Debitage Analysis: Case Studies, Successes, and Cautionary Tales

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Debitage Analysis: Case Studies, Successes, and Cautionary Tales" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The archaeological literature is full of different ways of conducting debitage analysis to address research questions. The recurrent critiques include (1) the large amount of time needed to record flake types or flake attributes, (2) the implicit subjectivity in defining analytical units, (3) the unjustified assumptions that are made in defining classes of objects or selecting attributes for recordation, and (4) the lack of comparability of the data recorded across assemblages. All these critiques have missed the point. Debitage analysis objectives may be focused or broad, but in either case, the analyses should explicitly support the goals of the endeavor. The papers in this symposium provide examples of debitage analysis practices that have successfully addressed the research goals of the analyst and/or have provided insights into the best ways of extracting the specific information needed.