I delivered these lectures at the HHMI campus. The lectures were filmed, edited, and are available free, either online or on DVD.
The lectures are pitched at the level of high-school students in advanced placement classes. They are (I am told) popular among people who home-school.
The HHMI Biointeractive website has many other resources available to aid in the teaching of biology and evolution.
Stone tools provide some of the best remaining evidence of behavioral change over long periods, b... more Stone tools provide some of the best remaining evidence of behavioral change over long periods, but their cognitive and evolutionary implications remain poorly understood. Here, we contribute to a growing body of experimental research on the cognitive and perceptual-motor foundations of stone toolmaking skills by using a flake prediction paradigm to assess the relative importance of technological understanding vs. accurate action execution in Late Acheuleanestyle handaxe production. This experiment took place as part of a larger, longitudinal study of knapping skill acquisition, allowing us to assemble a large sample of predictions across learning stages and in a comparative sample of experts. By combining group and individual-level statistical analyses with predictive modeling, we show that understanding and predicting specific flaking outcomes in this technology is both more difficult and less important than expected from previous work. Instead, our findings reveal the critical importance of perceptual motor skills needed to manage speed-accuracy trade-offs and reliably detach the large, invasive flakes that enable bifacial edging and thinning. With practice, novices increased striking accuracy , flaking success rates, and (to an extent) handaxe quality by targeting small flakes with acute platform angles. However, only experts were able to combine percussive force and accuracy to produce results comparable with actual Late Acheulean handaxes. The relatively intense demands for accurate action execution documented in our study indicate that biomechanical properties of the upper limb, cortical and cerebellar systems for sensorimotor control, and the cognitive, communicative, and affective traits supporting deliberate practice would all have been likely targets of selection acting on Late Acheulean toolmaking aptitude.
Analogies are an important tool of archaeological reasoning. The Kalahari San are frequently depi... more Analogies are an important tool of archaeological reasoning. The Kalahari San are frequently depicted in introductory texts as archetypal, mobile hunter-gatherers, and they have influenced approaches to archaeological, genetic and linguistic research. But is this analogy fundamentally flawed? Recent arguments have linked the San populations of southern Africa with the late Pleistocene Later Stone Age (c. 44 kya) at Border Cave, South Africa. The authors argue that these and other claims for the Pleistocene antiquity of modern-day cultures arise from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of cultural and archaeological taxonomies, and that they are a misuse of analogical reasoning.
This short paper describes how three "Shea Stone Tools" books developed.
I wrote it up mainly for... more This short paper describes how three "Shea Stone Tools" books developed. I wrote it up mainly for journalists, but some colleagues have asked about these matters, so I decided to post it. I do not intend to publish this paper.
Primitive skills constitute the applied problem-solving knowledge of non-urban and pre-industrial... more Primitive skills constitute the applied problem-solving knowledge of non-urban and pre-industrialized human societies, and conjecturally, ancestral humans. They are rarely taught at research universities. This paper argues that such skills deliver core principles of a liberal arts education in ways that current practices do not do well. These skills exemplify behavioral variability, a generalized problem-solving capacity unique to our species. Fostering this capacity and understanding its evolutionary origins should be integral parts of a university education.
Skillful knapping requires both explicit, strategic knowledge (connaissance) and implicit, practi... more Skillful knapping requires both explicit, strategic knowledge (connaissance) and implicit, practical know-how (savoir-faire). Although much work in cognitive archaeology has focused on the former, researchers working from a perception-action perspective emphasize the latter. Controlled experiments show extensive knapping experience is required to acquire the know-how to predict and control flake shapes and whereas abstract strategic understanding develops more quickly. However, the process of acquiring these abilities, their relationship to each other, and their practical contribution to success with Paleolithic technologies remains poorly known. To address these issues, we conducted a flake prediction experiment as part of a multidisciplinary study of Late Acheulean handaxe-making skill acquisition involving twenty-six naïve subjects with up to 90 hours training over several months and 3 expert knappers with several years’ experience in handaxe production. All participants were asked to mark and attempt to detach 5 flake predictions (outline & point of percussion) from a flint core. The results show that novice flake success rates increase with training along a learning curve paralleling that for handaxe-making success in the same subject population. Striking accuracy increases with training and is key for successful flake production. Comparisons of prediction errors on success flakes show novices perform well, but experts are slightly better at matching predictions with outcomes. We fit two multivariate logistical regression models to the expert and novice data to understand the factors that influence both successful and unsuccessful flake production and their differences in novice and expert groups. The application of a model built on expert flake data and applied to novice flakes show that novices make reasonable predictions, but fail to deliver on them. Despite the fact that empirically-derived predictors of novice flaking success in our sample match the expectations of good flakes and the observation that novices perform similarly to experts, they still failed to make successful handaxes even after ~90 hours of intensive training. We show that novices achieve this “success” using compensatory flaking strategies that target overall smaller and easier flake detachments (< EPA, < Platform thickness) that deviate from expert larger and more difficult flaking targets (> EPA, > Platform thickness). We conclude that simple flake detachment is a challenging skill (stabilizing only after ~40hrs training) that is central to improvements in handaxe-making and depends on perceptual-motor control of the basic flaking gesture.
