'The Stone Age lasted roughly 3.4 million years, from 30,000 BC to about 3,000 BC, and ended with the advent of metalworking.
The above GOOGLE answer applies to Europe. It doesn't apply to North America because the stone age in North America ended in 1492. Until then it was all stone aged material. The southern indigenous people (and some North American indigenous people) worked with gold and copper... Pure metals that can be heated and melted into forms, but other than that, no metallurgy existed.
So how do you determine the age of a stone aged tool in North America? My assertion is that you cannot determine the age of stone aged materials in North and South America.
Am I wrong?
and you can get a ballpark age by stratigraphy.
The horizon it’s recovered from provides the best dating reference. The time of formation of the rock utilized for the tool is possible, but that probably far predates humans. The bone fragments will have “locked” an isotope ratio in during their formation, as will the surrounding soil or sediment matrix with respect to cementitious material, pollens, or near horizon sea life (if the area was subject to rising and falling sea levels).
I recently read an interesting speculation that much of the copper found in mid east tools was carted over there from here in pre-historical antiquity. Apparently its pretty spot on chemically. That would indicate a serious setback to humanity at some point in the area of 20-10K years back...
Date the carbon in the soil which is encrusting the stone tool.
You are possibly wrong but unintentionally. Manmade artifacts, when found, are called “in situ” (in place), but that doesn’t mean they were originally there.
I found a beautiful Mayan probably ceremonial chalcedony/quart dagger-like item sitting on a house mound in the jungles around Tikal. (we were doing a 20 kilometer survey to find out where the workers of that ceremonial center lived).
Now, that item might have been made centuries before it was placed on that house mound (remains of a small hut build on raised dirt). Or it could have been contemporaneous to when people lived in it (I have no idea how old the site was but aging put it around 800-1,000 years old). Further explorations might have found more age-identifiable pottery/shards that could be tested for radiation information. I haven’t heard anything about it).
In caves, however, dirt/dust depositions over the centuries can preserve POLLEN which can be identified by plant species and often dated by carbon-dating methods.
If the artifacts mentioned in this article were buried in a cave, then the dirt covering and surrounding them could be tested for pollen and other carbon-bearing materials which would give archaeologists a rough time period in which they lived and were buried.
If the items were found on the surface, that method of dating becomes questionable.
One thing I learned in my archeological work, dealing with a site in Bainbridge, Pa. is that items from different tribes/manufacturing times and places can end up in the same place because of trading (i.e. NY materials, Snookskill and other broad projectile points, wee found in the Penn. site mixed with some more southerly tribes points/scrappers, etc. This was due to east coast trade which followed the rivers from north to south.
In another site in Maryland, I found more modern Indian artifacts, esp. projectile points that were contemporaneous to a colonial farm settlement there (and an Indian burial too).
However, I also found artifacts that were identified as being at least 3,000 years older lying on the same ground, and there were also Paleocene (60-65 million year old) fossils mixed in with them. Soil/sand deposition and vegetation had covered them all up over a period of thousands of years. We also found more modern pottery which allowed researchers to identify the type of pottery by tribe (Piscataways, etc) and a fairly accurate dating re their manufacturing dates range.
We have to be very careful about where and in what condition a site is when found. There are a lot of variables which can create false dating or which can help more accurately identified its timeline.
Hope this helps a little. I left anthropology (my professors were weird) and then archaeology but not paleontology due to a career change (journalist in Nam for a little while) which I loved.