Towards a Functional Analysis of Handaxes and Cleavers: The Evidence from Eastern Africa

To date, analyses of stone artefact aggregates have been inainly nmorphological, and have drawn on European belhavioural analogies. In particular, the motor habit patterning of modern Europeans has been imnposed on the evidence from the past. We suggest that theories pertaining to the learning of motor skills and to motor habit patterning in the present can be used to discover the motor habit patterning of past populations. The available evidence is used to postulate the basic manipulative motor habit patterning of populations making and using Acheulian handaxes and cleavers in eastern Africa, and to suggest possibilities for testing this hypothesis.