‘I Can Do It’ Becomes ‘We Do It’: Kimberley (Australia) and Still Bay (South Africa) Points Through a Socio-technical Framework Lens

Abstract

Building on the body of work regarding the concepts of invention and innovation in lithic technology, we further explore the give-and-take relationship between people and their technologies in two different stone point knapping traditions. From the socio-technical framework perspective, which is one amongst many ways to look at technological trends, the acceptance and stabilisation of a tool-making tradition is not only dictated by its technology-specific properties, such as its ingenuity or usefulness. Instead, it also depends on the social conventions and practices of its spatiotemporal context, which can be explored through the notions of introduction, closure, stabilisation, destabilisation and copying. We explain the theory behind the socio-technical framework with modern examples, such as bicycle use in late nineteenth century England and electrical guitar trends in the last half of the twentieth century. Turning our attention to stone point knapping, we use Australian Kimberley point production during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries to bridge into how the socio-technical framework reflects in the dynamics that might be involved in lithic traditions. Using this theoretical framework to think about aspects of deep-time point production, such as that recorded from the Still Bay techno-complex during the Middle Stone Age in southern Africa, becomes trickier though. Instead of reliable ethno-historical accounts or dense archaeological context, we have to rely on coarse-grained data sets about distribution, age, environment and population, making inferences more speculative and less testable. In the context of this special volume, we suggest, however, that a socio-technical framework approach may be a useful tool to enhance our thinking about dynamics in ancient techno-behaviours and that more work is necessary to flesh out its potential in this respect.

Four-Field Co-evolutionary Model for Human Cognition: Variation in the Middle Stone Age/Middle Palaeolithic

“…Socially: Our technologies are embedded in our culture/s as a result of social learning, teaching, and negotiation (e.g. Boyd et al 2011;Högberg and Lombard 2021). 5.…”

The evolution of early symbolic behavior inHomo sapiens

“…However, we note that the comparison between the engravings from Blombos and Diepkloof might not provide the best test case for this hypothesis. There is no direct evidence of contact between the groups inhabiting the different sites, which implies that the engraved patterns may have increased in discriminability relative to pattern production in neighboring groups from which we currently do not have archeological evidence (60). Furthermore, discriminability also depends on learning and might have been enhanced over time through extended exposure to the patterns irrespective of their changes in form (61,62).…”

Regional patterns of diachronic technological change in the Howiesons Poort of southern Africa

“…To further this interpretation in future studies, cultural transmission theory [ 147 – 151 ] could be applied to cases like Sibudu based on the observed directional shifts in stone knapping behaviors that are likely related to mechanisms of information transmission (see e.g. for the Still Bay: [ 152 ]).…”

“…In this line of reasoning, spatially distinct selection pressures from environmental circumstances would have led to comparable behavioral adaptations within these regions, coupled with increased connectivity of groups within these areas [e.g. 65 , 82 , 152 ]. Yet, even within the HP we see asynchronous changes that do not align.…”

“…the “post-HP”). There is now growing evidence from multiple strands of research that this picture is not correct and requires refinement based on new empirical and theoretical observations [ 18 , 28 , 31 , 33 , 40 , 42 , 65 , 72 , 152 ]. To this list we can add the regional and intricate pattern of technological changes through time in the HP.…”