Oldowan behavior and raw material transport: perspectives from the Kanjera Formation

Braun, David R.; Plummer, Thomas W.; Ditchfield, Peter; Ferraro, Joseph V.; Maina, David; Bishop, Laura C.; Potts, Richard

doi:10.1016/j.jas.2008.03.004

Cited by 131 publications

(93 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Hominin stone tool distance-decay patterns have been explained as outcomes of the curation of raw material [26], natural topographic barriers [25], the mitigation of risk related to the need to possess sharp cutting edges [26], or planning for future needs [20]. Stone tool deposition might have, furthermore, been influenced by the ranging pattern of carnivores and ecological factors such as water sources and clusters of shelter trees.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distance-decay effect in stone tool transport by wild chimpanzees

et al. 2016

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Stone tool transport leaves long-lasting behavioural evidence in the landscape. However, it remains unknown how large-scale patterns of stone distribution emerge through undirected, short-term transport behaviours. One of the longest studied groups of stone-tool-using primates are the chimpanzees of the Taï National Park in Ivory Coast, West Africa. Using hammerstones left behind at chimpanzee Panda nut-cracking sites, we tested for a distance-decay effect, in which the weight of material decreases with increasing distance from raw material sources. We found that this effect exists over a range of more than 2 km, despite the fact that observed, shortterm tool transport does not appear to involve deliberate movements away from raw material sources. Tools from the millennia-old Noulo site in the Taï forest fit the same pattern. The fact that chimpanzees show both complex short-term behavioural planning, and yet produce a landscape-wide pattern over the long term, raises the question of whether similar processes operate within other stone-tool-using primates, including hominins. Where hominin landscapes have discrete material sources, a distance-decay effect, and increasing use of stone materials away from sources, the Taï chimpanzees provide a relevant analogy for understanding the formation of those landscapes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distance-decay effect in stone tool transport by wild chimpanzees

et al. 2016

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“…At Kanjera South, Kenya (Braun et al 2008Plummer and Bishop 2016), toolmaking hominins were highly selective regarding raw material procurement, bringing in stone from distant conglomerate sources often in much greater proportion that their presence in those conglomerates, while conversely often avoiding and largely leaving some rock types that were quite abundant in those distant sources. Moreover, they transported some of these rocks (∼30% of the stone artefact assemblage) up to 10-13 km from sources to the excavated sites between 1.95 and 2.3 Mya.…”

Section: Analysis Of Patterns At Oldowan Sites (Primarily Non-experimmentioning

confidence: 99%

An overview of the cognitive implications of the Oldowan Industrial Complex

Toth

Schick

2018

Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa

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“…The recently excavated sites at Gona, [69][70][71] Koobi Fora, 82,83 Lokalalei, 84,85 and Kanjera 86,87 give a more detailed picture of artifact transport than the one presented in 1989 by Olduvai and Koobi Fora alone. In particular, it is now clear that by 2.6 Ma hominin knappers carried flaked cores from a source to locations where they were further reduced.…”

Section: Transportmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…13 km) 80 and a corroborating (and earlier) set from Kanjera, where cobbles of various raw material were transported from a conglomerate 10-13 km away. 86 At Kanjera, more than 25% of the raw material appears to have been carried from this distant source. Braun and colleagues 86 suggested that such long-distance transport is evidence of a procurement system of some complexity.…”

Section: Transportmentioning

confidence: 99%

“An ape's view of the Oldowan” revisited

Wynn

Hernández‐Aguilar²,

Marchant³

et al. 2011

Evolutionary Anthropology

158

105

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In 1989, Wynn and McGrew published an explicit comparison between Oldowan technology and what was then known of chimpanzee technology. They compared the range and variety of tools, adaptive role of tools, carrying distances, spatial cognition, manufacturing procedures, and modes of learning. They concluded that everything archeologists had reconstructed about the behavior of Oldowan hominins could be accommodated within the ape adaptive grade; that is, a paraphyletic group united by overall similarities in anatomy and, in this case, behavior. The only Oldowan activities that were almost unknown for modern apes were the long-distance transport of objects and direct competition with carnivores, which was implied by meat acquisition activities. "In its general features Oldowan culture was ape, not human. Nowhere in this picture need we posit elements such as language, extensive sharing, division of labor, or pair-bonded families, all of which are part of the baggage carried by the term human."

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Oldowan behavior and raw material transport: perspectives from the Kanjera Formation

Cited by 131 publications

References 57 publications

Distance-decay effect in stone tool transport by wild chimpanzees

Distance-decay effect in stone tool transport by wild chimpanzees

An overview of the cognitive implications of the Oldowan Industrial Complex

“An ape's view of the Oldowan” revisited

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