Stone tools in the context of "Flintknapper"

Shangchen (Chinese: 上陈) is a Lower Palaeolithic archaeological site in Lantian County, Shaanxi, China, some 25 km south of Weinan.It was discovered in 1964, and excavated during 2004 and 2017.

Stone tools found at the site were dated based on magnetostratigraphy in a 2018 study. Possible artefacts were found in 17 layers, tentatively dated by their discoverers to between 1.26 Ma (palaeosol S15) and 2.12 Ma (loess L28). The date of 2.12 Ma predates the earliest known fossils of archaic humans in Eurasia (Homo erectus georgicus) by 300,000 years. Whether these potential tools were made by an early species in the genus Homo or another hominin species is unknown.

The history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques by humans. Technology includes methods ranging from simple stone tools to the complex genetic engineering and information technology that has emerged since the 1980s. The term technology comes from the Greek word techne, meaning art and craft, and the word logos, meaning word and speech. It was first used to describe applied arts, but it is now used to describe advancements and changes that affect the environment around us.

New knowledge has enabled people to create new tools, and conversely, many scientific endeavors are made possible by new technologies, for example scientific instruments which allow us to study nature in more detail than our natural senses.

In the archaeology of the Stone Age, an industry or technocomplex is a typological classification of stone tools.

An industry consists of a number of lithic assemblages, typically including a range of different types of tools, that are grouped together on the basis of shared technological or morphological characteristics. For example, the Acheulean industry includes hand-axes, cleavers, scrapers and other tools with different forms, but which were all manufactured by the symmetrical reduction of a bifacial core producing large flakes. Industries are usually named after a type site where these characteristics were first observed (e.g. the Mousterian industry is named after the site of Le Moustier). By contrast, Neolithic axeheads from the Langdale axe industry were recognised as a type well before the centre at Great Langdale was identified by finds of debitage and other remains of the production, and confirmed by petrography (geological analysis). The stone was quarried and rough axe heads were produced there, to be more finely worked and polished elsewhere.

Chaîne opératoire (French: [ʃɛn‿ɔpeʁatwaʁ]; lit. 'operational chain' or 'operational sequence') is a term used throughout anthropological discourse, most commonly in archaeology and sociocultural anthropology. The term denotes a description of the stages of production of material culture—especially pottery and stone tools made through lithic reduction—from raw material acquisition to tool production to use to abandonment.

The chaîne opératoire was born out of archaeologists' interest in elevating lithic analysis beyond simple typology. Building an object's chaîne opératoire is an important methodological tool. In a chaîne opératoire approach, archaeologists create a full biography of technologies, attempting to understand their craftsmanship and use in different social groups. By understanding the processes and construction of tools, archaeologists can better determine the evolution of technology, model human behavior, and understand the development of ancient cultures. As archaeologists come to understand an object's chaîne opératoire, they better understand human choices and technical traditions.

The Trail Creek Caves are a group of twelve caves found within the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve on the Seward Peninsula of the U.S. state of Alaska. This is a significant archeological site due to the discovery of several artifacts of ancient hunters. These included stone tools and bone fragments dated to 8,500 years or earlier. The caves were discovered in 1928 by Taylor Moto and Alfred Karmun, locals from Deering, Alaska. Geologist David Hopkins tested the site in 1948. This location was first excavated in from 1949-1950 by Danish archeologist Helge Larsen. The caves are located along Trail Creek 65°47′28″N 163°24′58″W / 65.79111°N 163.41611°W / 65.79111; -163.41611 near its mouth at Cottonwood Creek in the Northwest Arctic Borough.

In 2018, researchers sequenced the genome to around .4 coverage from a tooth excavated from Trail Creek Cave 2 in 1949. The tooth, directly dated to around 9000 BP, belonged to a young child. The young child from Trail Creek Cave 2 was found to cluster genetically with USR1 from the Upward Sun River site in an ancient DNA population grouping referred to as Ancient Beringian. As with USR2 from the Upward Sun River site, the child from Trail Creek Cave 2 was also found to carry a basal lineage of Haplogroup B2; this specific mtDNA lineage is different from the derived B2 lineage generally found in the Americas.