Symbolism and style in tool manufacture
The possibility that evidence for symbolism may be reflected in the morphology and patterns of manufacture of stone tools has also been much discussed. Holloway (1969, 1983) argued that the mere existence of clearly differentiated forms of stone tools at Olduvai Gorge and elsewhere could be taken as reasonable evidence for the existence of essentially linguistic mental concepts two million years ago. The same idea has been repeated in many other publications (Isaac 1969; Parker & Gibson 1979; Gibson 1988; Foster 1990; see Hewes 1993 for a review).
Recently, these rather simplistic notions of a symbolic element in early Palaeolithic stone tools have come under attack from different directions. Dibble (1987, 1989) has argued that almost all documented variation in Lower and Middle Palaeolithic stone tools can be attributed either to the different tasks for which the tools were intended, or to successive modifications in the shape and apparent design of the tools as a result of repeated episodes of resharpening and reworking in the course of use (see Chapter 4, Figs 4.8, 4.12). He believes that there were few, if any, basic concepts for the different tool forms beyond a simple mental categorization of tools in terms of the particular functions for which they were intended (see also Chase & Dibble 1987; Chase 1991).
Broadly similar arguments have been expressed in my own publications. In discussing the range of side-scraper forms from the Greek Mousterian site of Kokkinopilos, for example, I commented that The edge alone is the important part of the tool; the overall shape is of little importance' (Mellars 1964: 231). I went on to add: 'despite this variety of form, it is difficult to identify any clearly intentional sub-types amongst the racloirs, since so much of the secondary working applied to a piece depends on the original form of the flake chosen and the natural edges on it'. In a later paper I argued that the forms of most Mousterian tools, in contrast to those of the Upper Palaeolithic, showed a high degree of fluidity and lack of morphological standardization, with the result that Middle Palaeolithic tool assemblages were far more difficult to classify into discrete, clearly separate forms than were those of the Upper Palaeolithic, and that any attempt to categorize Middle Palaeolithic industries would require a much more limited range of discrete forms than would taxonomies of Upper Palaeolithic industries (see Chapter 4 and Mellars 1989b, 1991)
As discussed in Chapter 4, the essence of the contrasts between the morphology of Middle versus Upper Palaeolithic tools lies in the notion of deliberately 'imposed form' (Mellars 1989b, 1991; see also Chase 1991).
The central proposition is that in many if not the majority of Upper Palaeolithic tools the artisan seems to have invested much effort to control and modify the shapes of the original flake blanks, to achieve a distinctive and in most cases relatively standardized appearance in the form of the finished tools. In the majority of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic tools, by contrast, this element of imposed form seems to be lacking; most attention during tool manufacture seems to have been paid to the strictly functional properties of the working edges, with little attention paid to the overall shape or appearance of the resulting tool (Fig. 4.30). I have summed up this contrast by suggesting that Upper Palaeolithic artisans adhered to the maxim 'this is an endscraper: I use it as an endscraper, I call it an endscraper, and it must therefore look like an endscraper', whereas Middle Palaeolithic groups seem to have been content with the notion 'who cares what this tool looks like, so long as it performs adequately for the job in hand' (Mellars 1991: 66).
This same element of tightly imposed form and standardization in visual morphology is apparent in many other aspects of Upper Palaeolithic technology. As discussed elsewhere (Mellars 1989b, 1991) it is arguably even more explicit in the form and design of various Upper Palaeolithic bone and antler tools (which again contrast dramatically with the much simpler forms of Middle Palaeolithic bone tools) and may also be discernible in such features as the highly 'structured' organization of many Upper Palaeolithic living sites (e.g. Figs 9.31, 9.32: Combier 1988; Soffer 1985a), as well as in the similar regularity and standardization of Upper Palaeolithic art and decorative motifs (Figs 13.2, 13.4,13.5: Mellars 1989b, 1991).
The central assumption is that this kind of morphological standardization and imposed form in tool manufacture does indeed have some clear symbolic significance (see for example discussions in Chase 1991 and Byers 1994). The argument is that this element of standardization and imposed form goes beyond any purely functional or utilitarian requirements of the tools, and must necessarily imply some symbolic concept of individual tool forms, which in turn was reflected either consciously or unconsciously in their specific shapes and visual appearance (see also Wynn 1991: 203-4). Exactly what symbolic significance or associations this patterning might have inevitably remains more speculative. Two obvious possibilities are that it could be related to the social and ethnic identity of the groups producing the tools - reflecting what Wiessner (1983, 1984, 1990) and others have referred to as 'em-blemic style' in tool manufacture - or alternatively that it could be related to the specific economic, environmental and social contexts in which the different tool forms were employed. In an earlier paper I commented:
Eskimo groups, for example, make sharp conceptual distinctions between tools used for processing different forms of plant versus animal products, between tools used on different social occasions or at different seasons of the year, or between tools used by males and females (e.g. Birket-Smith 1945; McGhee 1977). Potentially, therefore, formalized, perceptually defined differences in the forms of stone and bone artefacts could have been tied into a much wider framework of symbolism and symbolically defined behaviour embracing many different aspects of the social and economic organization of Upper Palaeolithic groups.
(Mellars 1989b: 359)
Whether this element of imposed form in tool manufacture is entirely lacking from Middle Palaeolithic artefacts is more debatable. As discussed in Chapter 4, a fairly strong case for the existence of clear 'mental templates' could be argued for some of the distinctive forms of bifacial tools recorded in certain Middle Palaeolithic industries, such as the sharply triangular or 'bout coupe' forms of certain hand axes, or the symmetrical, bifacial leaf-point forms (see Figs 4.22,
4.25, 4.26, 4.27; Bordes 1961a, 1984). Despite some recent protests (e.g. Dibble 1989), it seems difficult to escape the conclusion that these particular forms were produced with a clear template in the minds of the artisans, which dictated that the tools should not only perform adequately for some particular tasks, but also conform to specific, predetermined and presumably preconceived forms (see also Gowlett 1984,1995).
In this context there would seem to be two possibilities: either that the occurrence of these pieces does reflect an incipient measure of symbolic patterning in Middle Palaeolithic stone-tools, directly heralding that which emerged on a greatly increased scale during the ensuing Upper Palaeolithic. Or alternatively that the regularity, symmetry and standardization apparent in these particular tool forms can be attributed to a more basic and innate motivation, reflecting either simple aesthetic appreciation (i.e. curiosity or satisfaction in the production of regular and symmetrical tool shapes), or perhaps even (as Binford has suggested: 1989: 28) to a more long-term adaptation to the production of these symmetrical, bifacial tool forms extending, in the case of the Acheulian, for over a million years (see also Wynn 1979, 1985; Gowlett 1984, 1995; Schick & Toth 1993). At present I can see no way of choosing between these alternatives. What must be accepted is that whatever degree of standardization, symmetry, imposed form etc. we can recognize in the morphology of Middle Palaeolithic tools emerges on a much greater, more complex and more rapidly changing scale in the ensuing tool inventories of Upper Palaeolithic groups. It is this dramatic and well defined shift in tool production patterns that suggests that there was indeed a major change in the symbolic and cognitive properties of tool manufacture between the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic periods, which may have equally significant implications for the general mental and cognitive dimensions of the populations involved.
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