Feminine Knowledge and Skill Reconsidered: Women and Flaked Stone Tools

Abstract

Archaeologists continue to describe Stone Age women as home bound and their lithic technologies as unskilled, expedient, and of low quality. However, today a group of Konso women make, use, and discard flaked stone tools to process hides, offering us an alternative to the man-the-toolmaker model and redefining Western "naturalized" gender roles. These Konso women are skilled knappers who develop their expertise through long-term practice and apprenticeship. Their lithic technology demonstrates that an individual's level of skill and age are visible in stone assemblages. Most importantly, they illustrate that women procure high-quality stone from long distances, produce formal tools with skill, and use their tools efficiently. I suggest in this article that archaeologists should consider women the producers of Paleolithic stone scrapers, engaged in bipolar technology, and as such perhaps responsible for some of the earliest-known lithic technologies.

Flake morphology as a record of manual pressure during stone tool production

“…Unlike previous studies examining variable stone tool forms (e.g. Roux and David, 2005;Roux et al, 1995;Stout, 2002;Weedman Arthur, 2010;Winton, 2005), the biomechanical patterns identified here do not, therefore, appear to be dependent upon differences in 'skill' or 'expertise' (although such qualities are difficult to define). Instead, we suggest the variable relationships between pressure and flake form observed here may be the results of differing choices (conscious or subconscious) in knapping technique.…”

A Twenty-First Century Archaeology of Stone Artifacts

“…Even contemporary studies of stone tool manufacture fall into the trap of contrasting complex retouched, formal "tools" with "expedient" forms. Arthur (2010), for instance, makes the case that women were as capable as men in making retouched scrapers and criticizes accounts that relegate women to simply producing "expedient" forms. As demonstrated above, there is nothing necessarily "simple" about "expedient" stone artifacts that either lack heavy retouch or retouch at all, no matter which gender produced them.…”

“…If technology is situational, then diagnosing why one particular technological solution was adopted where and when it was requires a comparative analysis, an approach increasingly provided by studies of technological organization (e.g., Andrefsky 2006;Binford 1973Binford , 1977Kelly 1988;Nelson 1991;Torrence 1983) as well as ethnoarchaeological studies (e.g., Arthur 2010;Weedman 2006). But as the Australian ethnographic accounts illustrate, there is no easy way to determine which categories of artifact best illustrate the operation of technological organization based on artifact morphology alone.…”

Ethnoarchaeology and the Organization of Lithic Technology

“…Early lithic ethnoarchaeological studies were mostly cautionary tales concerning problems with lithic analytical frameworks having to do with the emic reality of formal tools (Gallagher 1977;Gould et al 1971;MacCalman and Grobelaar 1965;White 1967;White and Thomas 1972). Although later studies increased in sophistication by focusing on the implications of modern lithic technology for understanding issues including the reality of stone tool traditions, the social contexts of learning, and gender (Arthur 2010;Hampton 1999;Petrequin and Petrequin 1993;Sillitoe and Hardy 2003;Weedman 2000Weedman , 2002Weedman , 2006, these often retain a cautionary theme or present the basis for some specific form of substantive analogy. Weedman (2006), for example, offers a description of the manufacture, hafting, and use of scrapers by the Gamo hideworkers of southern Ethiopia.…”