| Summary: | <p>It is the task of archaeologists to account for a wide range of cultural practises and processes using a limited range of surviving artefacts and features. In Palaeolithic contexts, organic materials such as leather goods (bags/pouches, shoes, clothing, slings, etc.) and woven fibre artefacts (baskets, cordage, textiles, etc.) are vastly underrepresented (Croes 1997, Soffer et al. 2000, Taylor 1966). How, then, can archaeologists working in great time depths account for artefacts crafted from leather and/or plant materials? One approach is the systematic examination of osseous tools: a preferred tool material for perishable craft production in cultures around the world.</p>
<p>The aims of the following research were to apply new or novel inductive methods to prehistoric bone tools, in order to gain an enhanced understanding of their place(s) within the cultural repertoire of prehistoric groups, with an emphasis on perishable craft production. The basis for these analyses are bone tools from the North African Palaeolithic site of Taforalt, and ethnographic bone tools housed at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology (PAHMA) and at the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM). Investigations were organised using a chaîne opératoire approach (Leroi-Gourhan 1964, 1968). This approach encompasses the technical processes of bone tool creation and use, the tasks the bone tools were used to perform (and products they were used to produce), and ways in which information about bone tools can be shared in reproducible, high-fidelity formats.</p>
<p>In the broadest sense, these methods have illuminated a number of formerly unknown cultural strategies and capacities among the Palaeolithic inhabitants of Taforalt. By studying bone tools from Taforalt, it was possible to understand intentionality in raw material selection, to see an emphasis on the creation of small, thin pointed tools, and to gain proxy evidence for coiled basketry production in the absence of the baskets themselves. These baskets, in turn, likely supported the collection, processing, cooking, and storage of food resources such as acorns, pine nuts, and snails. Crafted technologies would have enabled the population at Taforalt to maintain reliable food sources irrespective of seasonality, and to support an expanding population, in turn enabling people to continue to develop specialised cultural roles and technological forms.</p>
<p>The ultimate goal of this research has been to understand whether bone tools can be used as proxy stand-ins for activities, technologies, and people who are otherwise archaeologically imperceptible, especially in the remote past. The following studies show that these methods, when applied to bone tools, can successfully scaffold a more nuanced understanding of prehistoric lifeways, and in particular, perishable craft production.</p>
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