Curated character of the Initial Upper Palaeolithic lithic artefact assemblages in Bacho Kiro Cave (Bulgaria).

The dispersal of Homo sapiens across Eurasia during MIS 3 in the Late Pleistocene is marked by technological shifts and other behavioral changes, known in the archaeological record under the term of Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP). Bacho Kiro Cave in north Bulgaria, re-excavated by us from 2015 to 2021, is one of the reference sites for this phenomenon. The newly excavated lithic assemblages dated by radiocarbon between 45,040 and 43,280 cal BP and attributed to Homo sapiens encompass more than two thousand lithic artifacts. The lithics, primarily from Layer N1-I, exist amid diverse fauna remains, human fossils, pierced animal teeth pendants, and sediment with high organic content. This article focuses on the technological aspects of the IUP lithics, covering raw material origin and use-life, blank production, on-site knapping activities, re-flaking of lithic implements, and the state of retouched lithic components. We apply petrography for the identification of silicites and other used stones. We employ chaîne opératoire and reduction sequence approaches to profile the lithics techno-typologically and explore the lithic economy, particularly blade production methods, knapping techniques, and artifact curation. Raw material analysis reveals Lower Cretaceous flints from Ludogorie and Upper Cretaceous flints from the Danube region, up to 190 km and 130 km, respectively, from Bacho Kiro Cave, indicating long-distance mobility and finished products transport. Imported lithic implements, were a result of unidirectional and bidirectional non-Levallois laminar technology, likely of volumetric concept. Systematic on-anvil techniques (bipolar knapping) and tool segmentation indicate re-flaking and reshaping of lithic implements, reflecting on-site curation and multifaceted lithic economy. A limited comparison with other IUP sites reveals certain shared features and also regional variations. Bacho Kiro Cave significantly contributes to understanding the technological and behavioral evolution of early Homo sapiens in western Eurasia.

Scrapbooks as Sites of Technology: The Women's Institute and the Material Culture of 1960s Rural England.

Using scrapbooks created by members of the Women's Institute in England in 1965, this article offers a rare insight into women's lived experience and interaction with new technologies and services, in domestic and communal spaces, which show how rural women diligently recorded the new behaviors, emotions, and challenges surrounding rural life. Scrapbookers show multiple and sometimes contradictory attitudes, representing themselves as modern housewives proficient with new consumer durables, while also critiquing the inequalities heralded by new goods and services. Rural women were not simply bystanders to technological change but represented themselves as both consumers and producers of new forms of knowledge, through their use of material culture. Scrapbookers used their creations to archive the emotional labor they performed in their homes and communities, illuminating an important but often overlooked component of consumption.

Historiography: Why Should Historians Pay More Attention to Philosophy of Technology?

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology marks the maturity of the philosophy of technology, which has lagged behind the history of technology as a distinct field. The book's thirty-two chapters span almost seven hundred pages, written by thirty-four authors from twelve countries. Shannon Vallor, professor of philosophy at University of Edinburgh, edited the volume and wrote its excellent introduction, which provides a historical framing that is largely absent from the rest of the volume. Although many of the remaining chapters are quite strong, the volume as a whole suffers from an unevenness that reflects the conceptual disunity of the field. Nevertheless, the volume shows the value of this field for historians of technology, especially as an alternative to the stale STS theories that many historians of technology draw on.

Earliest evidence of human occupations and technological complexity above the 45th North parallel in Western Europe. The site of Lunery-Rosieres la-Terre-des-Sablons (France, 1.1 Ma).

