Lithic Technology: Measures of Production, Use and Curation

by Edited by William Andrefsky, Jr

• ISBN13: 9780521888271
• ISBN10: 0521888271
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-09-01
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The life history of stone tools is intimately linked to tool production, use, and maintenance. These are important processes in the organization of lithic technology or the manner in which lithic technology is embedded within human organizational strategies of land use and subsistence practices. This volume brings together essays that measure the life history of stone tools relative to retouch values, raw material constraints, and evolutionary processes. Collectively, they explore the association of technological organization with facets of tool form such as reduction sequences, tool production effort, artifact curation processes, and retouch measurement. Data sets cover a broad geographic and temporal span, including examples from France during the Paleolithic, the Near East during the Neolithic, and other regions such as Mongolia, Australia, and Italy. North American examples are derived from Paleoindian times to historic period aboriginal populations throughout the United States and Canada.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	p. xi
List of Contributors	p. xiii
Introduction, Background, and Review
An Introduction to Stone Tool Life History and Technological Organization	p. 3
Lithic Reduction, Its Measurement, and Implications: Comments on the Volume	p. 23
Production, Reduction, and Retouch
Comparing and Synthesizing Unifacial Stone Tool Reduction Indices	p. 49
Exploring Retouch on Bifaces: Unpacking Production, Resharpening, and Hammer Type	p. 86
The Construction of Morphological Diversity: A Study of Mousterian Implement Retouching at Combe Grenal	p. 106
Reduction and Retouch as Independent Measures of Intensity	p. 136
Perforation with Stone Tools and Retouch Intensity: A Neolithic Case Study	p. 150
Exploring the Dart and Arrow Dilemma: Retouch Indices as Functional Determinants	p. 175
New Perspectives on Lithic Raw Material and Technology
Projectile Point Provisioning Strategies and Human Land Use	p. 195
The Role of Lithic Raw Material Availability and Quality in Determining Tool Kit Size, Tool Function, and Degree of Retouch: A Case Study from Skink Rockshelter (46NI445), West Virginia	p. 216
Raw Material and Retouched Flakes	p. 233
Evolutionary Approaches to Lithic Technologies
Lithic Technological Organization in an Evolutionary Framework: Examples from North America's Pacific Northwest Region	p. 257
Changing Reduction Intensity, Settlement, and Subsistence in Wardaman Country, Northern Australia	p. 286
Lithic Core Reduction Techniques: Modeling Expected Diversity	p. 317
Index	p. 337
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