New Experiments and a Model-Driven Approach for Interpreting Middle Stone Age Lithic Point Function Using the Edge Damage Distribution Method

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) is associated with early evidence for symbolic material culture and complex technological innovations. However, one of the most visible aspects of MSA technologies are unretouched triangular stone points that appear in the archaeological record as early as 500,000 years ago in Africa and persist throughout the MSA. How these tools were being used and discarded across a changing Pleistocene landscape can provide insight into how MSA populations prioritized technological and foraging decisions. Creating inferential links between experimental and archaeological tool use helps to establish prehistoric tool function, but is complicated by the overlaying of post-depositional damage onto behaviorally worn tools. Taphonomic damage patterning can provide insight into site formation history, but may preclude behavioral interpretations of tool function. Here, multiple experimental processes that form edge damage on unretouched lithic points from taphonomic and behavioral processes are presented. These provide experimental distributions of wear on tool edges from known processes that are then quantitatively compared to the archaeological patterning of stone point edge damage from three MSA lithic assemblages—Kathu Pan 1, Pinnacle Point Cave 13B, and Die Kelders Cave 1. By using a model-fitting approach, the results presented here provide evidence for variable MSA behavioral strategies of stone point utilization on the landscape consistent with armature tips at KP1, and cutting tools at PP13B and DK1, as well as damage contributions from post-depositional sources across assemblages. This study provides a method with which landscape-scale questions of early modern human tool-use and site-use can be addressed.

旧石器时代中期（Middle Stone Age，MSA）与象征性物质文化以及复杂技术创新的早期证据密切相关。然而，MSA技术最显著的特征之一，是未修制的三角形石制尖状器：这类器物早在50万年前就出现在非洲的考古记录中，并贯穿整个MSA时期。探究这些工具在不断变化的更新世地貌中如何被使用与废弃，能够帮助我们理解MSA人群如何优先选择技术与觅食决策。建立实验与考古学工具使用之间的推断关联，有助于明确史前工具的功能，但沉积后损伤覆盖在行为磨损工具之上的情况，使得这一研究变得复杂。埋藏学损伤模式能够揭示遗址形成历史，却可能妨碍对工具功能的行为学解读。本研究呈现了多种可在未修制石制尖状器边缘形成损伤的实验过程，涵盖埋藏学与行为学两类成因。我们通过已知过程得到工具边缘磨损的实验分布，并将其与三处MSA石制品组合——卡图潘1号遗址（Kathu Pan 1）、品尼高点洞穴13B（Pinnacle Point Cave 13B）与迪克尔德尔斯洞穴1号（Die Kelders Cave 1）出土的石制尖状器边缘损伤的考古模式进行定量对比。通过模型拟合方法，本研究的结果为MSA人群在景观中多样化的石尖使用行为策略提供了证据：卡图潘1号遗址的器物对应尖状武器尖端，品尼高点洞穴13B与迪克尔德尔斯洞穴1号的器物则为切割工具，同时还揭示了各遗址组合中沉积后来源带来的损伤贡献。本研究提供了一种可用于解答早期现代人类工具使用与遗址使用相关的景观尺度问题的研究方法。