The Stone Age Institute is an independent research center dedicated to the

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscape ...

and

paleontological Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

study of human origins and technological development beginning with the earliest

stone tool A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...

s. The institute was founded by archaeologists

Nicholas Toth Nicholas Patrick Toth (born September 22, 1952) is an American archaeologist and paleoanthropologist. He is a Professor in the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University and is a founder and co-director of the Stone Age Institute. Toth's ...

and

Kathy Schick use both this parameter and , birth_date to display the person's date of birth, date of death, and age at death) --> , death_place = , death_cause = , body_discovered = , resting_place = , resting_place_coordinates ...

to provide a focal point for research on human origins where affiliated scientists could collaborate on research and to provide science education outreach on human origins and

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

. The Stone Age Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Stone Age Institute interior

The institute publishes scholarly books and articles and offers post-doctoral positions for prospective scientists. The institute is housed in a facility located on a rural site outside

Bloomington, Indiana Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County in the central region of the U.S. state of Indiana. It is the seventh-largest city in Indiana and the fourth-largest outside the Indianapolis metropolitan area. According to the Mo ...

. The building was designed by Mary Krupinski and Dawn Gray of Kirkwood Design Studio in Bloomington, Indiana, and was completed in 2003. The Stone Age Institute is an autonomous research facility, but it has strong ties with

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. * Indiana Univers ...

, especially CRAFT (the

Center for Research into the Anthropological Foundations of Technology Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity ...

) and the Human Evolutionary Studies Program. Its co-founders, Toth and Schick, are faculty members at Indiana University. The facility includes a research library on early human prehistory and related science donated by the late

J. Desmond Clark John Desmond Clark (10 April 1916 – 14 February 2002) was a British archaeologist noted particularly for his work on prehistoric Africa. Early life Clark was born in London, but his childhood was spent in a hamlet in the Chiltern Hills of B ...

, professor of Anthropology at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

References

External links

The Stone Age Institute
{{authority control Archaeological research institutes Stone Age Research institutes in Indiana Buildings and structures in Monroe County, Indiana Non-profit organizations based in Indiana