Nolan Ferar

Stone tool shaping without direct cultural transmission While environment and biology play important roles, the complexity and variability of human life today depends in many ways on special cultural proces…

Thank you to all involved and all who helped (e.g. @ctennie.bsky.social, @sahelanthrope.bsky.social)

Find all the details here, and be sure to check our FAQ section (e.g. regarding late Acheulean handaxe shapes) in the supplemental info: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440326000154

Besides handaxe shapes, even novel arbitrary shapes were replicated via the puppet method.

This validates the puppet method as a new tool in experimental archaeology *and* shows that handaxe shaping per se is not a secure indicator of know-how copying.

Knapping-naïve puppeteers successfully imposed Acheulean handaxe (and also other) shapes by directing the expert knapper. See picture.

The puppet method disentangles knapping know-how from shaping know-how:

Knapping-naïve "puppeteers" aim to reproduce target shapes by directing the flake removals of an expert "puppet" knapper—without any access to *shaping* know-how models.

We tested whether handaxe shaping requires know-how models using a novel experimental design, previously described only in theory by Mark W. Moore (2019): the puppet method.

The handaxe enigma continues!

Brand-new method shows: one can shape a handaxe without cultural models. Paper open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440326000154

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