MAKERS: Multi-Agent Knapping ExpeRimentS

• Applicant: Dr. William Daniel Snyder, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology ; Evolution, Anthropology
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 579073606

For upwards of 3 million years, members of our evolutionary lineage were breaking up stones into sharp tools that they could use to sustain their lifeways. The record of stone tools is considered a unique and invaluable data source from which we can make inferences about both the behavior and cognition of premodern hominins. One of the fundamental methods for reconstructing hominin behavior and cognition is the experimental reproduction of Stone Age artifacts by living humans, whether expert toolmakers or novice learners. In previous experiments of this kind, stone artifact reduction sequences have generally been carried out by single knappers in short, uninterrupted sessions. From these very experiments, archaeologists have made a variety of conclusions about the origins of human-typical learning and cultural transmission. However, these experiments are not well representative of all the various scenarios that created the artifacts from archaeological sites. An understudied possibility is the use and modification of artifacts by multiple individuals across time. If reduction sequences were divided between discrete episodes by different hominins, this undermines the interpretation of individual cognition from archaeological material. In order to make better or stronger inferences about evolutionary cognition, we need to take a step back and try to discriminate individual- from group-level influences on the character of artifacts and assemblages. To evaluate the relative visibility of individual knappers – including of different skill levels – in the archaeological record, we propose a research program that includes Multi-Agent Knapping ExpeRimentS (MAKERS) and a computational modelling protocol that accounts for taphonomic loss of artifacts, improving comparability between experimental and archaeological datasets. These will be combined with the development of a Virtual Refit Program, which is designed to improve reliability of refit analyses and enable associations between artifacts where true, physical refits are impossible. The combined methods of this proposal will not just help overcome existing epistemic problems in the field and enhance our ability to search for the traces of individual and group-level behaviors in the archaeological record, but will also establish new ways for studying stone artifacts and their implications for individual cognition. Ultimately, the project will produce new insights about human beings and how we came to be who we are, as evidenced by the artifacts our ancestors left behind.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants