fulltext - Simple search

Knowledge and know-how in the Oldowan: an experimental approach
varied, most cobbles presented to the subjects were not highly spherical or
irregularly shaped. Although this does make it impossible to draw valid in
ferences concerning cobble choice differences among knappers of different
skill levels, it was considered more important to increase the probability that
to a given hammer strike. Hammerstones were chosen from a small sample
of granite, sandstone, and greenstone cobbles of varied shape weighing bet
ween 480 and 550g; this restriction was imposed in order to make the bio
were allowed to remain in the sample offered to subjects until their mass
fell below 480g, at which time they were replaced by a similar, but heavier,
lected, and all artifacts over 20 mm in maximum dimension were retained
for analysis.
The task parameters were similar for the bonobo subjects, except that the
stone raw materials were somewhat larger than those presented to the hu
man subjects. This was necessary because, due to the anatomy of their hands,
bonobos are not able to comfortably manipulate and knap the smaller cores
presented to the human subjects; conversely, most human subjects would
desirable body orientations with respect to the camera, and partly because
observation of previous video recordings of their knapping styles seemed
making additional trials desirable.
Filming: method and analysis
The goal was to obtain at least three analyzable strikes per core per subject;
tween four and six analyzable strikes per core were obtained. Camera speeds
were set at 200 frames per second in order to facilitate the collection of data
as close to the instant of impact as possible (in this case, data can be collected
225