Kathy Schick

Kathy Diane Schick (born 6 June 1949) is an American archaeologist and paleoanthropologist. She is professor emeritus in the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University and is a founder and co-director of the Stone Age Institute. Schick is most well known for her experimental work in taphonomy as well as her experimental work, with Nicholas Toth, on the stone tool technology of Early Stone Age hominins, including their work with the bonobo (“pygmy chimpanzee”) Kanzi who they taught to make and use simple stone tools similar to those made by our Early Stone Age ancestors.

Early life and education Schick was born to a middle-class family. Her father was an engraver, who inspired Schick for her interest in crafts and tools as a child. Years after her father’s passing at the age of 10, she began studying paleoanthropology in college, focusing on the study of the human brain’s evolution in relation to culture.

Schick received her Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Kent State University in 1974, where she graduated magna cum laude. Schick, at the end of her education, in 1978, had got special training in Flintknapping at the Lithic Technology Fieldschool in Washington State University. After graduating, she became one of the supervisors for the “Ohio dig” during her master’s program at Kent State University. She then went on to apply to UC Berkeley to pursue her doctorate’s degree in 1980, which was also where she met her eventual husband, Nicholas Toth, whom she married in 1976. Specifically, her research focuses on paleoanthropology, the study of human evolution, which is interconnected with the work of physical anthropologists, archaeologists, and other individuals in related specialized fields.

Schick has participated in fieldwork relating to her areas of interest across the world for decades. She has observed archaeological sites and lithic collections in Oldowan and Acheulean sites such as Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Dmanisi in the Georgia, Gona and Middle Awash in Ethiopia, Nihewan Basin in China, Lake Natron in Tanzania, Ambrona in Spain, and Koobi Fora in Kenya.

Research of the Acheulean

Schick has investigated the acheulean since the beginning of her anthropological and educational career. Schick started her research of the acheulean during her years at UC Berkeley. In 1981 and 1983, under the supervision of Clark Howell and Lesile Freeman, she participated in a study where they analyzed and researched the acheulean found in the Ambrona Spain. In 1997, she took part in the Middle Awash Project. Afterwards in 2007, Schick and Toth investigated the emergence of acheulean and the social and environmental behaviors that lead to the adaptation of this stone into a tool across the course of human evolution. They used various acheulean tools in different sizes in diverse locations with specific human evolution times to determine the use of these tools.

Research with Kanzi In 1990, Schick began a long-term collaborative research project, along with Nicholas Toth and psychologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, to observe the bonobo Kanzi as he learned to make and use stone tools. Over the course of this research, Schick and Toth worked together to teach Kanzi, by example, to flake stone and use the sharp flakes produced to cut a length of rope that would allow access to a desired food reward. The goal of this research was to compare the products of human tool makers to those of our prehistoric counterparts (which we can see archaeologically through the tools they produced), as well as to those of non-human primates who have not evolved to make stone tools. This research would allow the scientists to investigate what, if any, cognitive and biomechanical adaptations required for stone tool technology may be present in modern day primates.

Given a supply of chert for flaking and stone to use as a hammerstone, Kanzi was able to learn to flake stone, yielding sharp flakes that he was able to use to cut through rope and obtain his edible reward. The flakes and cores produced by Kanzi’s efforts were less sophisticated than the earliest stone tools recognized by archaeologists, suggesting that there is probably an earlier stone tool technology that is not recognized archaeologically.

Olduvai Gorge Coring Project In 2014, Schick, along with three other principal investigators including Nicholas Toth, Jackson Njau, and Ian Stanistreet, began the Olduvai Gorge Coring Project to extract geological cores around the gorge in order to increase our knowledge of the geological history of the Olduvai Gorge area. This coring project is the first of its kind to take place at Olduvai and the project has resulted in the extraction of more than 600 meters of geological cores from 3 different locations around the gorge, with the deepest core resulting in 236 meters of recovered core material. This project more than doubles the known stratigraphic sequence at Olduvai, adding 400,000 years of deposits dating as far back as 2.4 million years ago. The coring project is ongoing, with further coring planned and a variety of researchers analyzing the extracted core material.

Honors and distinction In 1990, Schick, Nicholas Toth, and J. Desmond Clark became the first foreign archaeologists invited to excavate in China since the Peking Man excavations in the 1930s. From 1992 until 1994, Schick was the president of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists. In 2004, Schick became an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2019, Schick received an Honorary Doctorate from Tbilisi State University, Republic of Georgia for her contributions to Georgian archaeology.