Hafting and Retooling: Effects on the Archaeological Record

1982 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 798-809 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence H. Keeley
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Distributional Effects ◽  
Methods Of Analysis

Hafting has long been recognized by archaeologists as a process affecting stone tools. However, the effects of this process on the archaeological record have been virtually ignored. Hafting affects the final typological form of tools because hafted tools are usually more extensively and intensively worked than their unhafted counterparts. Ethnoarchaeological and some recent archaeological evidence indicates that functionally equivalent but typologically diverse hafted and unhafted tools may be in use at the same site. Because hafted tools are disposed of as a consequence of the “retooling” of hafts, the context of their disposal may not be equivalent to the context of their use. But, unhafted tools appear to be disposed of more often at or near the focus of use. Indifference to the hafted/unhafted distinction then may seriously distort inferences based upon intrasite spatial analysis. It is also argued that hafting is a strategy that will be differentially employed by any social group at different sites according to circumstances, thereby contributing to interassemblage variability. Finally, some methods of analysis are suggested that will allow the typological and distributional effects of hafting and retooling to be taken into account by lithic analysts.

Slaves without Shackles: An Archaeology of Everyday Life on Gorée Island, Senegal

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibrahima Thiaw
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Settlement Pattern ◽  
Heterogeneous Population ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Urban Settlement ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Transnational Community ◽  
Changing Patterns

This chapter examines how slavery was imprinted on material culture and settlement at Gorée Island. It evaluates the changing patterns of settlement, access to materials, and emerging novel tastes to gain insights into everyday life and cultural interactions on the island. By the eighteenth century, Gorée grew rapidly as an urban settlement with a heterogeneous population including free and enslaved Africans as well as different European identities. Interaction between these different identities was punctuated with intense negotiations resulting in the emergence of a truly transnational community. While these significant changes were noted in the settlement pattern and material culture recovered, the issue of slavery — critical to most oral and documentary narratives about the island — remains relatively opaque in the archaeological record. Despite this, the chapter attempts to tease out from available documentary and archaeological evidence some illumination on interaction between the different communities on the island, including indigenous slaves.

scholarly journals 4E cognition in the Lower Palaeolithic

2020 ◽  
pp. 105971232096718
Author(s):  
Thomas Wynn ◽  
Karenleigh A Overmann ◽  
Lambros Malafouris
Keyword(s):  
Stone Tools ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Technical Expertise ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cognitive Archaeology ◽  
4E Cognition ◽  
Thinking Process ◽  
Computational Processes ◽  
Lower Palaeolithic

This essay introduces a special issue focused on 4E cognition (cognition as embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) in the Lower Palaeolithic. In it, we review the typological and representational cognitive approaches that have dominated the past 50 years of paleoanthropology. These have assumed that all representations and computations take place only inside the head, which implies that the archaeological record can only be an “external” product or the behavioral trace of “internal” representational and computational processes. In comparison, the 4E approach helps us to overcome this dualist representational logic, allowing us to engage directly with the archaeological record as an integral part of the thinking process, and thus ground a more parsimonious cognitive archaeology. It also treats stone tools, the primary vestiges of hominin thinking, as active participants in mental life. The 4E approach offers a better grounding for understanding hominin technical expertise, a crucially important component of hominin cognitive evolution.

Martyria

2019 ◽  
pp. 88-104
Author(s):  
David L. Eastman
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Practices

Martyria served as spatial focal points for numerous practices associated with the early Christian cult of the saints. However, the archaeological study of these martyr shrines is limited by the lack of evidence prior to the fourth century, forcing scholars in many cases to rely on textual evidence for their reconstructions of spaces. This chapter studies the earliest evidence for martyr shrines in Smyrna and Rome, which is textual, in order to establish primitive Christian practices surrounding martyria. It then examines the archaeological evidence from martyria in Rome and Philippi of the fourth century or later. These sites demonstrate the continuing expansion of martyria as cultic centers. The chapter concludes with a caveat concerning the popularity of small, even private, shrines that are invisible to the archaeological record.

