Increasing reliance on skill-intensive subsistence strategies appears to be a hallmark of human evolution, with wide-ranging implications for sociality, brain size, life-history and cognitive adaptations. These parameters describe a human technological niche reliant on efficient intergenerational reproduction of increasingly complex foraging techniques, including especially the production and effective use of tools. The archaeological record provides a valuable source of evidence for tracing the emergence of this modern human condition, but interpretation of this evidence remains challenging and controversial. Application of methods from psychology and neuroscience to Palaeolithic tool-making experiments offers new avenues for establishing empirical links between technological behaviours, neurocognitive substrates and archaeologically observable material residues. Here we review recent progress and highlight key challenges for the future.