Evaluating lithic microwear traces in terms of settlement mobility patterns and raw mateiral distributions

Summary

The paper investigates concrete methods to evaluate lithic microwear data in conjunction with human mobility patterns and raw material distributions. Since the discovery of micro-polish variety reflecting different worked materials, use-wear analysts emphasized reconstruction of individual behavioral episodes at the site location. However, actual wear traces reveal highly complex patterns, partially attributable to combined factors of mobility and raw material selection. Conventional methods of wear interpretation confront such problems as coarse-grained rocks, heavy surface patina, and superimposed traces, analogous to palimpsest phenomena in site structure. Thus, use-wear data tend to underestimate implements less suitable to high power analysis. Repeated overwriting of use-wear on working edges of high quality rocks reflects gradient dichotomy between on-site consumption of local resources, and technological strategy of retaining good quality materials of limited availability on the landscape. The proposed method would alleviate existent biases in traditional use-wear interpretation. Case studies in the Japanese Upper Paleolithic are discussed from Tohoku University excavation projects of the Mogami River drainage, Shinjo Basin on the Japan sea side, where excellent quality materials of shale schist are locally abundant and utilized in blade based industries.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage