Over the past two decades, growing evidence indicates that the use by members of our lineage of unmodified or partially modified bone fragments preceded the emergence of fully shaped, standardized bone tools. But what were the major tipping points in their origin and development? And how did they contribute to the emergence of fully shaped, standardized bone tools? It is believed that these rudimentary tools, some of which date back to 2.4 million years ago (Myr), were used to dig, pierce, cut, or scrape. However, due to the lack of precise means to investigate these artifacts, it is difficult to reach definitive conclusions regarding their use. The development of replicable quantitative methods to infer their role in past cultural systems would allow a thorough documentation of their evolution in relation to other aspects of Pleistocene material culture. The objective of EXOSTECH is to fill this gap. The post-doctoral researcher in Bordeaux will contribute to this endeavor by conducting experimental and neotaphonomic research on the development, stabilization and preservation of use wear patterns on expedient bone tools, and compare the experimental results with faunal assemblage from Southern and Eastern Africa, dated to the Gelasian and the Calabrian. The research will involve microscopic analysis of archaeological, ethnographic and experimental objects using confocal microscope, the application of multivariate statistical analyses of surface texture parameters and image recognition algorithms. The results will be interpreted in the light of theoretical models and scenarios on the evolution of material culture, environmental changes and the cognitive abilities inferred for the members of our lineage.
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