The Chaine Opératoire Approach in Middle Paleolithic Archaeology. (original) (raw)
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From artefacts to behaviour: technological analyses in prehistory
Analyses of everyday objects (from pottery, flint, stone, osseous materials) form the basis of all archaeological research, regardless of the period, region, methodological approach or theoretical framework. Although methodology went through significant changes in past decades, especially regarding the importance of experimental and ethnoarchaeological methods, many of these analyses still relied on typology, and the theoretical discussions were less diverse and much slower. In recent years, a concept of technology as a cultural-driven phenomenon has become more widely accepted, largely influenced by the technological approach from the French anthropological and archaeological school. The conceptual paradigm of chaine operatoire is today a commonplace in almost every analysis of artefact manufacture, and it also triggered the creation of numerous different models for analyses from raw material managing through to the use and discard of artefacts. This paper discusses past and current approaches towards technology and its role within the given society. The combination of technological and contextual approach may not only improve our understanding of the artefacts in the context of a given society, their value, importance, function, and meaning, but also can help in starting the discussion on the creation of new theoretical frameworks for social phenomena such as raw material procurement, the organisation of craft production, the labour division, etc. The case studies on the bone industry in the Neolithic Balkans will be used as examples of the possibilities of such approach.
AWRANA, 2021
Historically, European Lower Paleolithic cultures have been divided according the presence or the absence of bifacial tools. In order to go beyond this typotechnological classification of Homo heidelbergensis groups, we now question socio-economic behaviors. These are identified by territorial, functional and technical analysis. That involves the study of the whole lithic production chaine operatoire from raw material gathering to the making and use of stone tools and how they are abandoning or carry away from the site. Also, we confront the results from lithic studies to other data from pluridisciplinary studies (archaeozoology, paleoenvironment…). Here we present a techno-morphological and functional approach of bifacial tools, flakes, flake-tools, and small flakes resulting from resharpening. Functional studies on Lower Palaeolithic tools are rare because of the difficulties to work on such an old material. We chose to apply this combined approach on the main archeological level ...
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 2000
The artifact typology of François Bordes has been universally applied to European Middle Paleolithic assemblages for the past half-century. Although its utility as a common descriptive language is acknowledged, it is argued that Bordes' type definitions are inadequate for use in modern quantitatively and technologically oriented studies of lithics because they are overly subjective and are an uncontrolled mixture of technological and functional variables acted on by raw material constraints. They also incorporate untested assumptions about the cognitive abilities of Middle Paleolithic hominids. This paper proposes to replace the Bordes typology with a method based on attribute combinations in which artifact descriptions will contain more behaviorally significant information than is afforded by the current system. The last years have seen a strong development of dissatisfaction among lithic typologists. The feeling that Bordes method has achieved a particular task but did not allow further progress . . . has led researchers working in this field to try new directions.
Observations on Systematics in Paleolithic Archaeology
The intellectual traditions that frame Paleolithic research in Europe and the United States are reviewed, and the European Middle Paleolithic archaeological record is examined for patterns that contradict the “textbook generalizations” embodied in Paul Mellars’ “human revolution”. The fact that different typologies are used to describe the Middle and Upper Paleolithic respectively emphasizes differences between them (especially if typology “trumps” any other systematic investigation of pattern), effectively precluding the perception of continuity in retouched stone tool form over the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition. The proliferation of “transition industries” over the past 20 years has made the picture much more complicated than it was before ca. 1990, and the identification of ca. 20 Mousterian “facies” since 1985 strongly suggests that the west Eurasian Mousterian is more complex and variable than previously thought. We conclude that there is much under-acknowledged formal convergence in the kinds and frequencies of chipped stone artifacts, that patterns in lithic industries are mostly determined by raw material package size, quality and forager mobility, that changes in lithic technology are only “historical” at the macroscale (i.e., over evolutionary time), and that formal convergence likely overrides any “cultural” component supposedly present in the form of retouched stone tools.
History Written in Stone: Evolutionary Analysis of Stone Tools in Archeology
Evolution: Education and Outreach, 2011
Populations of living things evolve over time, but do other things? Evolution involves transmission, be it of genes, ideas, or designs. What is transmitted, how and by whom, influences tempo and mode of evolution. In recent years, archeologists have applied evolutionary logic and processes to their study of things made and used by ancient people. Despite differences in subject units and in modes and patterns of transmission, evolutionary processes and the transmission modes that accompany them are worth seeking in archeological data. Stone spear points are abundant in the archeological record, yet we lack a theory to explain the creation, duration, and divergence of point types. Evolutionary studies of New World Late Pleistocene Paleoindian points are a step toward such theory, but limit the form of data and the evolutionary processes considered. An alternative in the study of Paleoindian points is geometric morphometric methods that do not constrain how point size and form are characterized nor assume branching divergence between taxa. Evolutionism should not dominate archeology, but it should become a major area of research within the field.
