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）最权威的石器工具，并且仍然是我们在过去（约175万至30万年前）人类社会、认知和行为的最好和最丰富的证据。英国有大量的手斧，它们年代都很久远。当人们在连续的冰河时期离开英国时，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，而手斧可以分配给特定的脉冲。这个项目的目的是利用我们的手斧，与这个独特的精细年表相适应，来解决两个基本问题：1)阿舍利手斧形状的不同配置是否反映了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）人口；2)这些人群在多大程度上使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，对变异模式的理解，以及对变异原因的认识。在过去的40年里，我们看到了对所有这些因素越来越严格的科学方法：开发了新的多代理年代学框架（与全球海洋同位素阶段记录相关联），提供了千年甚至百年的时间尺度；更准确地量化石器形态和影响它的因素。测年技术的发展使该研究小组的成员首次确定了英国旧石器时代晚期人工制品记录中令人信服的空间和时间模式。我们已经表明，每个间冰期都有自己独特的人工制品特征，以手斧的存在/缺失、独特手斧形式的范围以及更复杂技术的存在/缺失来衡量。我们将其与气候驱动的殖民和居住阶段联系起来，在温暖的间冰期，在寒冷的冰期，与海平面的变化同时发生，海平面的变化改变了英国和欧洲其他地区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来制作，并且有很高的失败风险，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的联系。然而，直到现在，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·罗伊（Derek Roe） 20世纪60年代的工作，并且越来越与数字世界脱节。为了回答我们的研究目标，该项目将：1)使用最先进的结构光3D扫描技术生成手斧组合的最终数字数据库。然后进行新开发的三维分析方法，以期：2)建立一个新的、更精确的英国下旧石器时代手斧时空变化的综合。3)量化岩石类型和形式、敲击技术、敲击技巧、还原强度、功能、景观文脉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一个新的框架，利用心理模型来解释群体水平行为是如何产生的，并探索这些行为在旧石器时代早期人类生态位中可能发挥的作用。5)通过提供高分辨率手斧扫描数据库，减少石器工具分析的碳足迹，同时扩大免旅行的可及性。

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.