The development of mining to acquire the best materials for producing stone tools represents a breakthrough in human technological and intellectual development. Based on the measurement of in-situ produced cosmogenic 10Be nuclide concentrations, we investigated the source of the raw material used for Palaeolithic and Neolithic flint tools. The in-situ buildup of 10Be in a flint matrix is related to the exposure time of the flint to cosmic rays. Although this exposure history can be complex, the 10Be content of flint assemblages can show whether the raw material used to manufacture the tool was obtained from surface collection or/and shallow mining as opposed to sediments two or more meters below the surface. The flint tool waste products from artifact assemblages from two Palaeolithic caves in Israel, Tabun and Qesem, were analysed. We show that these assemblages have different concentrations of 10Be. By comparison with control samples, we conclude that different raw material procurement strategies were used. For Qesem cave we have also analyzed two different sets of the flint tools themselves and compare them to the waste assemblages.
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