Perforation with Stone Tools and Retouch Intensity: A Neolithic Case Study

2009 ◽  
pp. 150-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Patrick Quinn ◽  
William Jr. Andrefsky ◽  
Ian Kuijt ◽  
Bill Finlayson ◽  
Jr. Andrefsky
Keyword(s):  
Stone Tools

scholarly journals How Rocks Die: Changing Patterns of Discard and Re-Use of Ground Stone Tools in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 8869
Author(s):  
Andrew McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ground Stone ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

Cultural objects are thought to have a lifespan. From selection, through construction, use, destruction, and discard, materials do not normally last forever, transforming through stages of life, eventually leading to their death. The materiality of stone objects, however, can defy the inevitable demise of an object, especially durable ground stone tools that can outlive generations of human lifespans. How groups of people deal with the relative permanence of stone tools depends on their own relationship with the past, and whether they venerate it or reject its influence on the present. A case study from the long-lived site of Prasteio-Mesorotsos in Cyprus demonstrates a shifting attitude toward ground stone objects, from the socially conservative habit of ritually killing of objects and burying them, to one of more casual re-use and reinterpretation of ground stone. This shift in attitude coincides with a socio-political change that eventually led to the ultimate rejection of the past: complete abandonment of the settlement.

scholarly journals ETHNOECOLOGY IN PRE-HISPANIC CENTRAL AMERICA: FOODWAYS AND HUMAN-PLANT INTERFACES

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-553
Author(s):  
Shanti Morell-Hart ◽  
Rosemary A. Joyce ◽  
John S. Henderson ◽  
Rachel Cane
Keyword(s):  
Forest Management ◽  
Central America ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Chipped Stone ◽  
Macrobotanical Remains ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Dynamic Relationship

AbstractIn recent years, researchers in pre-Hispanic Central America have used new approaches that greatly amplify and enhance evidence of plants and their uses. This paper presents a case study from Puerto Escondido, located in the lower Ulúa River valley of Caribbean coastal Honduras. We demonstrate the effectiveness of using multiple methods in concert to interpret ethnobotanical practice in the past. By examining chipped-stone tools, ceramics, sediments from artifact contexts, and macrobotanical remains, we advance complementary inquiries. Here, we address botanical practices “in the home,” such as foodways, medicinal practices, fiber crafting, and ritual activities, and those “close to home,” such as agricultural and horticultural practices, forest management, and other engagements with local and distant ecologies. This presents an opportunity to begin to develop an understanding of ethnoecology at Puerto Escondido, here defined as the dynamic relationship between affordances provided in a botanical landscape and the impacts of human activities on that botanical landscape.

Experimental implement manufacture and use; a case study from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

1981 ◽  
Vol 292 (1057) ◽  
pp. 189-195 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Raw Materials ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Technical Level ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Olduvai Gorge

Experiments involving the manufacture and use of stone tools are described. The original tools that served as models came from two sites in upper bed IV at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. The following conclusions are drawn. Widespread use of terms such as ‘crude’ or ‘refined’ in describing stone tools tells us nothing of the technical level achieved by the makers of the assemblages. The different qualities of the available raw materials, the forms in which they occur and how they function when used may have influenced the tool maker’s designs and the morphology of the tools. The experiments suggest uses for the tools that are relevant to our understanding of what is found on some archaeological sites.

Settlement and economy in a changing prehistoric lowland landscape: an East Yorkshire (UK) case study

2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Halkon ◽  
Jim Innes
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Factors ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Field Survey ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Northern Shore

This article assesses the major changes in landscape and coastline, which took place in an area adjacent to the northern shore of the inner estuary of the river Humber, in East Yorkshire, UK, from the beginning of the Holocene to the Iron Age. It considers the effect of these changes on material culture as represented by artefact distributions, including flint assemblages and polished stone tools located during field survey. The conclusions presented here derive from a continuing programme of research in this study area and they are placed in the context of the wider Humber region and the North Sea Basin. This article advocates a restoration of balance with regard to geographical determinism – a new pragmatism – accepting that environmental factors have a great importance in determining the nature and location of certain activities in the past, though cannot be used to explain them all.

Biface Reduction and the Measurement of Dalton Curation: A Southeastern United States Case Study

2007 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Shott ◽  
Jesse A. M. Ballenger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Southeastern United States ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Continuous Variable ◽  
Central Tendency ◽  
Mathematical Functions ◽  
Reduction Measure ◽  
Complex Variation ◽  
Categorical State

Stone tools were reduced during use, with implications both for classification and curation rates. Ballenger's “expended utility” (EU) is a continuous reduction measure devised for Dalton bifaces, described by its mean but also its distribution among specimens. We validate EU as a reduction measure by reference to experimental and contextual controls. We compare EU between the “special context” Dalton assemblages Sloan and Hawkins in Arkansas and Ballenger's eastern Oklahoma “occupation context” ones. Then we fit EU distributions to mathematical functions to model the curation process. Results show that Oklahoma bifaces were better curated than Arkansas ones. Fitting distributions to the Gompertz-Makeham model efficiently describes distributions' shape and scale, which are as important to know as central tendency. Curation is not a categorical state but a continuous variable whose complex variation implicates complex causes.

Technology and Society during the Middle Pleistocene: Hominid Group Size, Social Learning and Industrial Variability

1994 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Mithen
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Group Size ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Middle Pleistocene ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Lower Palaeolithic ◽  
Palaeolithic Archaeology

A model is developed for the relationship between the tool behaviour and social behaviour ofHomo erectus.This explores the role of social learning as the link between social organization and techniques—the methods used to manufacture stone tools. Predictions are made as to how techniques should vary with increasing group size and these are evaluated through a case study from the Middle Pleistocene of southeast England. The case study suggests that inter-assemblage variability in the Lower Palaeolithic can partly be attributed to different relative intensities of individual and social learning arising from varying hominid group size and social interaction in open and closed (i.e. wooded) environments. As such, the paper seeks to integrate material from three fields—comparative socioecology, primate social learning and Palaeolithic archaeology—to explore the relationship between society and technology.

scholarly journals Petrology and Provenance of Lithic Raw Materials used to knap stone: A Case Study From the Inner Ionian Sea

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Magganas ◽  
Nena Galanidou ◽  
Petros Chatzimpaloglou ◽  
Marianna Kati ◽  
Giorgos Iliopoulos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Raw Materials ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Ionian Sea ◽  
Silica Diagenesis ◽  
Icp Ms ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
Material Provenance ◽  
Pure Sio2

This paper examines the lithology and raw material provenance of knapped stone artifacts recovered from prehistoric sites on Meganisi in the course of the Inner Ionian Sea Archipelago survey. Research was twofold: in the field to map the geology of the island and collect raw material samples, and in the laboratory to conduct a petrological study using LM, XRD, SEM and ICP-MS techniques. The greater part of the materials used to produce stone tools consists of almost pure SiO2, bedded or nodular cherts mainly of Malm–Turonian and Eocene ages. The cherts were collected by prehistoric knappers from local sources. Patinas present on the artifacts are relatively enriched in calcite material of incomplete silica diagenesis and subsequently a product of late weathering and alteration.

scholarly journals Assessment of portable X-ray fluorescence analysis for the evaluation of slate procurement and exchange: a Maritime Archaic case study from Newfoundland and Labrador

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher B. Wolff ◽  
Robert J. Speakman ◽  
William W. Fitzhugh
Keyword(s):  
Newfoundland And Labrador ◽  
Physical Nature ◽  
Fluorescence Analysis ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Regional Patterns ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Use Patterns ◽  
Ancient Exchange ◽  
Non Destructive

Prehistoric peoples of Newfoundland and Labrador, like many northern coastal populations, produced many of their stone tools from slate; however, the procurement and movement of this material in that Province and elsewhere has gone virtually unstudied beyond generalised typologies and macroscopic evaluation. This paper provides an overview of a recent study utilising non-destructive portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) technology to analyse slates used by people of the Maritime Archaic tradition <em>(ca.</em> 8000-3200 BP) in Newfoundland and Labrador. Because pXRF is non-destructive, these instruments allow archaeologists to chemically analyse artifacts directly in non-traditional laboratory environments. Through the examination of 164 slate artifacts recovered from 50 sites from throughout Newfoundland and Labrador, we were successful at identifying broad regional patterns in slate distribution, as well as identifying preferred use of particular slate varieties in the production of specific artifact classes. Although limitations exist in the use of this technology, mostly having to do with the physical nature of the source material and the appropriate scale of research, this study demonstrates its potential in identifying broad use patterns and distribution of slate in ancient exchange systems.

Stone tools and resources: A case study from Southern Africa

1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aron Mazel ◽  
John Parkington
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Stone Tools
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