Comment on “Tomato Springs: The Identification of a Jasper Trade and Production Center in Southern California”

Shackley, M. Steven

doi:10.2307/281603

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 24 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…Hughes [52, pp. 367] points out that other durable commodities may eventually prove useful as indices of trade or long-distance movement, but some studies of such materials have produced highly misleading findings (see comments by Koerper et al [80] and Shackley [97] on Cottrell [23]). Obsidian (traced to source via XRF analysis) and marine shell artifacts recovered from contexts far from the nearest ocean offer more secure inferences on the movement of goods.…”

Section: Previous Estimates For the Antiquity Of California-great Basmentioning

confidence: 97%

Ancient long-distance trade in Western North America: new AMS radiocarbon dates from Southern California

Fitzgerald

Jones

Schroth

2005

Journal of Archaeological Science

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Eleven Olivella biplicata spire-lopped shell beads from six sites located 250-365 km inland from the Pacific coast of southern California produced AMS dates between 11,200 and 7860 CAL BP. Olivella shell beads were well-documented items of prestige and media of exchange in Native California, and recovery of these examples from inland contexts indicates low-level exchange between resident populations of the coast and the southwestern Great Basin by at least 10,300-10,000 CAL years BP. These findings represent some of the earliest unequivocal evidence for long-distance trade in western North America and push the antiquity of this important form of inter-group interaction back several thousand years earlier than previously thought.

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Section: Previous Estimates For the Antiquity Of California-great Basmentioning

confidence: 97%

Ancient long-distance trade in Western North America: new AMS radiocarbon dates from Southern California

Fitzgerald

Jones

Schroth

2005

Journal of Archaeological Science

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Intrasource Chemical Variability and Secondary Depositional Processes

Shackley

1998

Archaeological Obsidian Studies

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Going the distance: Mapping mobility in the Kalahari Desert during the Middle Stone Age through multi-site geochemical provenancing of silcrete artefacts

Nash

Coulson

Staurset

et al. 2016

Journal of Human Evolution

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This study utilises geochemical provenancing of silcrete raw materials, in combination with chaîne opératoire analyses, to explore lithic procurement and behavioural patterns in the northern Kalahari Desert during the Middle Stone Age (MSA). New data from the sites of Rhino Cave, Corner Cave, and ≠Gi in northwest Botswana, combined with earlier results from White Paintings Shelter, reveal that the long distance transport of silcrete for stone tool manufacture was a repeated and extensively used behaviour in this region. Silcrete was imported over distances of up to 295 km to all four sites, from locations along the Boteti River and around Lake Ngami. Significantly, closer known sources of silcrete of equivalent quality were largely bypassed. Silcrete artefacts were transported at various stages of production (as partially and fully prepared cores, blanks, and finished tools) and, with the exception of ≠Gi, in large volumes. The import occurred despite the abundance of locally available raw materials, which were also used to manufacture the same tool types. On the basis of regional palaeoenvironmental data, the timing of the majority of silcrete import from the Boteti River and Lake Ngami is constrained to regionally drier periods of the MSA. The results of our investigation challenge key assumptions underlying predictive models of human mobility that use distance-decay curves and drop-off rates. MSA peoples in the Kalahari appear to have been more mobile than anticipated, and repeatedly made costly choices with regard to both raw material selection and items to be transported. We conclude that (i) base transport cost has been overemphasised as a restrictive factor in predictive models, and (ii) factors such as source availability and preference, raw material quality, and potential sociocultural influences significantly shaped prehistoric landscape use choices.3

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Comment on “Tomato Springs: The Identification of a Jasper Trade and Production Center in Southern California”

Cited by 5 publications

References 24 publications

Ancient long-distance trade in Western North America: new AMS radiocarbon dates from Southern California

Ancient long-distance trade in Western North America: new AMS radiocarbon dates from Southern California

Intrasource Chemical Variability and Secondary Depositional Processes

Going the distance: Mapping mobility in the Kalahari Desert during the Middle Stone Age through multi-site geochemical provenancing of silcrete artefacts

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