Oldowan Culture

The Oldowan is the earliest of the Lower Paleolithic or Early Stone Age typological “cultures.” At present, the earliest Oldowan sites date from about 2.6 my and come from Gona, in the Afar region of Ethiopia. The Oldowan industry terminates at about 1.6 my, which coincides with the beginning of the Acheulean. The Developed Oldowan, which is concurrent with the Acheulean industry but lacks the characteristic bifaces, continues for several hundred thousand years after the end of Oldowan. However, numerous researchers do not consider the Developed Oldowan separate from the Acheulean industry. In the strictest sense, the Oldowan culture is restricted to Africa, although stone tool assemblages predating the Acheulean have been found in other parts of the Old World recently.

The Oldowan culture is named for the type-site of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Olduvai was first investigated by Heinrich Reck during the early 1910s, establishing the basic stratigraphic framework for future investigations. However, it was Louis Leakey who first recognized the significance of the archaeō logical remains at Olduvai, and established the Oldowan as a stone tool cultural sequence. Leakey established the Oldowan as a new typological culture. Leakey also established the extreme age of the Oldowan culture at Olduvai during the1950s, when radiometric dating techniques became available. The realization of the extreme age of the Oldowan had a dramatic impact on the study of hominid evolution during this time period.

The Oldowan is frequently defined as a “chopper” or “chopping tool” industry, and it is usually thought of as made on either rolled stone cobbles or nodules of stone. These notions stem from the prominence of pebble choppers, which occur in high frequencies at many Oldowan sites. These choppers are made by removing a few large flakes from one edge of a cobble. In addition, the Oldowan is defined by the presence of a few other core types: discoids, polyhedrons, spheroids, and simple bifaces. These other core tools are made in a very similar process to the chopper, with flaking simply extended around the perimeter of the core in varying degrees. These core tool types are also accompanied by vast assemblages of unmodified flakes, or debitage. The Oldowan also has low frequencies of modified flakes, such as simple scrapers and denticulates. The Oldowan is also frequently defined by the presence of battered stones, perhaps used for smashing objects or used in reducing stone cores.

Many archaeologists have viewed the Oldowan as a primitive version of the later Acheulean. In this respect, many have seen the pebble choppers as a more basic version of the Acheulean hand axe. In addition, many have noted that the Oldowan and Acheulean are extremely similar and are differentiated mainly on the basis of presence or absence of hand axes. This problem was further complicated by the discovery of many sites concurrent with the Acheulean that lacked hand axes. Such sites were often attributed to the Developed Oldowan. In more recent research, such perspectives have been considered increasingly problematic because of the decreased significance given to hand axes as type specimens of the Acheulean.

...