Stone Age Visiting Cards Revisited: A Strategic Perspective on the Lithic Technology of Early Hominin Dispersal

Abstract

This paper examines the stone tool technology of dispersing Plio-Pleistocene hominins. The traditional division of Early Paleolithic assemblages into Oldowan, Developed Oldowan, Early Acheulean, and related industries obscures a more fundamental axis of strategic variation between pebble-core and large cutting tool technology. In Eurasia, as in Africa before it, first appearances of fossils of the genus Homo occur together with “Oldowan” pebble-core technology. Acheulean assemblages featuring large symmetrical cores/cutting tools, if they appear at all, do so after a considerable period of time. The patterning of the Early Paleolithic industrial variability may reflect a strategic shift between an initial “frontier” phase and a subsequent “settling in” phase of hominin dispersal.