SESSION 10 – Stirring the wheel on human behavior: Mechanical devices for testing material performance
Evaluating the feasibility of robot-aided microwear analysis: preliminary results of the Robocut project

Humans are set apart from animals by the fact that we use tools to manipulate our surroundings in a very systematic and creative way. The question of how tools and technology influenced human evolution is one of the most important in anthropology, yet we still know relatively little about how individual tools found in the archaeological record were used. Along with residue analysis, lithic microwear analysis (MWA) constitutes our best hope of reconstructing tool use in the most ancient periods of human evolution.