Stone Tool - Evolutionary Development of Technocomplexes

Evolutionary Development of Technocomplexes

From the 19th century archaeologists had been turning up prehistoric worked stone tools that appeared to be typologically classifiable into taxa. They referred to these homotaxial groups of stone tools as industries and named them after the type site; for example, Acheulean after St. Acheul, France, and later Oldowan from Olduvai Gorge in Africa. In the earlier 20th century they became complexes and technologies; in the later, technocomplexes.

In 1969 in the 2nd edition of World Prehistory, Grahame Clark envisioned an evolutionary progression of flint-knapping in which the "dominant lithic technologies" occurred in a fixed sequence from Mode 1 through Mode 5. He assigned to them relative dates: Modes 1 and 2 to the Lower Palaeolithic, 3 to the Middle, 4 to the Advanced and 5 to the Mesolithic. They were not to be conceived, however, as either universal – they did not account for all lithic technology – or synchronous – in effect simultaneously in different regions. Mode 1, for example, was in use in Europe long after it had been replaced by Mode 2 in Africa.

Clarke's scheme was adopted enthusiastically by the archaeological community. One of its advantages was the simplicity of terminology; for example, the Mode 1/Mode 2 Transition. The transitions are currently of greatest interest. Consequently in the literature the stone tools used in the period of the Palaeolithic are divided into four "modes", each of which designate a different form of complexity, and which in most cases followed a rough chronological order.