Dietrich Stout
Assistant Professor
PhD Indiana University 2003
Anthropology 304
404-712-1828
dwstout@emory.edu
Research Interests:
- Brain evolution
- Language evolution
- Lithic technology
- Experimental archaeology
- Ethnoarchaeology
- Cultural psychology
- Cognitive neuroscience
Selected Publications:
- Stout, D., Toth, N., Schick, K. D. & Chaminade, T. (2008) Neural correlates of Early Stone Age tool-making: technology, language and cognition in human evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, 363:1939-1949
- Stout, D. (2008) Technology and human brain evolution. General Anthropology. 15(2).
- Stout, D., Chaminade, T. (2007) The evolutionary neuroscience of tool making. Neuropsychologia. 45, 1091-1100.
- Stout, D. (2006). Review of: From monkey brain to human brain: a Fyssen Foundation symposium (edited by Dehane,Duhamel,Hauser,Rizzolatti) Journal of Human Evolution 51, 111-112
- Stout, D. (2005). Neural Foundations of perception and action in stone knapping. in Roux,V., Bril,B. (ed.) Stone Knapping: the necessary conditions for a uniquely hominin behaviour. McDonald Institute Monograph series. Oxford: Oxbow Books
- Stout, D. (2005). The social and cultural context of stone knapping skill acquistion. in Roux,V., Bril,B. (ed.) Stone knapping: the necessary conditions for a uniquely hominin behaviour. MCDonald Institute Monographs series. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 331-340
- Stout, D., Quade, J., Semaw, S., Rogers, M., Levin, N. (2005) Raw material selectivity of the earliest stone toolmakers at Gona, Afar, Ethiopia. Journal of Human Evolution 48 (4): 365-380.
- Quade, J., Levin, N., Semaw, S., Stout, D., Renne, P., Rogers, M., Simpson, S. (2004) Paleoenvironments of the earliest stone toolmakers, Gona, Ethiopia. Geological Society of America Bulletin 116 (11/12): 1529-1544.
- Semaw, S., Rogers, M., Quade, J., Renne, P., Butler, R., Dominguez-Rodrigo, M., Stout, D., Hart, W., Pickering, T., Simpson, S. (2003) 2.6-Million-year-old stone tools and associated bones from OGS-6 and OGS-7, Gona, Afar, Ethiopia. Journal of Human Evolution 45 (2): 169-177.
- Stout, D. (2002) Skill and cognition in stone tool production: An ethnographic case study from Irian Jaya. Current Anthropology 45 (3): 693-722.
- Stout, D., Toth, N., Schick, K., Stout, J.C., Hutchins, G. (2000) Stone tool-making and brain activation: Positron Emission Tomography (PET) studies. Journal of Archaeological Science 27: 1215-1223
Research Projects and Collaborations:
- Gona Paleoanthropological Research Project, Afar, Ethiopia. Led by Dr. Sileshi Semaw of Indiana University and the Stone Age Institute. Multidisciplinary investigations of fossil and artefact bearing deposits dating from the Miocene to Middle Pleistocene, including the earliest known stone tools in the world.
- Neural Foundations of Stone Tool Making Skill. In collaboration with Thierry Chaminade (Mediterranean Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience), Chris Frith (Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL) and Dick Passingham (Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford). Exploring the use of functional brain imaging technologies (fMRI, PET) to identify the brain basis of stone tool making skills.
- Action Organization in Stone Tool Making. In collaboration with Jan Apel (Institute of Archaeology) and Aldo Faisal (Engineering Department, Cambridge). Modeling the hierarchical organization of experimental tool making action sequences.
- Stone Tool Production in a Traditional Cultural Context. An ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological investigation of modern stone adze makers in the New Guinea Highlands, and of the social reproduction of the craft.