John Shea's three books published over seven years are a remarkable effort to provide a comprehensive overview of Paleolithic stone tools, one of the most abundant—if, arguably, least dramatic—artifact types of the period. Two books are regionally focused efforts to impose some order on the “messy” data from sites in the eastern Mediterranean basin and eastern Africa. The third book increases the scale and uses lithic data to test “big hypotheses” about the evolution of human behavior—the kind of grand narratives in paleoanthropology that often rely on dramatic fossil finds purported to be the “missing link,” migration pathways and population contact inferred from ancient DNA, or generalized species-wide reconstructions drawn from observations of extant foragers.
I have chosen to review the books serially in the order of publication. Read together, they form a comprehensive view of the past that provides the basic building blocks of stone artifact description necessary to develop “big picture” uses of lithic data. As with anything that Shea writes, even though I often disagree with what he says, I am consistently engaged with it. The writing is crisp and illustrations are abundant and of the highest quality. Although I am old-fashioned—and if given a choice, I tend to favor the more traditional shaded-line drawing—for the purposes of teaching, the schematic illustrations adopted in all three books are wonderful.
Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Near East: A Guide
In Shea's own words, Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Near East “is intended as a reference work for those beginning their studies in Levantine Prehistory and for experienced researchers seeking an efficient way to become familiar with the lithic record for this region” (p. 2). I believe that Shea succeeds in meeting this goal. Of the three books reviewed here, Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Near East is by far my personal favorite, and it is one that has served as a valuable, well-thumbed, heavily annotated, and coffee-stained part of my book collection for several years. As someone who has extensive experience in lithic analysis but who has only recently engaged with the Mediterranean Paleolithic record directly, I can personally attest to the value of this work as an important starting point for anyone interested in the archaeology of the region.
The book begins with an introduction that provides the geographic and historical setting for the book, followed by “Lithic Basics,” a chapter that concisely summarizes how stone artifacts are made, described, interpreted, illustrated, and organized by archaeologists. Although it is by no means sufficiently detailed or intended for a complete novice to truly understand lithic analysis, I believe that this chapter does stand as a useful summary for those wanting basic familiarity with stone artifacts.
These chapters are followed in succession by those organized chronologically by the traditional culture-historical taxonomy of the region: the Lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic, Upper Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic, and Neolithic. Each of these chapters follows a common format: (1) a brief discussion of why the period matters to our broader understanding of the evolution of human behavior; (2) an introduction to the key sites, references, and scholars that have shaped our current understanding of the period; (3) a well-described and abundantly illustrated synthesis of the major characteristic lithic artifact types described in the published literature; (4) a synthesis of how the lithic archaeological record is organized (e.g., into various “industries”); and (5) brief suggestions on how to improve our analyses in the future. I feel that these chapters, which form the core of the book, do an absolutely excellent job of compiling concise definitions of a wide array of artifacts, and they include much-needed careful and clear comparisons of how the various terms, taxonomies, and chronological successions proposed by scholars over the last several decades articulate with one another. As an example, we learn that terms as diverse as “Late Levalloiso-Mousterian,” “Levalloiso-Mousterian Phase 3,” “Phase 2–3 Mousterian,” “Late Levantine Mousterian,” “Tabun B-Type Mousterian,” and “Later Levantine Mousterian” have all been used to describe the same artifact assemblage—something incredibly intimidating to the outsider or nonexpert.
The concluding chapter is full of innovative ideas for synthesizing and reinterpreting patterns in the Levantine archaeological record, and it serves as a springboard for ideas developed in the other books. Two very useful appendices—one a checklist of artifact types and the other a short compendium on how to record qualitative attributes and take measurements on stone artifacts—round out the volume.