The site of LuneryRosieres la-Terre-des-Sablons (Lunery, Cher, France) comprises early evidence of human occupation in mid-latitudes in Western Europe. It demonstrates hominin presence in the Loire River Basin during the Early Pleistocene at the transition between an interglacial stage and the beginning of the following glacial stage. Three archaeological levels sandwiched and associated with two diamicton levels deposited on the downcutting river floor indicate repeated temporary occupations. Lithic material yields evidence of simple and more complex core technologies on local Jurassic siliceous rocks and Oligocene millstone. Hominins availed of natural stone morphologies to produce flakes with limited preparation. Some cores show centripetal management and a partially prepared striking platform. The mean ESR age of 1175 ka ± 98 ka obtained on fluvial sediments overlying the archaeological levels could correspond to the transition between marine isotopic stages (MIS) 37 and 36, during the normal Cobb Mountain subchron, and in particular at the beginning of MIS 36. The Lunery site shows that hominins were capable of adapting to early glacial environmental conditions and adopting appropriate strategies for settling in mid-latitude zones. These areas cannot be considered as inhospitable at that time as Lunery lies at some distance from the forming ice cap.

Seeds, Dams, and Khipus: Latin America's Eclectic Recent History of Technology.

Scholarship on Latin America's history of technology has expanded significantly in recent years. By reviewing articles in English- and Spanish-language journals from 2012 to the first half of 2023, we illustrate the emerging themes, geographies, and methodologies in this literature. The four main themes we identify are industrialization, institutions and policies, infrastructure, and moving beyond technological adaptation. We also highlight two emerging themes: Indigenous technologies and the circulation of knowledge. We conclude that the scholarship has generally moved in three directions: the study of technologies associated with traditional economic activities in the region (e.g., monocrop agriculture), national industrialization and modernization processes, and cases that demonstrate alternative ways of knowing the world and how communities use these types of knowledge. We suggest that deepening the connections between these three lines of research could be fruitful for future work.

Debate: Seeds as Deep Time Technologies.

This essay theorizes crop seeds as deep time technologies, surveying a range of materialist approaches to the study of agriculture, from historical materialism to agroecology and actor-network theory. Recent studies of plant domestication suggest that the long history of human-plant relations and agrarian knowledge defy the reduction of seeds to products of nature or objects of property. Approaching seeds as technologies allows us to understand the actors and processes of improvement that demarcate biological material according to commercial and scientific logics. Framing seeds as a collaborative technological project with a 19,000-year history unseats industrial time as the dominant frame in the history of technology. It recasts political economy not simply as a construction of human social relations of production but also as it imagines the material used to produce life itself.

Who Invented the Possum? What Historians Can Learn from Disabled Innovation in Britain's Responaut Communities.

This article provides a new exploration of disabled innovation that transforms our understanding of collective contributions to the history of science and technology. It does so by showing how a user network galvanized individual inventions into disabled expertise by tracking the development of two technologies-the Selectascan/Possum and the adapted Loudspeaking Telephone. Hamraie and Fritsch's 2019 "Crip Technoscience Manifesto" defined "disabled expertise" by exploring how disabled technology modification has been devalued. This article takes up their manifesto's challenge to combine disability history with science and technology studies by analyzing the technologies discussed in Responaut, a British quarterly magazine published between 1963 and 1989. Responauts were people who depended on respirators to breathe. This technological interdependence meant that users adapted an extraordinary variety of technologies to live well with respirators and modify their personal environment.

Fixing the Huai River: Technology of Labor Formation in Maoist China, 1950-53.

This article contributes to the large-scale engineering scholarship by revealing the labor practices involved and the state's role in shaping them. It provides a history of labor formation through earthwork technology in China's 1950s Huai River Control Project. The Communist Party's approach to engineering and labor differed from its Nationalist predecessor's. The party mobilized millions of peasants to dig and move an astronomical amount of soil in a few years. This herculean feat was made possible by promoting "work methods" to encourage peasants' self-Taylorization. The campaign aimed to cultivate a habit to work efficiently in mass-scale collaboration under external instructions. Through promoting work methods, state-appointed cadres assumed a tutelage role that allowed them to replace labor foremen. A hierarchical cadre-laborer relationship emerged from the same labor process that changed the nation's landscape.

