Observations on Systematics in Paleolithic Archaeology

Clark, Geoffrey A.; Riel‐Salvatore, Julien

doi:10.1007/0-387-24661-4_3

Cited by 37 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…In fact, we believe we can detect an emerging consensus that the factors just noted are important determinants of forager assemblage composition in general (Clark 2002(Clark , 2009Clark and Riel-Salvatore 2006). Since we are likely not dealing with 'culturally diagnostic' artifacts but rather with the range of products of blade technology, we continue to think that the effect of sample size on assemblage diversity is quite significant and needs to be explicitly accounted for (e.g., Grayson and Cole 1998).…”

Section: A Forum For Commentary On Articles and Research Issuesmentioning

confidence: 91%

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2010

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W e wish to take this opportunity to respond to H. Bricker's comment (2010) about our assessment of the case for an Aurignacian-Châtelperronian interstratification at the Châtelperronian 'type site' of Grotte des Fées de Châtelperron (Riel-Salvatore et al. 2008). We are pleased to see that it has generated some interest, and thank Bricker for taking the time to express his concerns.Bricker takes issue with our general approach to typology, which he considers unorthodox, if not downright heretical. His critique boils down to the fact that we used types that, in his view, do not define the Aurignacian as it was traditionally defined by de Sonneville-Bordes and Perrot. The irony is that we largely agree with him and were explicit about this in our study. Why did we resort to creating more inclusive versions of the Aurignacian Index? Quite simply because the only previous typological assessment of the Grotte des Fées Châtelperronian, based on the retouched tools from all five cuts from Level B, yielded a GA value of precisely zero. This value derives from typological data in an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Harrold 1978) that Bricker considers "good" (i.e., reliable). Yet, Bricker asserts that "the recent detailed examination of the relevant material by Zilhão and his colleagues should be accepted as correct." Because that study indicates that up to 8.2% of the assemblage from the supposedly interstratified Aurignacian Level B4 consists of Aurignacian diagnostics, it is clear that something is amiss in the typological systematics used to make these assessments. Is it a matter of determining who is the better typologist (see Sackett [1988] for an insightful discussion of this issue)? Or is it more likely that Zilhão et al. (2006Zilhão et al. ( , 2008 and Gravina et al. (2005) simply used a list of Aurignacian diagnostics that is more inclusive than the traditional one devised over half a century ago? We think the latter, and that Bricker does not comment on this fundamental discrepancy effectively vitiates much of his critique.Some of Bricker's remarks also strike us as contradictory. On the one hand, he chastises us for the seemingly uncontroversial observation that mobility patterns and sample size must be taken into account in these assessments. But, after dismissing these concerns as of "dubious relevance," he then asserts that we do not come to "a meaningful conclusion." As for the "putative" Aurignacian tools, we stand by our contention that laminar technologies can generate only a rather limited range of tool morphologies, all of them easily produced by competent flint knappers. This equifinality is, in our view, sufficient to explain the presence of such items in most Châtelperronian assemblages. We are thus puzzled by Bricker's observation that the Châtelperronian at Les Tambourets contains 1.77-2.15%PaleoAnthropology 2010: L10−L11.

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Section: A Forum For Commentary On Articles and Research Issuesmentioning

confidence: 91%

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2010

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“…Artifact types and lithic industries coined in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century remain very much in use today even though we long ago solved the chronstratigraphic problems these named industries were intended to solve. 8,9 Lithic microwear analysis retains a seemingly irreducible subjective component and judgmental sampling strategies that severely limit its analytical value. 10 Grahame Clark's 11 technological ''modes'' are still applied at a global scale, 12,13 even though the lithic assemblages of entire continents, including Australia and the Americas, resist being shoehorned into one of these modes.…”

Section: How To Make Stone Tools Irrelevant To Human Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stone tool analysis and human origins research: Some advice from uncle Screwtape

