Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Oldowan

Erella Hovers focuses on Oldowan and Middle Stone Age archaeology in Africa and on the Middle Paleolithic of the Levant. She is the co-editor (with Steve Kuhn) of "Transitions Before the Tansition" (Springer 2006) and the author of "The Organization of Mousterian Lithic Technology in Qafzeh Cave, Israel" (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2009). She is a senior lecturer in the Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jersualem. David R. Braun’s research is centered on the relationship between around the earliest stone artifact behavior and the ecology of our earliest ancestors. His research is conducted in Kenya, South Africa and China. He is a lecturer in the department of archaeology in the University of Cape Town.

Introduction: Current Issues in Oldowan Research.- Remarks on the Current Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Study of Early Technological Strategies in Eastern Africa.- From Homogeneity to Multiplicity: A New Approach to the Study of Archaic Stone Tools.- An Overview of Some African and Eurasian Oldowan Sites: Evaluation of Hominin Cognition Levels, Technological Advancement and Adaptive Skills.- Early Homo Occupation Near the Gate of Tears: Examining the Paleoanthropological Records of Djibouti and Yemen.- Homo floresiensis and the African Oldowan.- Methodological Considerations in the Study of Oldowan Raw Material Selectivity: Insights from A. L. 894 (Hadar, Ethiopia).- Variability in Raw Material Selectivity at the Late Pliocene sites of Lokalalei, West Turkana, Kenya.- Oldowan Technology and Raw Material Variability at Kanjera South.- Obsidian exploitation and utilization during the Oldowan at Melka Kunture (Ethiopia).- Are all Oldowan Sites Palimpsests? If so, what can they tell us about Hominid Carnivory?.- The Environmental Context of Oldowan Hominin Activities at Kanjera South, Kenya.