Understanding Prehistoric Stone Tool Manufacture and the Formation of Archaeological Assemblages

By Albert M. Pecora, Ph.D.

2003

My dissertation:  Abstract, excerpts, modifications, and additions

2002  The Organization of Chipped-stone Tool Manufacture and the Formation of Lithic Assemblages.  Unpublished Dissertation.  The Ohio State University.

(Complete Document - pdf)

Dissertation Abstract

My dissertation research addresses the relationship between the organization of prehistoric lithic tool production and the formation of lithic assemblages. For the purposes of this study, two technological variables are used to define the organization of chipped tool manufacture: (1) the level of biface manufacturing complexity, and (2) the types of transport stages used.  A lithic transport stage is defined as the point within the manufacturing process at which lithic material is prepared for transport and the point at which the reduction process is resumed at a given location on the landscape.  Biface complexity is defined as the relative intensity of biface thinning necessary to convert a piece of lithic material into a bifacial tool.  Both variables have a direct impact on the distribution, density, and diversity of lithic artifacts on the landscape. 

Following various models of mobility, lithic research over the past 20 years has focused on explaining lithic artifact patterning in terms of changing prehistoric mobility strategies. In other words, lithic technologies are viewed as a reflection of prehistoric settlement organization.  These approaches treat settlement structure as a conditioning factor that influences the organization of lithic technology.  In other words, lithic technologies are thought to play a functional role within a given settlement system.   It is proposed in this study that prehistoric tool technologies and the resulting assemblages should not be treated as a reflection of settlement organization, land-use, or site-specific activities.  Instead, lithic artifact patterning is first and foremost a reflection of how stone tool manufacturing and use strategies were organized. 

Assuming that the organization of stone tool manufacture and use are culturally patterned, two general propositions can be advanced:  (1) If the same technology, in terms of transport stage and biface complexity, is employed at two different locations on the landscape occupied for the same general purposes, then the lithic assemblages generated would be very similar, and (2) if a different technology, in terms of transport stage and biface complexity, is employed at two different locations on the landscape occupied for the same general purposes, then the lithic assemblages generated would be very different.  If valid, it should hold that two different technologies employed at two different locations occupied for different purposes would have two different lithic assemblages.  Assemblage differences would be the result of differences in the organization stone tool manufacture.

The importance of this research is that it develops an approach for identifying and understanding how prehistoric lithic assemblages are formed.  It is these formation processes that create lithic artifact patterning over the landscape.  Without the ability to identify and understand such patterning, more significant archaeological inferences related to regional and temporal prehistoric settlement structure, and ultimately changes in settlement structure, cannot be made.  The lithic assemblage formation approach advanced in my dissertation provides the framework for using lithic data within established models of hunter-gatherer settlement organization.  (Complete Document - pdf)