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Through short-term excavations carried out in the settlements of Dündartepe, Kaledoruğu, and Tekkeköy in Samsun, significant data has been gathered regarding the prehistory and protohistory periods of the Central Black Sea Region. The study involved comparing stone tools found in the aforementioned sites to those found in Sinop/Kovuklukaya Mound, Sinop/Maltepe Mound, Ordu, and Sinop Museums, to classify and evaluate their typology and functionality. Additionally, this study has contributed to the identification of stone tools, the determination of their types, usage areas, and dating. The main sources of livelihood for these settlements during the Late Chalcolithic Age were primarily animal husbandry, followed by agriculture. Stone tools were widely used, but metal tools were also employed in vital activities, despite their scarcity. The finds examined included stone axes, arrows, ceremonial axes, hand stones or mortars, and cutting tools. The finds were generally dated to the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age ranges. Notably, although no Neolithic settlements had been identified in the Black Sea Region previously, the Neolithic finds from this study may indicate that the region was inhabited during this period.Formun Üstü [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How children's understanding of emerging technologies originates is a critical, fundamental, and challenging research question. Placing this question in the history of human evolution and technology development, the present article uses a newly designed literature review method, focused rapid review, to synthesize three fields of research, developmental psychology, behavioral archaeology, and comparative primatology. The six highly cited empirical studies highlighted in the review demonstrate how infants understand simple artifacts, how ancient humans made, used, and understood stone technologies, and how non‐human primates make, use, and understand simple tools. The article concludes with a discussion of four implications for examining the origins of children's understanding of emerging technologies in a broader intellectual context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Traditional typological, technical, and cognitive approaches to early stone tools have taken an implicit Cartesian stance concerning the nature of mind. In many cases, this has led to interpretations of early technology that overemphasize its human-like features. By eschewing an epistemic mediator, 4E approaches to cognition (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) are in a better position to make appropriate evaluations of early hominin technical cognition that emphasize its continuity with non-human primates and ground a description of the evolution of hominin technology. This essay takes some initial steps in that direction by shifting focus away from tool types and knapping patterns toward a description based on ergonomics and Gibsonian affordances. The analysis points to the evolutionary importance of two hitherto underappreciated aspects of hominin technical systems—the emergence of ergonomic clusters instantiated in artifact form and the development of displaced affordances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adhesive production is one of the earliest forms of transformative technology, predating ceramics and metallurgy by over 150,000 years. The study of the adhesives used by Neandertals and early modern humans currently plays a significant role in debates about human technological and cognitive evolution. Depending on the type of adhesive used, different production sequences were required. These can vary in complexity and would have needed different knowledge, expertise, and resources to manufacture. However, our knowledge of this important technological development is severely hampered by poorly understood taphonomic processes, which affects the preservation and identification of adhesive materials and leads to a research bias. Here we present the results from a 3-year field preservation experiment. Flint flakes hafted and non-hafted with replica adhesives were left to weather naturally on and below the surface at two locations with different soils and climatic conditions. Differential preservation was recorded on a variety of natural adhesives by digitally measuring the surface area of each residue before and after the elapsed time. Residues were further assessed and photographed using metallographic optical microscopy. Results show that certain adhesives preserve to a significantly higher degree than others, while some materials may be more easily overlooked or visually misdiagnosed. We must therefore be aware of both taphonomic and identification biases when discussing ancient adhesive technology. This research provides a first look that will help us understand the disparities between which adhesives were used in the past and what we find in the archaeological record today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adjustment of percussive movements to match the energetic requirements of the task serves as an index of skill in stone-knapping and nut-cracking. In this study, we compared strike-by-strike adjustment of percussive movements in expert bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) and (novice and expert) humans cracking palm nuts (Astrocaryum spp.) using stone hammers of varying mass. The monkeys regulated each strike's amplitude and hammer's velocity at impact to a small degree based on the propagation of a fracture in the nut's shell but overall struck a nut with consistent kinetic energy for a given hammer. They showed the smallest movement variability across strikes among all groups. Novice humans took the most strikes to crack a nut among all groups. Expert humans took the fewest strikes among all groups while showing the largest variation in hammer's kinetic energy at impact and largest movement variability across strikes. Overall, our findings confirm that expert humans can adjust their strikes more precisely to meet variable task demands and are more efficient than monkeys or novice humans in cracking nuts, but the findings also show a surprising advantage for expert monkeys over novice humans. The monkeys' strategy of striking with consistent amplitude and velocity is advantageous when hammer mass is adequate to generate sufficient kinetic energy at impact and crack open a nut in few strikes without requiring fine adjustments, explaining why the monkeys are particularly attentive to a stone's mass when choosing it as a hammer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]