Deformable Model Based Shape Analysis Stone Tool Application

This paper introduces a method to measure the average shape of handaxes, and characterize deviations from this average shape by taking into account both internal and external information. In the field of Paleolithic archaeology, standardization and symmetry can be two important concepts. For axially symmetrical shapes such as handaxes, it is possible to introduce a simple appropriate shape representation. We adapt a parameterized deformable model based approach to allow flexibility of shape coverage and analyze the similarity with a few compact parameters. Moreover a hierarchical fitting method ensures stability while measuring global and local shape features step-by-step. Our model incorporates a physics-based framework so as to deform due to forces exerted from boundary data sets

The role of play objects and object play in human cognitive evolution and innovation

Abstract: In this contribution, we address a major puzzle in the evolution of human material culture: If maturing individuals just learn their parental generation’s material culture, then what is the origin of key innovations as documented in the archeological record? We approach this question by coupling a life-history model of the costs and benefits of experimentation with a niche-construction perspective. Niche-construction theory suggests that the behavior of organisms and their modification of the world around them have important evolutionary ramifications by altering developmental settings and selection pressures. Part of Homo sapiens’ niche is the active provisioning of children with play objects — sometimes functional miniatures of adult tools — and the encouragement of object play, such as playful knapping with stones. Our model suggests that salient material culture innovation may occur or be primed in a late childhood or adolescence sweet spot when cognitive and physical abilities are sufficiently mature but before the full onset of the concerns and costs associated with reproduction. We evaluate the model against a series of archeological cases and make suggestions for future research

Care of Infants in the Past: Bridging evolutionary anthropological and bioarchaeological approaches

The importance of care of infants and children in palaeoanthropological and human behavioural ecological research on the evolution of our species is evident in the diversity of research on human development, alloparental care, and learning and social interaction. There has been a recent surge of interest in modelling the social implications of care provision for people with serious disabilities in bioarchaeology. However, there is a lack of acknowledgement of infant and child care in bioarchaeology, despite the significant labour and resources that are required, and the implications this has for health outcomes within societies. Drawing on the recent proliferation of studies on infancy and childhood in evolutionary anthropology and bioarchaeology, this paper presents ways the subdisciplines may draw on research developments from each field to advance a more holistic understanding of the evolutionary, social and health significance of infant and children care in the past.We acknowledge the Wenner Gren Foundation for the funding of the symposium that stimulated and contributed to the development of this pape

The nature of culture : an eight-grade model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities in hominins and other animals

Tracing the evolution of human culture through time is arguably one of the most controversial and complex scholarly endeavors, and a broad evolutionary analysis of how symbolic, linguistic, and cultural capacities emerged and developed in our species is lacking. Here we present a model that, in broad terms, aims to explain the evolution and portray the expansion of human cultural capacities (the EECC model), that can be used as a point of departure for further multidisciplinary discussion and more detailed investigation. The EECC model is designed to be flexible, and can be refined to accommodate future archaeological