ABSTRACT
[Abstract: The story of technological evolution during the Paleolithic is often told as a tale of gradually increasing complexity of artefacts and production processes. This tendency is in turn assumed to be a direct reflection of the cognitive sophistication of hominins as well as the gradual accumulation of knowledge. However, variation in technological complexity, whether in procedures or in implements, is also influenced by the nature of applications for artefacts, constraints on investment of time and energy, conditions affecting social transmission and retention of cultural information, and the place of stone tools in larger technological systems. In fact, change in artefact complexity over the course of the Pleistocene is both discontinuous and regionally variable. Such variability reflects this diversity of causal factors. Although most of what we know concerns stone tools, limited evidence about technologies for working bone and antler or for preparing mastics provides an important window on the broader technical repertoires of ancient humans.]
