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）的决定性石器工具，仍然是我们在过去（约175万至30万年前）人类社会性，认知和行为的最佳和最丰富的证据。英国有大量的手斧，而且它们的年代非常久远。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，而手斧可以被分配给特定的脉冲。这个项目的目的是使用我们的手斧，适合这个独特的精炼年表，以解决两个基本问题：1）阿舍利手斧形状的不同配置是否反映了不同的早期尼安德特人（又名海德堡人）人口在英国和欧洲之间~ 60万和25万年前; 2）这些人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？解释手斧变异的重要性取决于三个关键因素-可靠的年代测定，理解变异的模式，以及理解变异的原因。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：新的多代理年表框架的发展（与全球海洋同位素阶段记录挂钩），提供千年甚至百年的时间尺度;以及对石器形态及其影响因素的更准确量化。测年的发展使该研究小组的成员能够确定，这是第一次，在英国旧石器时代早期的人工制品记录中，有说服力的空间和时间模式。我们已经表明，每个间冰期都有自己独特的人工制品签名，在手斧的存在/不存在，独特的手斧形式的范围内，以及更复杂的技术的存在/不存在。我们已经将其与温暖的间冰期期间的殖民和居住的气候驱动阶段以及寒冷冰川期间的放弃联系起来，这些阶段与改变英国与欧洲其他地区之间的地理和社会关系的海平面变化同时发生。许多独特的手斧形式需要高水平的技能来生产，并涉及高风险的失败，所以进一步解释手斧是有意义的相关规范的社会群体，使他们。然而到目前为止，用于定义和建模手斧形态和技术模式的方法仍然植根于20世纪60年代德里克·罗伊的工作，并且越来越与数字世界脱节。为了实现我们的研究目标，本项目将：1）使用最先进的结构光3D扫描技术制作手斧组装的最终数字数据库。然后进行新开发的3D分析方法，以便：2）建立一个新的和更精确的合成的时空手斧在英国旧石器时代早期的变化。3)量化岩石类型和形式、破碎技术、破碎技巧、减少强度、功能、景观背景和设计对这种变化的作用。4)为21世纪的旧石器时代研究提供一个新的框架，借鉴心理模型来研究群体行为如何出现，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.