A technological reassessment of East African Plio -Pleistocene lithic artifact assemblages

East African Plio-Pleistocene lithic assemblages from the 2.5--1.3 Ma period are highly variable in terms of their character and context. Traditionally, this variability has been described and interpreted according to typologically based conceptual frameworks which serve to define distinct cultural entities. Few of these entities, however, have ever been tested as to their meaning or validity according to experimentally derived technological criteria.;This experimental and technological study has examined a total of 49 in situ lithic assemblages dating from 2.5 Ma through to the beginnings of the Acheulian around 1.4--1.3 Ma. These assemblages have been recovered from sites in the Gona and Omo in Ethiopia, East and West Turkana and Chesowanja in Kenya, the Semliki River in Congo and Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.;This research has focused on several major issues in East African early hominid studies. These include the technological validity of typologically defined lithic industries; early hominid cognitive, manual and behavioral evolution and whether the initial 1 million years of hominid technology can be described as a technological stasis or if there is a temporal trend towards increased levels of hominid tool-making abilities from the late Pliocene into the early Pleistocene.;The findings of this study indicate that there is indeed technological validity to some of the Plio-Pleistocene industries such as the Developed Oldowan from Olduvai Gorge and the Karari Industry from Koobi Fora. Technologically, the Karari Industry itself appears to be much more like the Acheulian than it does the Oldowan and the appearance of the Developed Oldowan and Karari industries may be related to emergence of Homo erectus/ ergaster in East Africa. Levels of early hominid manual dexterity appear to be far more advanced than previously noted. In addition, although it does appear that the Oldowan can be characterized as being a stasis, features of the earliest assemblages from the Gona indicate it is more a stasis in tool production methodology than a stasis in the technological skills involved in tool manufacture.