ABSTRACT
Ever more powerful rockets would initiate the space age by 1957; televisions, refrigerators, and washing machines would be common by 1960; this was the era when people began to accept the labour-saving electric gadget. Utilising the relatively new Potassium/Argon dating technique, its age astonished the world. Francois Bordes and Maurice Bourgon were developing a methodology that would require the study of all the retouched tools in an assemblage not just one or two signature types. The method didn't concentrate on individual artefacts, it considered the variability present in an assemblage of handaxes. Technologically and typologically advanced-looking artefacts were not necessarily more recent in age. By engaging with a battery of Pleistocene environmental sciences Mark White has demonstrated the potential for big picture archaeological interpretations emplaced within a multidisciplinary framework. Enormous advances in archaeological method and theory were made during the 1970s and 1980s by American research teams in East Africa.
