Frick & Herkert (2014) - Lithic Technology and Logic of Technicity (original) (raw)

The present-day research on lithic analysis provides very different approaches how stone artifacts can be recorded, analyzed, and interpreted. Most scholars agree today that a purely typological view should be avoided. The last three decades provided a technological approach to lithic research. Likewise, there are also very different approaches how lithic assemblages should be classified. Beside the Bordes-Binford debate if assemblages can be seen as made by distinct groups or if they are functional units, many other hypotheses have been formulated (like environmental, transformative or recycling approaches, production analysis, core classification criteria, as well as functional analysis within use-wear or hafting studies). In the context of lithic analysis, Eric Boëda’s research is of outstanding interest, because he formulated many technological approaches that are very often used, and in some research traditions they are nearly standard. This paper uses his newly published work (Boëda 2013) as an opportunity to resume his litho-technological approaches, but also to discuss Boëda’s approaches and try to integrate these into the context of lithic analysis. In his recent work, Eric Boëda sums up his litho-technological research of the past three decades and combines it with the sociocultural work of Gilbert Simondon, Yves Deforge, André Leroi-Gourhan and others. The focus lies on the understanding of how and why lithic artifacts develop and change through time, particularly with regard to production schemes and techno-functional aspects, wherein Boëda presents a classification of six different core-types. The theoretical work is concluded and elucidated with the example of blade industries in the Near East. More than only presenting a classical review or a summary of Boëda’s latest work, this paper also aims to help make the complex theme accessible to non- French speakers. Thus, the emphasis lies on the theoretical, litho-technological aspects, particularly on the terminological understanding and the core-type classification. Since Boëda’s work combines a broad spectrum of philosophical and theoretical framework with lithic analyses, we try to clarify and revise important points and supplement them with own approaches. The aim of this paper is to contextualize his approaches and show that they round out other lithic analysis to a more holistic view of lithic artifacts with the goal to contribute to complete the Paleohistoriography.