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Papers by John Shea
generic MSA will reduce African prehistoric archaeology’s
potential contribution to human origins research. If one were
searching for a way in which to make Africa’s stone tool evidence
irrelevant to human origins research, then one could hardly do
better than to offer archaeologists a generic MSA to which to
assign lithic assemblages. At the editors’ invitation, the paper also
comments briefly on several of the other contributions to this
special issue of Azania.
our views on the biological and cultural interactions between populations and lineages of fossil Homo in the Later
Pleistocene of Eurasia. A spatiotemporally complex picture emerges, with multiple population admixture and
replacement events. Focusing on the evidence from Western Eurasia, we consider here how the mapping out of
between-species interactions based on fossil and material cultural evidence is being replaced by a broader
approach. Traditional narratives about human migrations and the biological and/or cultural advantages of our
own species over the Neanderthals are now giving way to the study of the biological and cultural dynamics of
past human populations and the nature of their interactions in time and space.
generic MSA will reduce African prehistoric archaeology’s
potential contribution to human origins research. If one were
searching for a way in which to make Africa’s stone tool evidence
irrelevant to human origins research, then one could hardly do
better than to offer archaeologists a generic MSA to which to
assign lithic assemblages. At the editors’ invitation, the paper also
comments briefly on several of the other contributions to this
special issue of Azania.
our views on the biological and cultural interactions between populations and lineages of fossil Homo in the Later
Pleistocene of Eurasia. A spatiotemporally complex picture emerges, with multiple population admixture and
replacement events. Focusing on the evidence from Western Eurasia, we consider here how the mapping out of
between-species interactions based on fossil and material cultural evidence is being replaced by a broader
approach. Traditional narratives about human migrations and the biological and/or cultural advantages of our
own species over the Neanderthals are now giving way to the study of the biological and cultural dynamics of
past human populations and the nature of their interactions in time and space.
excavations and, predictably, they struggle to understand them. Eastern Africa
alone boasts a 3.4 million-year-long archaeological record, but its stone tool
evidence still remains disorganized, unsynthesized, and all-but-impenetrable to
nonexperts, and especially so to students from Eastern African countries. In this
book, John J. Shea offers a simple, straightforward, and richly illustrated introduction
in how to read stone tools. An experienced stone tool analyst and an expert
stoneworker, he synthesizes the Eastern African stone tool evidence for the first
time. Shea presents the EAST Typology, a new framework for describing stone
tools specifically designed to allow archaeologists to do what they currently
cannot: compare stone tool evidence across the full sweep of Eastern African
prehistory. He also includes a series of short, fictional, and humorous vignettes
set on an Eastern African archaeological excavation that illustrate the major issues
and controversies in research about stone tools.
John J. Shea is Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University, New York.
He is the author of Stone Tools in Human Evolution (Cambridge University Press,
2016) and Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic of the Near East: A Guide
(Cambridge University Press, 2012).
IMPORTANT: This is only the front matter. I posted it to help colleagues decide if they want the book or not. An electronic version of the book is available for purchase now (April 2020), hard copies available in May 2020. Don't have a heart attack over the price, paperbound copies will assuredly be less expensive.
-JJS
Abstract
Stone Tools In Human Evolution examines how the evolution of behavioral differences between humans and non-human primates influenced the lithic archaeological record. Traditional archaeological approaches to the lithic evidence are poorly matched with major issues in human origins research. In their place, this book develops a new analytical framework based on comparisons of human and non-human primate tool use. Individual chapters develop and test hypotheses about how qualities that distinguish human from non-human primates, stone cutting tool production, logistical mobility, language and speech, dispersal an diaspora, and residential sedentism, are reflected in the stone tool evidence. Stone Tools In Human Evolution argues that over the course of human evolution an ape-like pattern of occasional stone tool use developed into a more human pattern of obligatory technologically-assisted adaptation.
This book is now available in hardcover, paperback, and as an electronic book.
Any errata will be posted on my personal website, together with pdfs of artwork and data files.
A "fixed" pdf version of Figure 4.3 showing chimpanzee distributions, tool use sites, and Plio-Pleistocene sites is attached below. I noticed this mistake (wrong version of figure) after the book had gone to press.
Just published in UK, April 26, 2013.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In order to render Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic of the Near East: A Guide into an affordable 23 x 16 cm format, it was necessary to reduce some of the figures significantly. To preserve the value of these figures as aids to the analysis and identification of stone tools from Southwest Asian archaeological sites, and with the permission of Cambridge University Press, the pdf files below reproduce these figures as they were originally submitted to the publisher. The numbering of the figures follows that in the book.
Additional figures that were excised from the final version of the book can be viewed and downloaded from the Cambridge University Press website for Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic of the Near East: A Guide ."""
I have been working with David Christian and colleagues from Flight 33 Productions in filming segments for this project and for a television documentary, "Little Big History," that will air in the Fall of 2013.
Sections of this program are apparently viewable on Youtube.
The television program aired a few years ago. My students and I are in it, demonstrating flintknapping and primitive weapon use.
There are a lot of links to educational materials and guidance for teachers on this website.
The lectures are pitched at the level of high-school students in advanced placement classes. They are (I am told) popular among people who home-school.
The HHMI Biointeractive website has many other resources available to aid in the teaching of biology and evolution.
I wrote it up mainly for journalists, but some colleagues have asked about these matters, so I decided to post it.
I do not intend to publish this paper.