Tools, stone

Bones and teeth, however, are primary archaeological materials and are common to many archaeological sites. Bones bearing cut marks from stone tools are a clear proxy for human occupation of a site, and in the study of human evolution, hominid remains provide the primary archive material. Hence, many attempts have been made to directly date bones and teeth using the U-series method. Unlike calcite, however, bones and teeth are open systems. Living bone, for example, contains a few parts per billion (ppb) of Uranium, but archaeological bone may contain 1-100 parts per million (ppm) of Uranium, taken up from the burial environment. Implicit in the calculation of a date from °Th/U or Pa/ U is a model for this Uranium uptake, and the reliability of a U-series date is dependent on the validity of this uptake model. 

Cattaneo, C., K. Gelsthorpe, P. Phillips, and R. J. Sokol (1993), Blood residues on stone tools, World Archaeol. 87, 365-372. 

Grace, R. (1989), Interpreting the Function of Stone Tools The Quantification and Computerization of Microwear Analysis, British Archaeological Reports, 474, Oxford. 

Keeley, L. H. (1980), Experimental Determination of Stone Tool Uses - Microwear Analysis, Univ. Chicago Press, Chicago. 

Torrence, R. (1986), Production and Exchange of Prehistoric Stone Tools Prehistoric Obsidian in the Aegean, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK. 

Vaughan, P. (1985), Use-Wear Analysis of Flaked Stone Tools, Univ. Arizona Press, Tucson. 

P.P.A. Mazza, F. Martini, B. Sala, M. Magi, M.P. Colomhini, G. Giachi, F. Landucci, C. Lemorini, F. Modugno, E. Rihechini, A new Palaeolithic discovery tar hafted stone tools in a European id Pleistocene hone bearing bed, Journal of Archaeological Science, 33, 1310 1318(2006). 

DE-MS was employed in the characterisation of resinous materials from Roman ceramic vessels, Palaeolithic stone tools, Roman glass unguentaria and amphorae [14,16,18,23]. 

Eisele, J.A., Fowler, D.D., Haynes, G. and Lewis, R.A. (1995). Survival and detection of blood residues on stone tools. Antiquity 69 36-46. 

Loy, T.H. (1983). Prehistoric blood residues detection on stone tool surfaces and identification of species of interest. Science 220 1269-1271. 

Birch bark tar has been identified in numerous investigations of prehistoric samples, as residues of hafting on stone tools, as visible surface deposits on pottery vessels and as isolated finds, sometimes displaying clear evidence... 

Hardy, B.L., Kay, M., Marks, A.E. and Monigal, K. (2001). Stone tool function at the paleolithic sites of Starosele and Buran Kaya III, Crimea behavioral implications. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 98 10972-10977. 

Human technology developed from the first stone tools about two and a half million years ago. In the beginning, the rate of development was slow. Hundreds of thousands of years passed without much change. Today, new technologies are reported daily on television and in newspapers. 

Human ancestors begin using stone tools by this time. 

Lithic Tool Forgery and the ESR Age. Thermal stability of radiation-induced defects were studied in a stone tool excavated from Paleolithic Kami-Takamori site and supplied by archaeologists in our laboratory. The age agreed well with those of tephra in the same sediment studied by several dating methods. The age is related with the heating event which does not necessarily mean heating by ancient man as written clearly and cautiously in the paper.79... 

To interpret the significance of the presence of ochre, one must first attempt to discern if the use of the material was practical or symbolic. Practical uses of ochre include application as a preservative in curing hides, as an adhesive for hafting stone tools, and as medicine. Even practical objects can have symbolic... 

Like other regions of the world, the prehistoric inhabitants of South America showed a preference for obsidian as a raw material for the production of stone tools. Evidence of obsidian consumption exists at both highland and coastal sites (7-5) in southern Peru dating to at least 13,000 years B.P. The appeal for obsidian was likely due to its visual attractiveness and physical properties that... 

The idea of an element as a basic type of material, different from other materials, has been around for at least 2 million years, when the first people to make stone tools appeared on the scene. These early humans chose different types of rock for different tools, knowing that certain kinds of rock were more likely to break into small flakes or keep their sharp edge. Although they probably did not think about the building blocks of the rocks themselves, they knew that the material of some rocks was different from the material of other rocks. 

The steady decay of radioactive elements has some other important uses. One radioactive form of cesium releases radiation at such a steady rate that the worlds most accurate clocks rely on this rate to keep time. Another timekeeper is the precise decay of radioactive potassium into the more stable element argon. Scientists use potassium-argon dating to determine the age of rocks and stone tools at ancient human sites that are more than a million years old. The researchers know how long it takes all the potassium in a rock... 

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