Evidence for the earliest structural use of wood at least 476,000 years ago.

Wood artefacts rarely survive from the Early Stone Age since they require exceptional conditions for preservation; consequently, we have limited information about when and how hominins used this basic raw material1. We report here on the earliest evidence for structural use of wood in the archaeological record. Waterlogged deposits at the archaeological site of Kalambo Falls, Zambia, dated by luminescence to at least 476 ± 23 kyr ago (ka), preserved two interlocking logs joined transversely by an intentionally cut notch. This construction has no known parallels in the African or Eurasian Palaeolithic. The earliest known wood artefact is a fragment of polished plank from the Acheulean site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel, more than 780 ka (refs. 2,3). Wooden tools for foraging and hunting appear 400 ka in Europe4-8, China9 and possibly Africa10. At Kalambo we also recovered four wood tools from 390 ka to 324 ka, including a wedge, digging stick, cut log and notched branch. The finds show an unexpected early diversity of forms and the capacity to shape tree trunks into large combined structures. These new data not only extend the age range of woodworking in Africa but expand our understanding of the technical cognition of early hominins11, forcing re-examination of the use of trees in the history of technology12,13.

Picturing Chinese science: wartime photographs in Joseph Needham's science diplomacy.

Joseph Needham occupies a central position in the historical narrative underpinning the most influential practitioner-derived definition of 'science diplomacy'. The brief biographical sketch produced by the Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science sets Needham's activities in the Second World War as an exemplar of a science diplomacy. This article critically reconsiders Needham's wartime activities, shedding light on the roles played by photographs in those diplomatic activities and his onward dissemination of them as part of his self-fashioning. Images were important to the British biochemist, and he was an avid amateur photographer himself, amassing a unique collection of hundreds of images relating to science, technology and medicine in wartime China during his time working as director of the Sino-British Science Co-operation Office. These included ones produced by China's Nationalist Party-led government, and by the Chinese Communist Party. Focusing on these photographs, this article examines the way Joseph Needham used his experiences to underpin claims to authority which, together with the breadth of his networks, enabled him to establish himself as an international interlocutor. All three aspects formed essential parts of his science diplomacy.

The "therapeutic relationship:" emergence, eclipse, and transformations of a social technology.

This essay situates the history of "the relationship" as a therapeutic technology within the broader context of changing social relations in the twentieth-century United States. More specifically, it outlines the emergence and subsequent diffusion of practices that aim to cultivate a social bond between therapist and patient that may serve as a psychotherapeutic tool. The article highlights the transformations of this technology as its institutional and epistemic foundations became challenged. Initially conceived as an "artificial" social relation designed to help with "personal adjustment," the therapeutic relationship was soon also deployed by non-experts and became a model for more healthful social relations. More recently, it has been fashioned as collaborative and combined with a range of other methods.

Revolução tecnológica e smartphone: considerações sobre a constituição do sujeito contemporâneo / Revolución tecnológica y smartphone: consideraciones sobre la constitución del sujeto contemporáneo / Technological revolution and smartphone: considerations about the constitution of the contemporary subject

RESUMO. O texto, resultante de estudos teóricos empreendidos à luz da Psicologia Histórico-Cultural entre 2016 e 2020, tem como objetivo recuperar a revolução tecnológica como um recurso para a compreensão da constituição dos sujeitos contemporâneos, partindo da máquina a vapor da Primeira Revolução Industrial, empregada nos meios de produção, até o smartphone, empregado na cotidianidade. O smartphone possui níveis tão altos de compactação, portabilidade e operacionalidade que o tornaram uma das mais avançadas tecnologias da história, revelando o elevado grau de desenvolvimento do psiquismo alcançado pelo gênero humano. Ele, mais do que outras tecnologias digitais de informação e comunicação (TDICs), tem impactado notadamente a constituição dos sujeitos contemporâneos, especialmente suas funções psicológicas cognitivas. Os resultados demonstram que recuperar dialeticamente o percurso histórico das criações tecnológicas é essencial à psicologia, permitindo ampliar o espectro de análise de como os sujeitos se constituem na atualidade. Conclui-se que a revolução microtecnológica deve ser tomada sob um viés crítico e ético, por tudo o que pode impactar nas relações entre os sujeitos e no desenvolvimento dos seus processos psíquicos.

