The recycling of material culture today and during the Paleolithic

Abstract

Archaeologists are being increasingly challenged to apply their methods and perspectives to address contemporary global concerns, such as material consumption and recycling. The archaeological investigation of recycling can contribute to understanding its behavioral causes and situational contexts because it can reveal systematic patterning in its temporal, spatial, and formal dimensions. In this paper, I review some of the archaeological evidence of artifact recycling and a few lessons drawn from those studies, including general patterns in lithic recycling behavior and needs to address ambiguity in the definition of recycling, compounding factors of equifinality in lithic reduction, and recognizing opportunism in recycling behavior. This evidence is also used to consider the behavioral and environmental circumstances of patterned recycling in the broader study of material culture and human behavior. It is argued that archaeological studies can offer useful contributions to such universal theories and that archaeological explanations about recycling behavior would benefit from greater integration with the larger body of historical and social science studies on this topic.

Kosti: jedna od najranijih sekundarnih sirovina

“…Uvod Recikliranje i ponovna uporaba raznih materijala i predmeta javljaju se kroz cijelu ljudsku povijest, još od samih početaka (Amick 2015). Međutim, odnos prema praksi recikliranja dosta se mijenjao tijekom vremena i u različitim kulturama.…”

“…Razlozi i motivi za recikliranje u različitim kulturama, međutim, nisu bili samo ekonomski, već i kulturni, odražavajući kulturni odnos prema određenim predmetima i sirovinama od kojih su nastali (cf. Drackner 2005;Amick 2015).…”

Recycling in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age: evidence of flint recycling at Ein-Zippori, Israel

“…In modern times recycling is understood as a process of turning discarded materials into new useable materials. Although it is difficult to identify recycling in pre-industrial societies, it has been shown both in archaeological and ethno-archaeological research, that recycling discarded materials has been practiced since ancient times for different reasons (Amick 2007(Amick , 2015Camilli & Ebert 1992;Hayden & Cannon 1983;Holdaway et al 1996;Vaquero et al 2012Vaquero et al , 2015. The origin of recycling behavior was related to the development of specialized technologies as a result of an increasing spectrum of daily activities (Rossell et al 2015).…”

The Effects of Secondary Recycling on the Technological Character of Lithic Assemblages

“…Lithic artifacts were recycled throughout prehistory in many areas of the globe (Amick 2007(Amick , 2015Assaf et al 2015;Baena Preysler et al 2015;Barkai 1999; Barkai et al 2015;Belfer-Cohen and Bar-Yosef 2015;Camilli 1988;Gravina and Discamps 2015;Hiscock 2009Hiscock , 2015Shafer and Hester 1991;Shimelmitz 2015;Turq et al 2013;Vaquero 2011;Vaquero et al 2012Vaquero et al , 2015Whyte 2014). However, because of difficulties in identification, recycling as a process receives comparatively little attention in the archaeological literature (Vaquero 2011).…”

“…However, because of difficulties in identification, recycling as a process receives comparatively little attention in the archaeological literature (Vaquero 2011). This is problematic because recycling has the potential to affect chronological and compositional assessments of assemblages by creating misleading associations between items that were not used together in the same space or time (Amick 2015;Camilli and Ebert 1992). Recycling can also cause a spatial displacement and fragmentation of reduction sequences, sometimes with preferential selection of specific shapes and sizes for recycling (Belfer-Cohen and Bar-Yosef 2015;Vaquero et al 2015).…”