Ethnoarchaeology and the organization of lithic technology
Although the modern production and use of stone tools is rare, ethnoarchaeological research on this subject has provided important perspectives on methodological approaches to archaeological lithic analysis. Recent ethnoarchaeological research on lithics frequently takes the form of ''cautionary tales,'' warning against the primacy of functional variables most commonly invoked by lithic analysts. I argue that lithic ethnoarchaeology would benefit from a comparative organizational framework for explaining variation in patterns of stone tool use that takes into account the predictability and redundancy of the location and timing of technological activities. Understanding the underlying causes of modern patterns of stone tool use, in turn, offers a framework for exploring sources of lithic technological variation in the archaeological record. I also argue that technological analytical perspectives, such as the chaîne opératoire and sequence of reduction approaches, can benefit from the insights gained through lithic ethnoarchaeological research, helping us define important analytical concepts and identify appropriate units of analysis.
Olle et al 2017 New contributions to the functional analysis of prehistoric tools QI 427 2 5
New contributions to the functional analysis of prehistoric tools Half a century after the publication of Sergej Semenov's fundamental work " Prehistoric Technology " (1964), traceology or microscopic use-wear analysis continues to be the major method for the identification of prehistoric tool use and function. The recognition of macroscopic and microscopic wear traces as well as use-related residues contributes to various important aspects of archaeological research. Among them are relevant questions on site functions and activities carried out in prehistoric settlements or the reconstruction of archaeologically invisible components of complex tool technology, for example hafting and composite tool design. Traceology has significantly contributed to the debate on human behavioural complexity and cultural and cognitive advancement as well as other aspects of the evolution of the human cognitive capacity. Since the establishment of the International Scientific Commission A17 on " Functional studies of prehistoric artefacts and their socioeconomic influence on past societies " , and particularly since the Li ege Congress in 2001, its main activity has been devoted to the complex and manifold role of artefacts in human palaeoecology and the reconstruction of ancient economic systems. This implies that the reconstruction of production and use of artefacts in the past is not just the reenactment of processing of different raw materials , human activities or prehistoric technologies but a matter of understanding the evolution and adaptation of production techniques and their consequences for the people that produced and used the artefacts in a socioeconomic context. The Commission ensures that the greatest possible efforts are made to promote meth-odological advancement and support cutting-edge research that is aimed at widening the informative capacity of use-wear analysis, as well as establishing new data recording and relational database systems. This volume is the result of the Commission's activities during the XVII th UISPP World Congress from 1 to 7 September 2014 in Burgos, Spain, which included the organisation of three sessions dedicated to traceology. The first session was titled " Recent trends and aspects of use-wear analysis and their contribution to the modernization of archaeology " , and was oriented on the theoretical and archaeological reasoning from which a traceological study should stem from. As well it welcomed the discussion on recent innovations aiming to overcome specific problems of the basic meth-odological procedures of the discipline. They included technological enhancements to improve the microscopic observations , as well as combined methodological procedures aimed to face especially difficult archaeological issues. The second session was titled " Traceological work research and experimental work " , and was the one with the highest number of contributions. The presentations focussed on the importance of the experimental works for the study of the prehistoric tool uses, complemented by ethno-graphic observations and technical knowledge. Here archaeologists who work in the field of microwear and residue analysis and related experimental framework presented their current research in order to contribute to methodological debate and the exchange of ideas in the discipline. The third session, entitled " Microscopic determination of hafting technology: use-wear and residues " was specifically devoted to the issue of prehistoric hafted tools, which can be identified through examples of preserved hafts (resulting from very specific sedimentary contexts or because the handle has been produced in less perishable materials such as bone and ant-ler), through use-wear studies describing microwear produced by the haft itself or related to the use of a hafted tool, or after identification of residues used to adhere the tools to the haft. From the overall 63 oral presentations and posters presented during the congress, 21 studies were finally included as articles in the current volume. A first group of papers specifically focused on the experimental procedures, which from the very beginning of the discipline were recognised as of fundamental importance for its development. Skakun and Terekhina (2017) are opening the volume debating on the significance of experimental works in research of the function of ancient tools, and present a comprehensive case study of the experimental-traceological method based on the assemblage from the site of Bodaky. Chabot and colleagues are discussing the concept that functional studies require experimental referential according to the specific context of the sites to be investigated. Therefore, they propose a complete and specialised database based on high magnification use-wear analysis. Such a database is intended to assist the understanding of subsistence activities and to highlight lifeways, social relations and the complexity of the occupation sequence of the Northeast portion of the American continent (Chabot et al., 2017). Pedergnana and Oll e (2017) are discussing the study of use-wear on quartzite by means of an experimental programme based on the sequential monitoring of the process. This has the double aim of constructing a wide reference collection to serve for future interpretation of archaeological quartzite tools, and, at the same time, to improve the comprehension of the mechanical behaviour of such a particular raw material. Methodological issues regarding the combined use of optical microscopes and SEM are also evaluated.