•Chert varieties were compared in Middle Paleolithic and Neolithic assemblages.•A multi-variate macroscopic, visual analysis was used.•Differences in chert utilization were explored through several ...interwoven factors.
A lithic sourcing study coupled with analyses of lithic reduction strategies and settlement- procurement patterns of Middle Paleolithic (Late Levantine Mousterian) and Early Neolithic (Late Middle PPNB) occupations revealed intertwined factors that shaped the different lithic provisioning strategies of the prehistoric groups. The accessibility and morphometrics of lithic sources, the techniques guiding the reduction process, economizing measures conditioned by elements of Optimal Foraging Theory and the settlement-procurement patterns of the consuming groups were important factors modeling the different lithic provisioning strategies. The interrelationship of these factors traces the complex process of lithic procurement and places it more fully within the context of human behavioral ecology.
Identifying stone tool production techniques in the archaeological record can inform on prehistoric economy, time budgets, shared cultural practices, and the spatiotemporal occurrence of ...technological innovations and adaptations. The pressure flaking technique is one such innovation that appears on every continent Homo sapiens colonized. Pressure flaking has long been associated with the ability of flintknappers to produce small, regularly shaped flakes that were used to maintain particular edge shapes and resharpen dull tool edges with minimal loss of raw material. Despite the importance of pressure flaking, a method for supporting the identification of pressure flakes in the archaeological record is lacking. Here, we present a stone tool replication experiment that statistically compares flakes derived from bifacial pressure flaking and soft hammer percussion flaking. Our analyses show that pressure flakes are on average lighter, shorter, narrower, and thicker than soft hammer percussion flakes. Discriminant analyses indicate that pressure flakes can be correctly classified at a rate of 70 percent in a mixed sample. Furthermore, our findings validate the assumption that pressure flakes are less variable in form compared to soft hammer percussion flakes. Based on our results, we suggest quantitatively reevaluating the presence of pressure flaking in the global archaeological record.
La identificación de técnicas de producción de herramientas talladas de piedra nos informa sobre economía, asignación de tiempo, prácticas compartidas culturales y la ocurrencia sobre tiempo e espacio de innovaciones y adaptaciones técnicas. La técnica de extracción de lascas por presión es tal innovación que aparece en todos los continentes colonizados por Homo sapiens. Desde hace mucho tiempo se ha asociado la extracción de lascas por presión con la capacidad de producir lascas pequeñas y de formas regulares. Dichas lascas sirvieron para mantener las formas de filos y para la agudización de filos desafilados con el despilfarro mínimo de materia prima. No obstante la importancia de la técnica, falta un método bien establecido para la identificación de lascas extraídos por presión. En este ensayo se presente un experimento en la duplicación de herramientas talladas. Se hace una comparación estadística entre lascas extraídos por presión bifacial y por percutor blando. Los análisis indican que las lascas de presión son más ligeros, cortos, angostos y gruesos en comparación con lascas de percutor blando. La técnica analítica de Discriminant Analyses demuestra que en una muestra de lascas de presión y de percutor blando se clasifica correctamente los 70 porciento de las lascas de presión. En adición, nuestro análisis demuestra que las formas de lascas de presión no son tan variables que las de lascas de percutor blando. En base de estos resultados se sugiere que la presencia de extracción por presión de lascas deba ser reexaminada en el registro arqueológico mundial.
Intentional heat treating of toolstone has been documented to have begun at least by 70 K BP; however, the advantages of such treatment have been debated for decades. There are two schools of thought ...with regard to its purpose. One, is that it merely reduces the force required for flake propagation. A second is that it also alters flake morphological properties. We systematically tested these hypotheses by generating flakes from cores exposed to three different temperatures (ambient, 300 °C, and 350 °C) using automated propagation procedures that bypassed any human agency. While the force propagation magnitude is altered by heat treatment, the flakes were not. We examined these flakes according to nine measures of morphology. None differed significantly or systematically within the three categories. While our results confirm that heat treatment does reduce the force needed for flake propagation, they also demonstrate that such treatment has no significant effect on major morphological aspects of flake form.
Identifying stone tool production techniques in the archaeological record can inform on prehistoric economy, time budgets, shared cultural practices, and the spatiotemporal occurrence of ...technological innovations and adaptations. The pressure flaking technique is one such innovation that appears on every continent Homo sapiens colonized. Pressure flaking has long been associated with the ability of flintknappers to produce small, regularly shaped flakes that were used to maintain particular edge shapes and resharpen dull tool edges with minimal loss of raw material. Despite the importance of pressure flaking, a method for supporting the identification of pressure flakes in the archaeological record is lacking. Here, we present a stone tool replication experiment that statistically compares flakes derived from bifacial pressure flaking and soft hammer percussion flaking. Our analyses show that pressure flakes are on average lighter, shorter, narrower, and thicker than soft hammer percussion flakes. Discriminant analyses indicate that pressure flakes can be correctly classified at a rate of 70 percent in a mixed sample. Furthermore, our findings validate the assumption that pressure flakes are less variable in form compared to soft hammer percussion flakes. Based on our results, we suggest quantitatively reevaluating the presence of pressure flaking in the global archaeological record.
Archaeologists recognized that prehistoric people altered their lithic raw material through heating toolstone in their fires. Early evidence for the heat treatment of stone comes from South Africa ...during the Middle Stone Age. However, while archaeologists recognize that this alteration of knappable stone occurred, they have struggled in understanding why this pretreatment was practiced, what benefits the knapper gained through this process, and how to identify heat-treated stone in the archaeological record. Many experiments involving heat treatment have been performed over the last sixty years attempting to understand this process. While each of these experiments has provided something new to our understanding of thermal alteration of chert, there are still some fundamental gaps in our recognition and understanding of the process. There have been difficulties in developing reliable means for accurately identifying heat-treated materials macroscopically in the archaeological record. There have been several studies that have attempted to use microscopic methods to identify heat treatment but many of these destroy the sample and/or have limitations on the size and number of the pieces that can be analyzed. This study addresses how heat-treated materials can be identified using a series of five different quantitative macroscopic methods on one type of chert, Keokuk Chert. There have been difficulties in the past with creating a standard method for quantifying the knappable changes observed in these tests, often describing the changes to heat-treated stone as improving knappability or making knapping easier but what exactly these subjective terms mean is unclear. This research uses a series of four knapping experiments to examine the effects that heat treatment has on the flintknapping process. The four knapping experiments are broken into two laboratory experiments (dynamic and static loading; dynamic loading mimics the effects of percussion flaking and static loading mimics the effects of pressure flaking) and two actualistic experiments (whole clast and ground biface).The results of this study show that for identifying heat-treated Keokuk Chert, that color change traced through shifts in RGB color codes and changes in luster (gloss units) using a gloss meter are the two best methods for recognizing heated Keokuk Chert. The results from the knapping experiments reveals that heat treatment lowers the fracture toughness of the chert allowing a flintknapper to remove a flake with less force. This reduction in loading, in turn, promotes increased precision in concentrating dynamic (percussive) or static (pressure) energy-in the promulgation of flakes and fabrication of stone tools. Either dynamic or static which allows the knapper to slow down their blow (force) and be more accurate with their strikes. This is significant in that it provides a new interpretation of the effects of heat treatment: heat treatment does not produce modified flake forms, but instead reduces variation in the flakes produced by augmenting the inherent skills of the knapper.
PDF
