Re: How did the millions of stone tools get on the savanna?

On Jul 25, 1:06 pm, "deowll" <deo...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


I read at least one professional who claimed based on some evidence that a
biface was just the core from which sharp flakes were removed. I don't
question that many of them were little more than cores however the item
itself would be useful as a tool under many circumstance and I suspect was
used as such when needed. Further some of the better made and nicer examples
look  to be the result of someone doing some very careful knapping to a
plan.

A few more items to consider.
In addition to the other attributes I mentioned above in this
thread, measurements on hundreds of handaxes show
some consistent parameters even though shapes/size can vary widely
(Isaac 1977). Increases in length show a proportional decrease
in width (keeping weight under control seems to have been important
for some reason).
Some assemblages from some sites have consistently larger
axes in them, even taking into consideration raw material
constraints, like it may have been a cultural thing and so on....

If one is interested in producing just flakes, anyone even least
bit competent at flintknapping knows that an amorphous core,
prismatic core, or a centripetal core will yield more flakes
per pound of stone than a rounded ***, pointed tipped, rounded
tipped, or tranchet-tipped handaxe. Also, there would be no rational
reason to stop flake-core reduction at a particular average handaxe
size if flakes were all that were needed. It would be like always
eating
half an ice-cream cone, then throwing it away only to start eating
another one.

One thing I have noticed about the "chip dispenser" argument is that
it depends on grabbing a few anomalous examples of crud out of
context,
that may resemble axes in a superficial way, and then claim they
were for chips only. Well yeah, those few may have been chip cores,
but
that doesn't mean the other 90% of well-shaped ones weren't for a
specific purpose.

.

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