RESUMEN. El texto, resultante de estudios teóricos realizados a la luz de la Psicología Histórico-Cultural entre 2016 y 2020, tiene como objetivo recuperar la revolución tecnológica como un recurso para comprender la constitución de los sujetos contemporáneos, a partir de la máquina de vapor de la Primera Revolución Industrial, empleada en los medios de producción, hasta el smartphone, utilizado en la vida cotidiana. El smartphone tiene niveles tan altos de compacidad, portabilidad y operabilidad que se ha convertido en una de las tecnologías más avanzadas de la historia, revelando el alto grado de desarrollo de la psique alcanzado por la humanidad. Él, más que otras tecnologías digitales de información y comunicación, ha impactado notablemente la constitución de los sujetos contemporáneos, especialmente sus funciones psicológicas cognitivas. Los resultados demuestran que recuperar dialécticamente el camino histórico de las creaciones tecnológicas es esencial para la psicología, lo que permite ampliar el espectro de análisis de cómo se constituyen los sujetos en la actualidad. Concluye que la revolución microtecnológica debe tomarse desde una perspectiva crítica y ética, para todo lo que pueda afectar las relaciones entre los sujetos y el desarrollo de sus procesos psíquicos.

ABSTRACT. The text, resulting from theoretical studies undertaken in the light of Historical-Cultural Psychology between 2016 and 2020, aims to recover the technological revolution as a resource for understanding the constitution of contemporary subjects, starting from the steam engine of the First Industrial Revolution, used in the means of production, even the smartphone, used in everyday life. The smartphone has such high levels of compactness, portability and operability that it has become one of the most advanced technologies in history, revealing the high degree of development of the psyche achieved by mankind. It, more than other digital information and communication technologies, has impacted notably on the constitution of contemporary subjects, especially on their cognitive psychological functions. The results demonstrate that recovering dialectically the historical path of technological creations is essential to Psychology, allowing to expand the spectrum of analysis of how subjects are constituted today. It concludes that the microtechnological revolution must be taken under a critical and ethical bias, due to everything that can impact on the relationships between the subjects and the development of their psychic processes.

Hidden signatures of early fire at Evron Quarry (1.0 to 0.8 Mya).

Pyrotechnology is a key element of hominin evolution. The identification of fire in early hominin sites relies primarily on an initial visual assessment of artifacts' physical alterations, resulting in potential underestimation of the prevalence of fire in the archaeological record. Here, we used a suite of spectroscopic techniques to counter the absence of visual signatures for fire and demonstrate the presence of burnt fauna and lithics at the Lower Paleolithic (LP) open-air site of Evron Quarry (Israel), dated between 1.0 and 0.8 Mya and roughly contemporaneous to Gesher Benot Ya'aqov where early pyrotechnology has been documented. We propose reexamining finds from other LP sites lacking visual clues of pyrotechnology to yield a renewed perspective on the origin, evolution, and spatiotemporal dispersal of the relationship between early hominin behavior and fire use.

Copper technology in the Arabah during the Iron Age and the role of the indigenous population in the industry.