The Archaeological Record of Indian Ocean Engagements

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunil Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Bay Of Bengal ◽  
Far East ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Neutral Model ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
Exchange Networks ◽  
The Far East

With the Bay of Bengal littoral as its focus, this chapter reviews the archaeological evidence for human expansions, migrations, formation of exchange networks, long-distance trade, political impulses, and transmissions of technocultural traditions in deep time, from around 5000 bc to 500 ad. In doing so, the author offers the idea of the Bay of Bengal Interaction Sphere, a “neutral” model of analysis that sets aside the constraints of the old Indianization debate for South-Southeast Asian interaction and situates the Bay within a broader global framework extending from the Mediterranean to the Far East in a new narrative of contact and change.

Living Lithics: ethnoarchaeology in Highland Papua New Guinea

Antiquity ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 77 (297) ◽  
pp. 555-566 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Sillitoe ◽  
Karen Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Direct Evidence ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Joint Work ◽  
Men And Women

This paper represents the joint work of two very different specialists. The fieldwork was undertaken by Sillitoe as part of his ethnographic research in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the interpretative work was done by an archaeologist, Hardy. The work described here represents some of the last direct evidence from users of stone tools. It shows how procurement, manufacture, use, storage and the relative roles of men and women in the process was dependant on what other materials were available – material often sadly elusive in the archaeological record. Discard did not reflect use, but was often guided by the thoughtful wish to avoid cut feet.

scholarly journals Elongation as a factor in artefacts of humans and other animals: an Acheulean example in comparative context

2013 ◽  
Vol 368 (1630) ◽  
pp. 20130114 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. J. Gowlett
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Capuchin Monkeys ◽  
Middle Palaeolithic ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
Satisfactory Outcome ◽  
New Caledonian Crows ◽  
Selection For ◽  
Individual Variables

Elongation is a commonly found feature in artefacts made and used by humans and other animals and can be analysed in comparative study. Whether made for use in hand or beak, the artefacts have some common properties of length, breadth, thickness and balance point, and elongation can be studied as a factor relating to construction or use of a long axis. In human artefacts, elongation can be traced through the archaeological record, for example in stone blades of the Upper Palaeolithic (traditionally regarded as more sophisticated than earlier artefacts), and in earlier blades of the Middle Palaeolithic. It is now recognized that elongation extends to earlier Palaeolithic artefacts, being found in the repertoire of both Neanderthals and more archaic humans. Artefacts used by non-human animals, including chimpanzees, capuchin monkeys and New Caledonian crows show selection for diameter and length, and consistent interventions of modification. Both chimpanzees and capuchins trim side branches from stems, and appropriate lengths of stave are selected or cut. In human artefacts, occasional organic finds show elongation back to about 0.5 million years. A record of elongation achieved in stone tools survives to at least 1.75 Ma (million years ago) in the Acheulean tradition. Throughout this tradition, some Acheulean handaxes are highly elongated, usually found with others that are less elongated. Finds from the million-year-old site of Kilombe and Kenya are given as an example. These findings argue that the elongation need not be integral to a design, but that artefacts may be the outcome of adjustments to individual variables. Such individual adjustments are seen in animal artefacts. In the case of a handaxe, the maker must balance the adjustments to achieve a satisfactory outcome in the artefact as a whole. It is argued that the need to make decisions about individual variables within multivariate objects provides an essential continuity across artefacts made by different species.

scholarly journals Análisis espacial del sistema defensivo de la costa granadina en época nazarí y su transformación tras la conquista castellana

X ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Rouco Collazo ◽  
José Mª Martín Civantos
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Defense System ◽  
Gis Software

Spatial analysis of Kingdom of Granada’s coastal defensive system in Nasrid period and its transformation after the Castilian conquestThe coast of the Kingdom of Granada was a border of importance in Nasrid times and it was also a zone to be protected after the Castilian conquest, mostly against piracy. To control the sea, the successive rulers would build a system of fortresses and watchtowers. The objective of this paper is to apply spatial analysis to the defense system of the southern coasts of Granada and Almeria from the fifteenth to seventeenth century, focusing in its evolution. To achieve this objective, we will use historical documentation and archaeological record as main data for the spatial analysis carried out by a GIS software, mainly visibility and distribution. With this approach we expect to add new insights to this topic and stablish a base for further research and comparison with other neighboring areas of the Kingdom of Granada.

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