Bone Tool Diversity During the Stone Age: More Insights into the Human Story

Once thought to signal the emergence of 'modern human behavior’ in the archaeological record, recent research in parts of Africa, Eurasia, and Oceania has pushed back the timeline of when bone tool technology is thought to have originated and highlighted the sophistication of this ancient and global technology. From the unworked implements used by African hominins to gather subterranean foods, to the simple pointed tools that facilitated long-distance migration of peoples into colder climates, to the sophisticated use of bone by archaic and modern humans as a canvas to express appreciation of form and harness sound—the literature on this topic is expanding every year as discoveries from new excavations and long-curated collections are reported. Seldom, however, do we find in the literature a comprehensive perspective of the sheer diversity of functions to which bone was put in the Stone Age (and synonymous Paleolithic or Pleistocene) period. In this contribution, we present a global review of the diverse range of roles that bone tools played during the period from the Middle Pleistocene to the Early to Mid Holocene (c. 8,000 years ago). Our aim is to highlight what we now know as an extraordinarily rich category of material culture and demonstrate how it is increasingly contributing to our understanding of cognitive, technological, and social change. We argue that, despite this growing body of data, what are collectively and colloquially referred to simply as ‘bone tools’, remain largely ignored when grand narratives of human development are constructed. Consequently, our discipline is yet to fully benefit from their presence in the archaeological record, nor the increasingly sophisticated traceological analyses which have identified more tools, tool types, and activities than was previously thought possible. We aim to demonstrate that the corpus of bone technologies must be considered side-by-side with the mass of stone technologies if we are to better understand the technological and behavioral evolution of our species.