Using Lithic Conveyance to Reconstruct Paleoindian Cultural Landscapes in the Great Basin

Summary

Archaeologists commonly use the geographic patterning of sourced artifacts to understand how prehistoric cultures used their landscapes, yet exactly what this patterning indicates remains unclear. The Paleoindian literature reflects a tendency to assume that toolstone conveyance reflects direct acquisition (i.e., mobility) motivated by subsistence and technological concerns, rather than acquisition (i.e., exchange) motivated by social concerns. Yet the challenge of actually distinguishing between mobility and exchange persists. Here, I offer some ideas that might help us make headway on the linkage problem we confront when attempting to infer mode of acquisition from patterns of toolstone conveyance, focusing on the North American Great Basin. I imagine a Paleoindian cultural landscape defined, not just by the distribution of food and non-food resources, but also other people, to propose that both mobility and exchange, perhaps operating at different scales in relation to subsistence, technological, and social motivations, contributed to the patterns of obsidian, fine-grained volcanic, and chert conveyance that we see.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21641