The record of east Africa is rich in the fossils of Middle Pleistocene hominids and the detritus that represents the material record of their behaviour. For archaeology and human palaeontology, as for any historical discipline, the order in which discoveries are made has a profound impact on the growth of knowledge and on the interpretation of new finds. This chapter therefore begins with a bri...

The database includes spatial, chronological and technological information about the analyzed tools in the article entitled "Evidence of bee products processing: a functional definition of a specialized type of macro-lithic tool" (Ache et al., 2017 [1]). The technological information refers to the tool type, its rock type, weight, state of preservation, morphology, metrical data and functional ...

Slimak et al. (Reports, 13 May 2011, p. 841) reanalyzed the lithic assemblage from the northern site of Byzovaya (Russia) and concluded that it was Mousterian and produced by Neandertals. The previous interpretation of this assemblage as falling within Early Upper Paleolithic variability remains the most parsimonious explanation; pending additional fossil discoveries, there is no evidence suppo...

A selection of papers presented at the Special Session 8 ‘Using multivariate analyses to interpret lithic variability: Contributions and limitations’ held during 2018 MetroArchaeo conference (22-24 October 2018, Cassino, Italy) is published in Journal Lithic Studies. Multivariate statistical are increasingly used discern patterns variability archaeological materials help with their interpretati...

Recent scientific investigations have shed light on the ecological importance and physiological complexity of subaerial biofilms (SABs) inhabiting lithic surfaces. In the field of sustainable cultural heritage (CH) preservation, mechanistic approaches aimed at investigation of the spatiotemporal patterns of interactions between the biofilm, the stone, and the atmosphere are of outstanding impor...

This paper presents computer-aided lithic analysis conducted in the context of an interdisciplinary research framework combining computer science and archaeology – the Partnership for Research in Stereo Modeling (PRISM), at Arizona State University. Pilot projects conducted as part of PRISM serve to find real-world applications to the tridimensional visualization technology developed as part of...