Case Study 11. The Habilis Workbench: Experimental Archaeology

  • John H. Langdon
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Abstract

The earliest stone tools were crude: a hominin picked up a cobble and bashed something with it. If the cobble broke, it produced a sharp edge, opening up further possibilities. Over the course of a million years or so, hominins became increasingly skilled in shaping the tools with relatively few flakes so they would be appropriate for the task at hand. Such tools must lie by the millions across the African landscape, or still buried, waiting to be found. Mary Leakey found them in great quantity at Olduvai Gorge and in the tradition of archeologists, she catalogued and described them according to shape. Functions of the tools and the actions of the tool-makers were left to the imagination until a new generation of researchers brought experimental archaeology to the field and shed new light on life in the very earliest Paleolithic era.

Keywords

Oldowan culture Olduvai Gorge Mary Leakey Nick Toth Kathy Schick Experimental archaeology 
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Additional Reading

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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • John H. Langdon
    • 1
  1. 1.University of IndianapolisIndianapolisUSA

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