Stone Tools in Human Evolution: Behavioral Differences among Technological Primates
Of the three books reviewed here, Stone Tools in Human Evolution: Behavioral Differences among Technological Primates is probably the most innovative, interesting, and yet, in many ways, the most frustrating. Shea recognizes, as many of us working in the field do, that paleoanthropology is very much a multidisciplinary research endeavor. Combining diverse strands of information into a cohesive understanding of the past represents one of the real strengths and joys of being a paleoanthropologist. But this multidisciplinarity also comes with a cost, in that few scholars can realistically synthesize or understand the nuances of datasets brought in from a broad array of allied disciplines. Shea explicitly targets this book for biological anthropologists and geneticists in order to demonstrate to them that stone tools can be used to test hypotheses related to what he sees as the “big questions” in anthropology—that is, Shea's goal is to show that archaeological data from stone tools can drive “big picture” research rather than serve as “window dressing” for narratives generated by the newest fossil discovery or emergent patterns from ancient DNA. My personal frustration stems from the fact that this reductive approach, although useful, removes much of the variation that I find interesting in the first place.
Stone Tools in Human Evolution represents a deliberate effort to use lithic data to test hypotheses related to key events in human history, in ways that (more or less) operate outside of any kind of culture-historical framework. Shea instead develops a series of predictions tested against the archaeological record, with hypotheses derived from the comparison of human and nonhuman primate tool use. To achieve this, Shea employs a novel lithic classification system—something useful and I think needed for looking at long-term, global patterns in the archaeological record, and a goal clearly linked to the other two books reviewed here. Otherwise, large-scale studies relying on aggregate data inevitably run into the problem that archaeologists working throughout the world use multiple geographically or temporally specific artifact typologies and analytical systems, which makes it difficult to separate patterns of past human behavior from those imposed by archaeologists today.
Structurally, the book begins with an introductory chapter with provocatively titled subsections such as “Little questions vs. big questions” and “Why archaeologists misunderstand stone tools.” For Shea (p. 2), there are apparently only two big questions in anthropology: “how are humans different from other animals and . . . why do humans differ from one another?” My partial unease with this book's outlook stems from the fact that my own research interests do not necessarily align with these questions, and I favor a more nuanced view in general. Drawing on observations from behavioral contrasts among humans and nonhuman primates (especially chimpanzees), Shea marshals a range of lithic data to examine five major evolutionary trends in human evolution organized across a broad narrative arc from the Plio-Pleistocene to the Holocene: (1) the development of cutting tools, (2) the development of logistical mobility and resource transport, (3) the appearance of language and symbolic artifacts, (4) dispersal and “diaspora,” and (5) the use of residential sedentism.
The chapters addressing each of the “big questions” are preceded by outlines of what we know, what we don't know, and what we think we know about stone tools and lithic analysis in general, as well as a chapter that briefly discusses how stone tools are described, including an introduction of Shea's own method of various technological modes (something he expands on in the most recent book as well). The concluding chapter evaluates the extent to which lithic data support his major hypotheses, and it defines broad trends in human technological dependency. The volume closes with an appendix that outlines the traditional age-stages and named industries otherwise avoided in the book, along with a glossary of key terms.
Does this book succeed? In terms of achieving its stated goal of using lithic data to address large-scale so-called “big questions” in human evolution, I would say absolutely. As a practicing Paleolithic archaeologist interested in stone tools, I found that the approach used was often unsatisfying because of the way that geographic variability in past human behavior is largely ignored or simplified for the sake of narrative. The difficulty with reaching an audience of nonspecialists is the necessary but delicate balancing act between understanding the “big picture” and an oversimplification of the more complex reality.
Prehistoric Stone Tools of Eastern Africa: A Guide
Prehistoric Stone Tools of Eastern Africa: A Guide provides a nice counterpoint to Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Near East. Where the latter sought to synthesize existing approaches to describing and categorizing stone tools, the former attempts to develop and apply a new taxonomic system, in an effort to at least “establish concordances among typologies now in use” (p. xv). And where the system of modes developed in Stone Tools in Human Evolution was global in scale, here, this approach is welded to a typology developed for a single region. The lithic typologies and analytical approaches currently used in eastern Africa are an incredibly diverse hodgepodge of systems. These were developed for particular sites, regions, or time periods, and they have been (over)extended to assemblages of other areas or ages—a problem compounded by the mix of French, English, American, and other “schools of thought” imposed on the region that partly reflect its colonial history. Only time will tell if Shea's new system will provide a unified understanding of the past and end what he (and, I think, correctly) refers to as “lithic systematics anarchy.”
