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Stone tools have been used throughout human history but are most closely associated with prehistory cultures and in particular those of the Stone Age. Stone tools may be made of either ground stone or Lithic reduction, the latter fashioned by a craftsman called a flintknapper. Stone has been used to make a wide variety of tools throughout history, including arrowheads, spearheads, hand axes, and Quern-stone. Knapped stone tools are nearly ubiquitous in pre-metal-using societies because they are easily manufactured, the tool stone raw material is usually plentiful, and they are easy to transport and sharpen.
The Lithic analysis is a cornerstone of prehistoric archaeology because they are essentially indestructible and therefore a ubiquitous component of the archaeological record. Ethnoarchaeology is used to further the understanding and cultural implications of stone tool use and manufacture.
Knapped stone tools are made from materials such as chert, flint, radiolarite, chalcedony, obsidian, basalt, and quartzite via a splitting process known as lithic reduction. One simple form of reduction is to strike stone lithic flake from a nucleus (core) of material using a hammerstone or similar hard hammer fabricator. If the goal is to produce flakes, the remnant lithic core may be discarded once too little remains. In some strategies, however, a flintknapper makes a tool from the core by reducing it to a rough uniface or biface preform, which is further reduced by using soft hammer flaking or by pressure flaking the edges. More complex forms of reduction may produce highly standardized blades, which can then be fashioned into a variety of tools such as scrapers, knife, , and microliths.
In 1969 in the 2nd edition of World Prehistory, Grahame Clark proposed an evolutionary progression of flint-knapping in which the "dominant lithic technologies" occurred in a fixed sequence from Mode 1 through Mode 5. He assigned to them relative dates: Modes 1 and 2 to the Lower Palaeolithic, 3 to the Middle Palaeolithic, 4 to the Upper Paleolithic, and 5 to the Mesolithic, though there were other lithic technologies outside these Modes. Each region had its own timeline for the succession of the Modes: for example, Mode 1 was in use in Europe long after it had been replaced by Mode 2 in Africa.
Clark's scheme was adopted enthusiastically by the archaeological community. One of its advantages was the simplicity of terminology; for example, the Mode 1 / Mode 2 Transition. The transitions are currently of greatest interest. Consequently, in the literature the stone tools used in the period of the Palaeolithic are divided into four "modes", each of which designates a different form of complexity, and which in most cases followed a rough chronological order.
The earliest known Oldowan tools yet found date from 2.6 million years ago, during the Lower Palaeolithic period, and have been uncovered at Gona in Ethiopia. After this date, the Oldowan Industry subsequently spread throughout much of Africa, although archaeologists are currently unsure which Hominan species first developed them, with some speculating that it was Australopithecus garhi, and others believing that it was in fact Homo habilis. (2025). 9780500285312, Thames & Hudson. ISBN 9780500285312 Homo habilis was the hominin who used the tools for most of the Oldowan in Africa, but at about 1.9-1.8 million years ago Homo erectus inherited them. The Industry flourished in southern and eastern Africa between 2.6 and 1.7 million years ago, but was also spread out of Africa and into Eurasia by travelling bands of H. erectus, who took it as far east as Java by 1.8 million years ago and Northern China by 1.6 million years ago.
The Leakeys, excavators at Olduvai, defined a "Developed Oldowan" Period in which they believed they saw evidence of an overlap in Oldowan and Acheulean. In their species-specific view of the two industries, Oldowan equated to H. habilis and Acheulean to H. erectus. Developed Oldowan was assigned to habilis and Acheulean to erectus. Subsequent dates on H. erectus pushed the fossils back to well before Acheulean tools; that is, H. erectus must have initially used Mode 1. There was no reason to think, therefore, that Developed Oldowan had to be habilis; it could have been erectus. Opponents of the view divide Developed Oldowan between Oldowan and Acheulean. There is no question, however, that habilis and erectus coexisted, as habilis fossils are found as late as 1.4 million years ago. Meanwhile, African H. erectus developed Mode 2. In any case a wave of Mode 2 then spread across Eurasia, resulting in use of both there. H. erectus may not have been the only hominin to leave Africa; European fossils are sometimes associated with Homo ergaster, a contemporary of H. erectus in Africa.
In contrast to an Oldowan tool, which is the result of a fortuitous and probably unplanned operation to obtain one sharp edge on a stone, an Acheulean tool is a planned result of a manufacturing process. The manufacturer begins with a blank, either a larger stone or a slab knocked off a larger rock. From this blank he or she removes large flakes, to be used as cores. Standing a core on edge on an anvil stone, he or she hits the exposed edge with centripetal blows of a hard hammer to roughly shape the implement. Then the piece must be worked over again, or retouched, with a soft hammer of wood or bone to produce a tool finely knapped all over consisting of two convex surfaces intersecting in a sharp edge. Such a tool is used for slicing; concussion would destroy the edge and cut the hand.
Some Mode 2 tools are disk-shaped, others ovoid, others leaf-shaped and pointed, and others elongated and pointed at the distal end, with a blunt surface at the proximal end, obviously used for drilling. Mode 2 tools are used for butchering; not being composite (having no haft) they are not very effective killing instruments. The killing must have been done some other way. Mode 2 tools are larger than Oldowan. The blank was ported to serve as an ongoing source of flakes until it was finally retouched as a finished tool itself. Edges were often sharpened by further retouching.
