The role of experimental knapping in empirically testing key themes in the evolution of lithic technology: reduction intensity, efficiency and behavioural complexity

Abstract

Experimental knapping has complimented and stimulated lithic analyses for over a century.Throughout this period, the discipline has witnessed an increase in the scientific rigour and theoretical grounding with which these studies are conducted. This thesis charts these key trends and in doing so establishes a best-practice model of experimental knapping, the veracity of which is in turn tested using four new lithic experiments. These case-studies employ experimental knapping to advance our understanding of flake platform measurement, reduction intensity, technological efficiency, and behavioural complexity.The first case-study, Chapter 3, offers a more accurate and precise calliper-based method of flake platform measurement that relies on simple geometric approximations of platform shape rather than the inflexible and unreliable existing method of multiplying platform width by thickness. In Chapter 4, a new reduction intensity metric for backed blades, a hitherto overlooked tool-type, is developed and tested on the backed blades from an early Neolithic site in Turkey. This new metric allows a reconstruction of the raw material consumption patterns at the site, finding that the backed blades These four case-studies, coupled with a consideration of existing knapping experiments, allow an understanding of how experimental knapping is embedded in the broader archaeological research process, and ultimately tests the efficacy of a best-practice model of experimental knapping. This model identifies the initial scope, methodological control, and breadth of interpretations as the key variables dictating the validity of an experiment. While knapping experiments may differ markedly in their scope and control, they do not necessarily vary in their validity. Instead, it is the interplay of these variables that dictates the validity of experimentation. Within this best-practice model, lithic experiments are most robust when the scale of the initial scope, methodological control and ensuing interpretations are congruent, and when they involve explicit and falsifiable hypothesis testing.iii