Following the Egyptian withdrawal in the mid-12th century BCE from their involvement in the Arabah copper production, and after an additional period of organization, the degree of copper efficiency and production at Timna and Faynan increased in the Early Iron Age (11th-9th centuries), rendering the region the largest and most advanced smelting centre in the Levant. The existing paradigm offered as an explanation for this technical and commercial success is based on extraneous influence, namely, the campaign of Pharaoh Sheshonq I near the end of the 10th century BCE that spurred a renewed Egyptian involvement in the Arabah copper industry. An alternative paradigm is suggested here, viewing the advances in Arabah copper technology and production as a linear development and the outcome of continuous and gradual indigenous improvements on the part of local craftsmen, with no external intervention. Behind these outstanding technical achievements stood excellent managerial personnel, supported by an innovative technical team. They employed two techniques for copper-production optimization that can be defined based on concepts taken from the world of modern industrial engineering: (i) "trial and error", in which the effect of each production variable was tested individually and separately, and (ii) "scaling-up", in which the size of some production elements (i.e., tuyère) was increased by using existing techniques which required minimum developmental costs and experimental risks.

Ecological perspectives on technological diversity at Kanjera South.

The aspects of hominin behavior responsible for Oldowan stone tool variation are the focus of much debate. There is some consensus that this variation arises from a combination of ecological and cultural factors. The diversity of raw material types and technological strategies present at Kanjera South, Kenya, provide an opportunity to examine the interacting influences of ecology and culture on Oldowan stone tool variation. Here, we combine previous analyses of raw material properties, provenance, and technology with quantitative measures of core reduction intensity and tool utilization to examine the influence of both ecological and technocultural factors on stone tool variation at Kanjera South. The results of this analysis reflect a dynamic relationship between raw material properties, provenance, and hominin mobility. Exotic raw materials are generally more resistant to edge attrition compared with those available locally, which may have incentivized their transport over long distances and more extensive reduction. Cores produced on raw materials from distant sources also exhibit more complex core reduction strategies than locally acquired materials. While this pattern is partially due to the differences in the quality of knappable stone, bifacial centripetal and multifacial core reduction strategies also arise due to the continuous transport and use of exotic raw materials. Moreover, the variation in stone tool reduction is not consistent with neutral models of stone tool transport and discard. These results demonstrate that ecological factors such as raw material provenance and physical properties have strong impacts on reduction intensity and the technological strategies used by hominins.

Luminescence chronology for the Paleolithic site of Xinmiaozhuang Locality 1 (XMZ1) in the Nihewan Basin, northern China, and its paleoenvironmental and archaeological implications.

In contrast to the prevailing view that the Chinese Paleolithic has been dominated by the Mode 1 technology-with a slow and conservative development from the Early to the Late Pleistocene-recent discoveries indicate that the lithic technology might have developed into an 'advanced' phase in some parts of China, at least since the early Late Pleistocene. The Xinmiaozhuang Locality 1 (XMZ1), located on the southern edge of the Nihewan Basin in northern China, is one of the examples belonging to such an 'advanced' phase. Although the stone artifacts at this site still belong to the long-existing 'small-tool' industry (core-and-flake) in this basin, some 'advanced' traits, including discoidal cores, elongated flakes, and 'Mousterian-like' triangular points and scrapers, are present. We provide a dating of the XMZ1 using the multiple elevated temperatures (MET) post infrared (pIR) infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL) procedure (MET-pIRIR) on both multigrained single aliquots and 'individual' grains of potassium-rich feldspars (K-feldspars). The consistency between the single-aliquot and single-grain K-feldspar equivalent dose results mutually confirmed the reliability of the obtained ages. Our chronology indicates that the cultural layer falls within the period of ca. 63-75 ka, corresponding to the early stage of the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 4. Based on the correlation of the cultural age to the environmental proxies of loess and stalagmites from China, we suggest that the site might have witnessed dramatic fluctuations of paleoclimate during the site formation. Additionally, based on the discoidal cores distribution, a potential corridor along the Xuefeng-Wu-Tainhang-Great Khingan Mountains for ancient humans migrating between South and North China is suggested. However, more archaeological and chronological studies are required to figure out the origin and the dispersal patterns of the discoidal core associated with lithic assemblage and the tool-makers in East Asia.