Although this is not a new approach, Backwell and d'Errico have made substantial progress in the analysis of possible bone tools at the early hominid sites of Swartkrans and Sterkfontein in South Africa, surpassing previous work, including studies done of the same specimens by C. Thus, the report by Backwell and d'Errico ( 9) in this issue of PNAS, outlining new techniques for recognizing bone expediency tools and their conclusion that termite extraction was one of the uses of such tools in the period between 1 million and 2 million years ago, is doubly noteworthy.īackwell and d'Errico have focused on characterizing use wear-the modification of a broken or intact bone surface by the process of use-as the best means of identifying expediency tools. Only the very largest bones from the biggest animals (the shafts of the major limb bones of elephants, giraffe, hippos, and the like) are amenable to flaking and even these may be subject to natural forces of destruction. As a raw material, stone has the infinite advantage of being enduring and inedible. Even the crudest tools are far easier to identify than bone tools of comparable sophistication, partly because stone and bone have very different material properties. In contrast, from about 2.6 million years onward, hominids apparently littered the landscape with readily recognizable flaked stone tools and the debris resulting from their manufacture and use (e.g., refs. Unambiguous examples of bone expediency tools are rare and precious. Taphonomy is especially pertinent in the evaluation of putative early bone tools that have been minimally modified and then often only by use as opposed to modification for use ( 5, 6). One of the main aims of taphonomic studies has been to establish whether hominids (human ancestors and their close kin) were instrumental in creating and modifying the assemblage in question or whether its features can better be explained by the action of natural agencies: carnivores, wind, water, trampling animals, sedimentary abrasion, and the like ( 2– 4). The fundamental taphonomic question is: what agent or agencies collected and modified a bone assemblage? The task is to deduce how particular bones came to be fossilized in a particular geological setting together and in the state of completeness or preservation in which they were found. Over the last 30 years, taphonomy has emerged as a concentration and set of techniques at the interface of archaeology, paleontology, biological anthropology, and ecology. ![]() ![]() Taphonomy can be defined as the study of the laws of destruction and burial that intervene between living communities and fossilized ones ( 1), but it is more an attitude than a proper discipline.
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