Some socio-economic aspects of the knapping process among groups of hunter—gatherers in the Paris Basin area

Skills and learning difficulties involved in stone knapping: The case of stone‐bead knapping in Khambhat, India

“…Accordingly, knappers are considered as more or less skilled (e.g . Pigeot 1990;Ploux 1989;Karlin, Ploux and Bodu 1993). Now, for a study of skills involved in knapping third millennium stone beads, the questions at issue are: how to test the general propositions about mental representations underlying stone knapping, or else about skills necessary to knap stone; how to study the learning process of complex skills: is it possible to characterize degrees of skill in terms of duration of apprenticeship?…”

Stone Tools and the Uniqueness of Human Culture

“…The fact that there may be some dispute about the intentionality of the production of the final form is further indication of the difficulty of making reliable inferences about social learning from the forms of artefacts. Karlin, Ploux, Bodu, and Pigeot (1993) interpreted the knapping skills represented by the different conjoined sets at 15,000-year-old sites in the Paris Basin as indicating different levels of skill that may be those of individuals at different stages of learning.The extent to which their interpretation depended on assumptions about the methods of learning emphasizes both how little we know about the process of learning about stone tools, and the absence of discussion of different skill levels in the earliest stone industries.…”

“…Rather, apes, early hominins, and later knappers make or made errors, but we tend to minimize reporting of these even where evidence would be available. Karlin, Pigeot, and Ploux (1992) have argued that the apparent variety of skill shown in knapping debris from 15,000-year-old French sites is a result of unskilled knappers practising while more skilled knappers were working. It would be surprising if there were not similar situations among earlier hominin knappers.…”

Inhabiting New Landscapes: Settlement and Mobility in Britain After the Last Glacial Maximum

“…The level of understanding displayed in some of the flintworking undertaken by these apprentices suggests the presence of young children – hardly the typical membership of a ‘small hunting party’. Karlin et al . (1993) suggest that Etiolles is part of a technical system that involved the manufacturing of blades for future use elsewhere in the landscape at sites situated on high quality flint deposits.…”