Lithic archaeology, or, what stone tools can (and can't) tell us about early hominin diets

Stone tools are the most durable residues of hominin behavior. Our ancestors left these "Stone Age visiting cards," as Isaac (1981) called them, on every major land mass humans have inhabited, except Antarctica. Before the advent of cheap and efficient methods for producing metal implements, stone tools were employed in subsistence tasks by all known human societies. Stone tools are also still used as subsistence aids by chimpanzees, our nearest primate relatives. To the extent that we believe major changes in hominin evolution have been accompanied by dietary shifts, it is reasonable to seek clues to these changes in stone-tool design and variability. In seeking these clues, however, we need to be alert to the complicating effects of behavioral variability. Recent stone-tool-using humans exhibit considerable variability, not only in the kinds of tasks for which stone tools are used but also in the choice of technological strategies they deploy in their land-use strategies and subsistence adaptations.