TRACE · Tracing Adaptation through Tribology and Ethnoarchaeology: Temporal-Resource Allocation and Changes in Pleistocene Bone Tools

Pleistocene bone tools provide crucial evidence for understanding hominin adaptive strategies. While research has traditionally focused on formal bone tools, growing evidence points to a two-million-year tradition of expedient bone tools, often unmodified or minimally modified. Although their importance has been demonstrated, current approaches remain limited to static functional snapshots and lack reliable methods for estimating use duration or integrating social and cultural contexts. TRACE addresses these challenges by developing an innovative Temporal-Resource framework that combines archaeology, tribology, ethnography and machine learning. The project will (O1) construct predictive models linking surface textures to tool use duration, (O2) validate them through a Chinese ethnographic bone tool database documenting practices among the Li, Dulong and Oroqen, and (O3) apply these models to six key Chinese sites spanning the late Middle Pleistocene-Early Holocene. By systematically integrating experimental replication, ethnographic evidence and surface texture analyses, TRACE will establish the first reproducible framework for estimating both use duration and function of bone tools. This approach expands the interpretive scope of expedient bone tools beyond the traditional focus on static functions related to lithic production and animal processing, incorporating plant-use replicas, dynamic decision processes, and their broader social and cultural implication. Incorporating Chinese datasets into global comparisons enhances reconstructions of hominin adaptation, cultural transmission and population dynamics, which have so far been dominated by African and European evidence. TRACE will thus create links between endangered traditional knowledge and prehistoric technologies, and redefine bone tools as ecological and cultural indicators of Pleistocene adaptive complexity.