Making it small in the Palaeolithic: bipolar stone-working, miniature artefacts and models of core recycling

Throughout the Palaeolithic and across the globe small, regular cores were made using bipolar techniques, in which the object was placed between an anvil and hammer. While there has been much discussion about whether they might have been used as tools or were debris from a manufacturing process it is likely that both are true in different locations and at different times. What is distinctive about the bipolar technique is that it allows knappers to work artefacts down to a very small size, and this may facilitate the extension of both core life and tool life. In this article a model of that miniaturization process is evaluated against Holocene material from Australia and Middle Stone Age material from South Africa. It is likely that the capacity to miniaturize lithic artefacts would have been valuable in a variety of Palaeolithic contexts.