One of the earliest cases of tools comes from the Channel Islands (California) as it was considered one of the earliest place in North America for civilization. The tools that were found were drills, reamers, scrapers, abraders, spoke-shave, macroblade plane, burin, wood-splitting wedges. These tools show that the people living there were skilled in wood working.
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In the San Francisco Bay Area found were often associated with grinding tools. Acorns show diachronic changes in tribal life as the tools used for acorns evolved. Mortar tools like millingstones and mortar and pestle that grind acorns are seen to be dated in different times in the locations.Buonasera, T.Y. (2013). More than acorns and small seeds: A diachronic analysis of mortuary-associated ground stone from the south San Francisco Bay area. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 32(2), 190–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2013.01.003
During the Neolithic period, large axes were made from flint nodules by knapping a rough shape, a so-called "rough-out". Such products were traded across a wide area. The rough-outs were then polished to give the surface a fine finish to create the axe head. Polishing increased the strength and durability of the product. There were many sources of supply, including Grimes Graves in Suffolk, Cissbury in Sussex and Spiennes near Mons in Belgium to mention but a few. In Great Britain, there were numerous small quarries in downland areas where flint was removed for local use, for example.
Many other rocks were used to make axes from stones, including the Langdale axe industry as well as numerous other sites such as Penmaenmawr and Tievebulliagh in Co Antrim, Ulster. In Langdale, there many of the greenstone were exploited, and knapped where the stone was extracted. The sites exhibit piles of waste flakes, as well as rejected rough-outs. Polishing improved the mechanical strength of the tools, so increasing their life and effectiveness. Many other tools were developed using the same techniques. Such products were traded across the country and abroad.
Complex stone tools were used by the Gunditjmara of western Victoria until relatively recently. Many examples are now held in museums.
Flaked stone tools were made by extracting a sharp fragment of stone from a larger piece, called a core, by hitting it with a "hammerstone". Both the flakes and the hammerstones could be used as tools. The best types of stone for these tools are hard, brittle stones, rich in silica, such as quartzite, chert, flint, silcrete and quartz (the latter particularly in the Kimberleys of Western Australia). These were quarried from bedrock or collected as pebbles from watercourses and beaches, and often carried for long distances. The flake could be used immediately for cutting or scraping, but were sometimes modified in a process called reduction to sharpen or resharpen the flake.
Across northern Australia, especially in Arnhem Land, the "Leilira blade", a rectangular stone flake shaped by striking quartzite or silcrete stone, was used as a spear tip and also as a knife, sometimes long. Tasmania did not have spears or stone axes, but the peoples there used tools which were adapted to the climate and environment, such as the use of spongolite. In north-western Australia, "Kimberley point", a small triangular stone point, was created using kangaroo bone which had been shaped with stone into an awl, to make small in the blade.
Apart from being used as weapons and for cutting, grinding (), piercing and pounding, some stones, notably , were used as pigment for painting.
The invention of the flintlock gun mechanism in the sixteenth century produced a demand for specially shaped gunflints.Flayderman, 1998 The gunflint industry survived until the middle of the twentieth century in some places, including in the English town of Brandon.
with lithic flakes are used in agriculture from Neolithic, and are still used today in the regions where agriculture has not been mechanized and industrialized.
The Ohlone people of the San Francisco Bay area see modernization in their social environments, and the stone tools(mortar and pestle) they used in the past are now collected by their descendants, in remembrance of the past histories.Skowronek, R. K. (1998). Sifting the Evidence: Perceptions of Life at the Ohlone (Costanoan) Missions of Alta California. Ethnohistory, 45(4), 675–708. https://doi.org/10.2307/483300
Glassy stones (flint, quartz, jasper, agate) were used with a variety of iron pyrite or marcasite stones as Fire making. That was the most common method of producing fire in pre-industrial societies. Stones were later superseded by use of steel, ferrocerium and matches.
For specialist purposes Glass knife are still made and used today, particularly for cutting for electron microscopy in a technique known as microtomy. Freshly cut blades are always used since the sharpness of the edge is very great. These knives are made from high-quality manufactured glass, however, not from natural raw materials such as chert or obsidian. Surgical knives made from obsidian are still used in some delicate surgeries, as they cause less damage to tissues than surgical knives and the resulting wounds heal more quickly. In 1975, American archaeologist Don Crabtree manufactured obsidian scalpels which were used for surgery on his own body.
^38. Jew, N. P., & Erlandson, J. M. (2013). Paleocoastal flaked stone heat treatment practices
on Alta California’s Northern Channel Islands. California Archaeology, 5(1), 79–104.
https://doi.org/10.1179/1947461x13z.0000000007
Modern uses
Stone tools are still one of the most successful technologies used by humans.
Tool stone
In archaeology, a tool stone is a type of stone that is used to manufacture stone tools.
See also
External links
California Example. American Antiquity, 56(2), 216–234. https://doi.org/10.2307/281416
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