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‘Normativity’ refers to the human conformity to the behavioral modes of a society, which underpins diverse aspects of our behavior, including symbolism, cooperation, and morality. It has its developmental basis in overimitation, the uniquely human bias towards replicating the intentional actions of a demonstrator, regardless of their causal relevance. Using evidence from stone tool technology, we suggest that both overimitation and normativity have their evolutionary origins in the Acheulean cultural tradition. Overimitation can be seen in arbitrary biases in Acheulean toolmaking; while normativity is evident in geographically and temporally restricted sub-types of Acheulean tools, which do not appear to be functional specializations. We argue that normativity would have conferred particular advantages for the Acheulean niche of cooperative hunting of mega-herbivores and living in large groups, through coordinating hunting strategies, promoting equitable sharing, and enforcing the punishment of free-riders.

This chapter examines the issue of whether the Acheulean is a genuine homologous cultural entity, descended via a chain of social reproduction from a common ‘ancestor’, or whether it was a technological phase that was repeatedly independently invented. An anecdotal experiment is used to determine the relative ease of inventing biface knapping from scratch, versus transmitting it with one bout of social observation. Handaxe and cleaver elongation is compared between East African and Indian Acheulean assemblages to determine if there are systematic differences that might reflect different lineages of social transmission. The age of the first appearance of the Acheulean in various parts of the world is modelled to determine if spread from a single source or independent inventions best fits the timing of its distribution. The issue of whether Pleistocene bifaces from East Asia are homologous with the Acheulean or were independently invented is examined by comparing the extent of bifacial shaping between East Asian and western Acheulean assemblages. The chapter concludes with the following contentions. Acheulean bifaces are hard to invent, or even emulate, but easy to imitate. Pleistocene East Asian bifaces are an example of parallelism; that is, not de novo independent invention, but invention from the same Oldowan substrate as the Acheulean. The western Acheulean is however a coherent cultural entity that seems to have spread from a single source region, and with regionally consistent variations suggesting it was maintained through social transmission.

The Clactonian is a stone tool industry dating to MIS 11 and found in southern England. Its maker is currently thought to be Homo heidelbergensis, a hominin species known to make handaxes in Britain before and after the Clactonian. Currently, neither direct nor proxy dating techniques are able to establish a clear contemporaneity between the Clactonian and the Acheulean. Clactonian technology is a basic one, in that it is dedicated to the production of sharp edges. Clactonian sites are usually located near to water bodies or rivers where raw material (flint) is present. Its contemporary interpretation is influenced by the culture-historical approach, prevalent in the 1920s and 1930s when the Clactonian was first identified. This paper briefly reviews the historical context of the industry. It then places modern interpretations in the broader contemporary Middle Pleistocene chrono-stratigraphic and environmental context. Although no overarching new interpretation of the Clactonian is offered, convergent evolution can be seen to explain some of the patterns seen in Clactonian knapping technology. However, it cannot explain the Clactonian phenomenon itself. Some important points for future consideration in the Clactonian debate are presented.

Acheulean assemblages—defined by the presence of handaxes and cleavers—are found across much of Asia. The best known are from the Levant and India and date from the Early Pleistocene. Although bifaces have been found in other parts of Asia, they are poorly dated but probably mostly Middle Pleistocene in age. In East Asia, the Movius Line as originally formulated is invalid because Acheulean, bifacial assemblages are present in China as well as the Korean Peninsula. Nevertheless, there are significant differences between some of these assemblages and those from west and south Asia. Problems of dating and differing definitions of “the Acheulean” are current impediments to establishing the spatial and temporal patterning of Acheulean assemblages in Asia. Additional major shortcomings are the lack of information on the climatic context of most Asian Acheulean assemblages, and the almost total absence of information on the identity and subsistence of their makers.

In this paper, we present and discuss pollen data from the Early Pleistocene (1.8 to 1.6 Ma) – we use the revised timescale approved by IUGS, in which the base of the Pleistocene is defined by the GSSP of the Gelasian Stage at 2.588 (2.6) Ma (Gibbard et al. 2010) – and from the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (0.9 to 0.6 Ma) at Melka Kunture (Upper Awash, Ethiopia). At 2000 m asl in the Ethiopian highlands, these deposits yield many rich and successive archaeological sites, notably documenting the late Oldowan, the emergence of the Acheulean and the middle Acheulean. The stratigraphic position of the fifteen pollen samples is checked by 40Ar/39Ar dating and by geological investigation. Furthermore, they are now correlated to archaeological layers whose excavated lithic industries have been reinterpreted. Our study shows that mountain forest trees belonging to the present-day Afromontane complex were already established in Ethiopia at ~1.8 Ma and that the knappers of the Oldowan and early Acheulean could cope with mountain climatic conditions that had a large diurnal temperature range. Moreover, the new interpretation of pollen results emphasizes changes that occurred in the vegetation cover at 200- or 300-thousand-year snapshot intervals, one during the Early Pleistocene and another one later on, during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. These changes concerned plant species and their respective abundance and appear to have been related to rainfall and temperature variability. The proportion of forest trees increased during wet episodes, whereas the influence of Afroalpine grassland indicators increased during cool and dry episodes. Variations in Early Pleistocene pollen data from Melka Kunture at ~1.8–1.6 Ma are consistent with isotopic evidence of precession variability as recorded at Olduvai and Turkana archaeological sites at ~2–1.8 Ma. For the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, variations in pollen data seem to match the climatic variability of isotopic and long pollen records from the Mediterranean region, notably upon the onset of dominant 100 ka-long glacial/interglacial cycles.

