Application of the Chaîne Opératoire and Techno-functional Approaches To Oldowan Cores and Retouched Pieces from Swartkrans and Sterkfontein, South Africa

Abstract

While Oldowan technology cannot be divorced from its ecological contexts, examining its socio-cultural scaffolding remains an important endeavor for developing a holistic perspective towards its evolutionary significance. Methods from the chaîne opératoire and techno-functional approaches have been adapted and applied to various Earlier Stone Age or Early Paleolithic assemblages to understand their cognitive and technical implications. However, in South Africa, Oldowan collections have yet to benefit from these approaches, which we employ here. This paper applies a techno-functional (also called ‘morpho-structural’) and chaîne opératoire approach to examine cores and retouched pieces from Swartkrans Member 1 Lower Bank (SWT-M1LB) and Sterkfontein Member 5 East (STK-M5E). This qualitative technological assessment of these two assemblages highlights the technical skills of Oldowan knappers in southern Africa more than 2 million years ago.