Shea¹

2011

Evolutionary Anthropology

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The production of purposefully fractured stone tools with functional, sharp cutting edges is a uniquely derived hominin adaptation. In the long history of life on earth, only hominins have adopted this remarkably expedient and broadly effective technological strategy. In the paleontological record, flaked stone tools are irrefutable proof that hominins were present at a particular place and time. Flaked stone tools are found in contexts ranging from the Arctic to equatorial rainforests and on every continent except Antarctica. Paleolithic stone tools show complex patterns of variability, suggesting that they have been subject to the variable selective pressures that have shaped so many other aspects of hominin behavior and morphology. There is every reason to expect that insights gained from studying stone tools should provide vital and important information about the course of human evolution. And yet, one senses that archeological analyses of Paleolithic stone tools are not making as much of a contribution as they could to the major issues in human origins research.

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“…It makes good sense to do this-to use many sources of evidence-and most archaeologists probably would agree with at least the major aspects of most reconstructed sequences. But the absence of clear analytical standards-what evidence is to be used, and how-inevitably produces disagreement (e.g., Clark and Riel-Salvatore 2006).…”

Section: Inferring Reduction Sequencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…How are stages distinguished from one another and where exactly do borders lie between them? Obviously, the number of stages is an empirical matter, since different sequences need not involve the same number (although many workers, particularly in the Old World research traditions, assume that the number of stages can be generalized [Clark and Riel-Salvatore 2006]). A problem arises, however, when archaeologists recognize different numbers of stages in the same sequence.…”

Section: Inferring Reduction Sequencementioning

confidence: 99%

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2011

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The systematic production of usable flakes is often presented by lithic technologists as a rigid set of strategies or procedures to be followed in a step-by-step fashion. The quintessential example is the chaîne opératoire, developed by the French in the 1980s and widely applied today. An alternate view is that lithic reduction is a fluid behavioral set conditioned by an intimate familiarity with techniques and materials and tempered by environmental and situational circumstances. In an effort to address the 'how' and 'why' questions central to an epistemologically informed archaeology, and thus help lithic analysts from different research traditions better understand one another, we contrast models of discrete lithic reduction stages with those based on models of reduction continua. How we understand reduction influences how we interpret it. First, we summarize experimental data from North American bifacial reductions that can be modeled as continuous reduction processes using regression and principal components analyses. Then we apply these same methods to refitted cores from WHS 623x, an Upper Paleolithic site in west-central Jordan. The analysis shows that some aspects of lithic reduction are best modeled as continua, while others are better modeled as discrete. If reduction is continuous in some respects, it should be understood in continuous terms in those respects.This special issue is guest edited by Gilbert B. Tostevin (Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota). This is article #4 of 7. M any archaeologists view lithic reduction as a process that unfolds in essentially discrete, generalizable stages (e.g., Boëda 1993; Boëda et al. 1990;Callahan 1979). This view has a long history and can be traced to various sources. In the Old World, with its great time depth, it is often tied to assumptions and preconceptions about hominin cognitive evolution, with the implication that biology and culture are linked in a more or less linear fashion (e.g., Grahame Clark 1969, Foley and Lahr 1994), and that lithic typology and technology tend to co-vary with one another over space and time (e.g., Bar-Yosef 1994, 2002Bordes 1961;de Sonneville and Perrot 1953). In the New World, William Henry Holmes originated the reduction-sequence concept over a century ago (Holmes 1894;Shott 2003). But the possibility that reduction might be continuous in some cases and respects, shaped only by generalizable contingencies with which all Stone Age societies must contend, has seldom been addressed. Holmes apparently shared this view. He explicitly recognized that stages were analytical constructs, not revealed entities present in the minds of people long dead:"There can really be no line of demarcation separating the phenomena of one stage from those of another and there is a danger of the change being thought of as a definite and restricted episode, as marking a complete ending of one phase of existence, and as being a datum point from which to begin the study of the succeeding phase" (Holmes 1892: 248-249, cited in M...

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Observations on Systematics in Paleolithic Archaeology

Cited by 37 publications

References 63 publications

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Stone tool analysis and human origins research: Some advice from uncle Screwtape

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