The Tabular Scraper Trade: Complexities of a Prehistoric Pastoral Trade System

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Originally modelled as a down-the-line exchange system from the desert to the settled zone, analyses of previously unpublished materials synthesized with newer materials indicate that the flint tabular scraper production and distribution system was a complex mixture of local desert consumption and long distance trade of objects that changed in function, role, and value depending on context and place in their use-life trajectory. These complexities are reflected in: 1. Different kinds of quarry sites reflecting different structures of production, 2. Find proveniences reflecting mortuary offerings, other cultic contexts, trade caches, secondary production sites, and domestic contexts, 3. Chronological variability suggesting changing symbolic meaning, and 4. Techno-typological variability which may, in part, be associated with both geography and chronology. Although originating in a system of desert pastoral production, itself variable in terms of degrees of intensity of production, it is likely that some kind of agent system operated at the seam between the settled and nomadic zones. The original simple down-the-line model must be tempered by these complexities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22928