The emergence of the Acheulean is a major topic, currently debated by archaeologists researching all over East Africa. Despite the ongoing discussion and the increasing amount of available data, the mode(s) of the technological changes leading to this emergence remain(s) largely unexplained. Overall, there is a dearth of continuous stratigraphic sequences recording both the late Oldowan and the early Acheulean at the same site. Accordingly, the technological changes cannot be evaluated taking into account the variability of each microregional context. Besides, the early Acheulean must be defined not only with respect to the Oldowan, but also in comparison with the following middle Acheulean.

This paper presents a detailed analysis of the bifacial shaping and the spatial distribution of 85 bifaces recorded in an area of 51.9 m2 on the Lower Floor of the TK site, located alongside the Trench I excavated by M. Leakey in 1963.

The Acheulean stone tools of Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis are the longest enduring of all archaeological cultures, lasting for 1.5 million years. Three competing hypotheses have been proposed to explain this longevity: that Acheulean technology lies in a zone of latent, easy to invent solutions to problems that H. erectus and H. heidelbergensis would have encountered; that there was a genetic predisposition among H. erectus and H. heidelbergensis populations to make handaxes, and perhaps other stone tools characteristic of the Acheulean; or that high-fidelity social transmission was an integral part of the behavioural repertoire of H. erectus and H. heidelbergensis. In this chapter, the first two of these hypotheses are critiqued. Experimental and anecdotal evidence from modern stone knappers is reviewed to determine how knapping expertise is acquired. The chapter concludes with reference to archaeological evidence for social transmission in the Acheulean and a model of how knapping expertise is and was acquired.

The Pleistocene record of Peninj, dated to 1.5–1.4 Ma and located on the Western shore of Lake Natron (Tanzania), is one of the classic archaeo-paleontological sources for the study of the early Acheulean in Africa. Beginning with the seminal project led by Glynn Isaac in the decades of 1960s and 1980s, other research programs have been carried out in Peninj since then, particularly the landscape archaeology approach undertaken by M. Dominguez-Rodrigo between 1995 and 2005. In 2007, fieldwork was resumed in the area and a new project is currently in progress. As a result of this long-lasting scientific effort, the variety of geological, contextual, technological, and spatial information gathered so far can shed light on a number of aspects related to the early Acheulean record identified in the three different archaeological areas of Peninj (the Type Section, the North and the South Escarpments). This paper presents a synthesis of the history of research in Lake Natron and the geology of the Peninj Group. It also reviews some of the main discussions related to the Type Section technology, the bifacial hierarchical centripetal method hypothesis, and the Oldowan–Acheulean dichotomy for the attribution of the lithic samples in the framework of the archaeological record of Peninj. The paper includes a synthesis of the new data gathered in the Acheulean sites of the Escarpments in the course of the present research project and, finally, a regional interpretation of the early Acheulean of the Lake Natron.

Konso in Ethiopia and Kokiselei in Kenya, both dated to ~1.7 million years ago (Ma), and FLK West, a recently reported site from Olduvai dated to 1.7 Ma, are the earliest Acheulean sites known in East Africa. Ongoing archaeological investigations at Gona, in the Afar Depression of Ethiopia, have also produced early Acheulean stone assemblages at several sites, estimated to ~1.6–1.2 Ma. A number of sites, including BSN-12 and OGS-12, have yielded archaeological materials comparable to the earliest Konso artifacts. The stone assemblages from the Gona sites consist of crudely made handaxes, cleavers, and picks, as well as Mode I (Oldowan) cores, and debitage. A variety of raw materials were exploited at Gona, with trachyte, rhyolite, and basalt being the most common.

We review below the Acheulean of East Africa from two perspectives: the history of research and the current state of the art. The definition of Acheulean industries has changed considerably over 150 years and since the earliest research in Africa. A brief presentation of the main discoveries, of the many theories, and of the various methods used in Acheulean archaeological research will help in understanding the current debate and the topics addressed in this volume.

