Chasing Mirages: Seeking Standardization among Prehistoric Stone Tools

ABSTRACT This paper asks why we expect to find standardization among prehistoric stone tools. It argues this expectation results from early archaeologists’ experience living in industrialized societies, a wild mismatch with the world their Pleistocene forebears inhabited. It further argues that in searching for evidence of lithic standardization, archaeologists must be alert for “mirages,” things that can create the illusion of standardization. Pre-industrial lithic standardization seems most likely to have emerged from attaching stone tools to handles (“hafting”), and from using stone tools as “passive lithic social media.”