Digital Technologies, Acheulean Handaxes and the Social Landscapes of the Lower Palaeolithic

手斧是旧石器时代晚期(旧石器时代)的权威石器，也是我们在远古时期(约175万至30万年前)人类社会性、认知和行为的最好和最丰富的证据。英国有一个庞大的手斧语料库，它们的年代是独一无二的。随着人们在连续的冰河时期离开英国，我们的人类活动在温暖的间冰期形成了一系列不连续的脉冲，手轴可以分配给特定的脉冲。这个项目的目的是使用我们的手斧，符合这个独特的精细年表，以解决两个基本问题：1)不同配置的阿舍利手斧形状是否反映了大约60万到25万年前英国和欧洲不同的早期尼安德特人(又名海德堡人)种群；以及2)这些种群在多大程度上利用这种物质文化来表明他们的个人和群体身份？解释手斧变异的意义取决于三个关键因素--可靠的年代测定，理解变异的模式，以及欣赏变异的原因。过去40年来，对所有这些因素采取了越来越严格的科学办法：制定了新的多代理年代学框架(与全球海洋同位素阶段记录挂钩)，提供了千年甚至百年的时间尺度；以及对石器形态和影响它的因素进行了更准确的量化。年代测定的发展使这个研究小组的成员第一次在英国旧石器时代的文物记录中确定了令人信服的空间和时间模式。我们已经证明，每个间冰期都有自己独特的人工制品特征，以手斧的存在/不存在、独特的手斧形式的范围以及更复杂的技术的存在/不存在来衡量。我们将这与气候驱动的殖民和居住阶段联系在一起，在温暖的间冰期和冷冰期放弃，与海平面变化同步发生，改变了英国和欧洲其他国家之间的地理和社会关系。许多独特的手斧形式需要高水平的技能才能生产，而且失败的风险很高，因此进一步将手斧解释为与制造它们的社会群体的规范有意义地相关。然而，到目前为止，用于定义和模拟手斧形态和技术模式的方法仍然植根于德里克·罗20世纪60年代的工作，与数字世界日益脱节。为了满足我们的研究目标，该项目将：1)使用最先进的结构光3D扫描技术建立一个明确的手斧装配数字数据库。然后进行新开发的3D分析方法，以便：2)建立新的、更精确的英国旧石器时代早期手斧时空变化的合成方法。3)量化岩石类型和形式、打结技术、打结技巧、还原强度、功能、景观环境和设计对这种变化的作用。4)为21世纪旧石器时代的研究提供了一个新的框架，借鉴了群体层面行为如何出现的心理学模型，并探索了这种行为在旧石器时代下层人类生态位中可能扮演的角色。5)通过提供高分辨率手斧扫描数据库，减少石材工具分析的碳足迹，同时扩大免旅行访问。

Handaxes are the definitive stone tool of the Lower Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age), and remain our best and most abundant evidence for human sociality, cognition and behaviour in the deep past (~1.75 million to 300,000 years ago). Britain has a vast corpus of handaxes, and they are uniquely well dated. As people left Britain during successive ice ages, our human occupation forms a discontinuous series of pulses during warm interglacials, and handaxes can be assigned to specific pulses. This project aims to use our handaxes, fitted into this uniquely refined chronology, to address two fundamental questions: 1) do different configurations of Acheulean handaxe shapes reflect different early Neanderthal (aka Homo heidelbergensis) populations in Britain and Europe between ~600,000 and 250,000 years ago; and 2) to what extent were these populations using this material culture to signal their individual and group identities? Interpreting the significance of handaxe variation depends upon three key factors - robust dating, understanding the patterning of variation, and appreciating the causes of variation. The past 40 years has seen an increasingly rigorous scientific approach to all these factors: the development of new multi-proxy chronological frameworks (tied to the global Marine Isotope Stage record) that provides millennial or even centennial timescales; and a more accurate quantification of both stone tool morphology and the factors which influence it. The developments in dating have allowed members of this research team to identify, for the first time, cogent spatial and temporal patterns in the British Lower Palaeolithic artefact record. We have shown that each interglacial has its own unique artefact signature, measured in terms of handaxe presence/absence, the range of distinctive handaxe forms, and the presence/absence of more complex technology. We have linked this to climatically driven phases of colonisation and residence during warm interglacials, and abandonment during cold glacials, occurring in tandem with changes in sea level that transformed the geographical and social relationship between Britain and the rest of Europe. Many of the distinctive handaxe forms required high levels of skill to produce, and involved a high risk of failure, so have further interpreted handaxes as being meaningfully related to the norms of the social groups that made them. Yet up until now, the methods used to define and model patterns of handaxe morphology and technology have remained rooted in the 1960s work of Derek Roe, and are increasingly out of step with the digital world. To answer our research aims, this project will: 1) Produce a definitive digital database of handaxe assemblages using state-of-the-art structured light 3D scanning technologies. Then conduct newly developed 3D methods of analyses, in order to: 2) Establish a new and more precise synthesis of spatio-temporal handaxe variation in the British Lower Palaeolithic. 3) Quantify the role of rock type and form, knapping techniques, knapping skill, reduction intensity, function, landscape context, and design on this variation. 4) Provide a new framework for 21st-century Palaeolithic research drawing on psychological models for how group level behaviours emerge and exploring the roles such behaviours may have played in the Lower Palaeolithic hominin niche. 5) Reduce the carbon footprint of stone tool analysis while expanding travel-free accessibility, by providing a database of high resolution handaxe scans.