In 2009, Hovers and Braun published in Springer’s Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology Series the volume “Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Oldowan,” stemming from the symposium of the 2006 SAA meeting in Puerto Rico. Many contributors focused on the description of the Oldowan as a lithic production system, showing the high technical variability of the techno-complexes. As pointed out by Braun and Hovers (2009: 4), even if most or all scholars agree that the study of Oldowan behaviors is fundamental to understand early hominin evolution, “not all would agree on a definition of the Oldowan.” Forty years after it was first defined (Leakey 1971, 1975), many sites scattered over approximately one million years are labelled as “Oldowan” in large-scale syntheses. While the available data are highly fragmented both in time and space, and the study of lithic assemblages follows different theoretical and methodological approaches, major overviews simply take for granted that a correlation among the East African assemblages is inescapable. However, the term Oldowan is still a vague concept, lacking a comprehensive definition of what an Oldowan technology is. Additionally, who were the authors of the Oldowan stone tools remains an open question.

International audience; The Early Pleistocene transition from the Oldowan to the Acheulean in eastern Africa was roughly contemporaneous with a number of other events commonly assumed to be connected with hominin evolution. I review here the large mammal evidence, well-documented in several major eastern African sites. Definite conclusions are hard to reach because of temporal gaps in the fossil record, and very patchy history of many lineages, but I conclude that, although some groups do show some turnover during this period, most of them did not change more than before or after it. We may conclude that this cultural change did not seriously impact the faunal assemblage. In addition, we may surmise that, since climate change at this period, if any, did not seriously impact the fauna, it is unlikely to have played a major role in human evolution at that time.

Based on data from different disciplines, such as Archaeology, Palaeobotany and History, the key moments of landscape evolution in the coastal stretch surrounding the Aveiro Lagoon are identified and interpreted in a broad diachronic perspective. In the southern part of the region, just north of the Lower Mondego River Valley, we find a broad flattened area, where the predominant sandy soils overlap deposits from ancient Pleistocene beaches. The wide and complex chronology of these deposits and the characteristics of its components suggest that during their development, environmental constraints, such as climate and vegetation, imposed severe limitations on human settling, as testified by the absence of archaeological remains in the lower deposits, extending westwards, which survey was facilitated by various sand quarries. This evidence contrasts with the presence of Acheulean assemblages in Mealhada, nearby the Certima valley, in deposits which some authors considered to be equivalent to some of the Pleistocene beaches indicated.

Azokh Cave (also known as Azikh or Azykh) contains Pleistocene and Holocene stratified sediment infill. The site was discovered by M. Huseinov (also named Guseinov by other authors) who led the previous phase of excavations. The geographic location of the site is at an important migratory route between Africa and Eurasia. The site has yielded Middle Pleistocene hominin remains (a mandible fragment) recovered in the 1960s during a previous phase of excavation work, together with Acheulean (Mode 2) stone tools and contemporaneous fauna. An important characteristic of the Azokh 1 cave site is a continuous sedimentary record along a 7 m section, ranging in age from Middle Pleistocene (MIS 9-8) to Late Pleistocene (Mousterian industry/Mode 3, MIS 5), and to Holocene periods at the top of the series. This detailed record documents three species of Homo: ancestors of Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. In addition, two new fossiliferous sites, Azokh 2 and Azokh 5 (which are currently being explored), constitute a potential new source of information, especially about the Middle to Late Paleolithic transition and Holocene periods in the area. Plans for preservation and protection of the whole site are currently in progress.

Between 2002 and 2009, renewed investigations of Units II, III, IV and V at Azokh 1 cave were undertaken following rigorous systematic methods of excavation and recording. New dates suggest an age of 184–100 ka for Unit II and ~300 ka for Unit Vm. The excavations produced a range of fossil faunas dominated by cave bears, and 387 lithic artifacts: 68 from Unit Vm, 4 from Unit III, and 315 from Unit II. Although a range of rock types was exploited for tool production, most artifacts are on siliceous rocks, with a few made from non-local obsidian. There is little evidence for the early stages of production on-site. It is possible that initial working may have occurred elsewhere, and cores, blanks and tools transported to the cave. However, given the restricted area of excavations at the rear of the cave, we cannot discount the possibility of knapping activities having occurred in other areas of the cave, the sediments of which were removed in earlier excavations. The stone artifacts from Unit II, with their Levallois component, are clearly Middle Paleolithic, and may be among the earliest evidence for Middle Paleolithic presence in the Southern Caucasus. The material from Unit Vm could be late Acheulean on the basis of dating, lack of Levallois technology, the general larger sizes of the pieces (although no bifaces have been found), and its stratigraphic position below Units II, III, and IV.

There are still a great number of unanswered questions relating to the spread of the first modern humans into Central Asia from Africa, via South Asia during the Paleolithic. The limited number of Paleolithic sites, likely due to heavy loess and colluvial buildup, has provided us with a highly fragmentary view of the earliest migrations into this broad geographic region. In this chapter I discuss a few new sites that researchers are using to try and piece together this wave of colonization and then link early Central Asian peoples to the expansion into northeast Asia and ultimately into the New World.