The book is divided into a series of formal academic chapters separated by fictional interludes (“Uwazi Valley Tales”) directly inspired by Kent Flannery's (1976) The Early Mesoamerican Village (more on these below). The introduction sets up the problem, followed by two excellent chapters outlining the basics of interpreting stone artifacts. Chapter 4 is devoted to defining “eastern Africa” (necessary because the meaning varies among authors), its geology, and the history of archaeological research in the region. Chapter 5 is the real heart of the book, providing a brief but impressively comprehensive overview of the lithic record of eastern Africa, along with an introduction of Shea's own modal classification for understanding stoneworking in the past, which he describes as “not an artifact typology but a standardized set of terms for diagnosing stoneworking strategies” (p. 120)—that is, the ways in which stone artifacts were made. These modes are inferred in part from observations built out of the Eastern African Stone Tool (EAST) Typology, detailed in Chapters 6 through 9. Whereas Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Near East was ordered chronologically, stone artifacts in this volume are organized into typological “bins” familiar to most lithic analysts: cores and core tools, flakes, retouched pieces, percussors, and groundstone artifacts. Despite its many quirks (which I do not go into here), the EAST Typology provides a level of detail and uniformity in how artifacts are described that is otherwise lacking for the region. My sense is that whether or not the typology is widely adopted, the book will prove a useful reference for decades to come. It concludes with a loosely written and wide-ranging essay that in part summarizes its contents, outlines major questions, and offers suggestions for changing the practice of archaeology in the future, followed by appendices that cover the archaeological sites mentioned and a summary of the EAST Typology.
Returning to the fictional “Uwazi Valley Tales,” I think they both represent a missed opportunity and serve, ultimately, as an unwelcome distraction. I appreciate the effort to break up what can be otherwise dry text with humorous fiction (does anyone really enjoy reading typologies?), using exaggerated stereotypes of archaeologists working in the field. I also enjoyed the nod to Flannery's groundbreaking book as a link to the history of the discipline. But the problem with playing around with stereotypes satirically is that doing so can unintentionally reify and perpetuate them. Shea clearly sees his book as call for a break with the past, and he states that he has eastern African students in mind as one of his prime audiences for this book, but they feature almost nowhere in these stories. Instead, the “Uwazi Valley Tales” are mostly about professors and students from American universities working in eastern Africa, with the African characters playing, at best, minor roles or those that reinforce worn-out tropes and character types that are best avoided. Instead of reusing a deliberately exaggerated portrayal of the discipline as “foreign scholars in an exotic land,” why not envision a future in which eastern African scholars lead the research that drives the narrative—not “just” support it as secondary characters?
Concluding Thoughts
As I have said for years to anyone who asks, anything written by John Shea is worth reading, and after reviewing these books, I stand by that statement. I suspect that these books will stand as essential reference works for several decades, and even when I disagree with what Shea says (or how he says it), I am never bored but always engaged, which is a sign of good scholarship. I enjoyed the shifts from passive to ultimately more active narrative voice: in the first book, Shea largely summarizes the views of other people, but by the last, he (very strongly) puts forth his own opinions first. This change from a mode of synthesizing to one of making his argument, or thesis, takes two interesting directions. First, as Shea points out, his efforts have unintentionally resulted in some of the most comprehensive lithic typologies for the Neolithic in the Levant and the Iron Age of eastern Africa—something that probably happened only because a Paleolithic archaeologist with a deep interest in stone tools focused his attention on these later time periods. The second concerns tone. Shea comes across as pretty sure of what is the “right way” and the “wrong way” to do things, and his certainty increases throughout the books. This sort of confidence lends an admirable clarity to his writing, but it can be rather chafing for readers like me who are a bit more agnostic about how to interpret the past. But without these differences of opinion, what would we have to talk about?
