Morphometric Analysis and the Investigation of Communities of Stone Toolmakers

Summary

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

This paper will explore the usefulness of morphometric analysis when investigating how communities of stone toolmakers are embedded in and help construct their social landscape. Utilizing the concept of communities of practice, I intend to examine the culturally and historically situated nature of stone toolmakers through the analysis of their products. Morphometric analysis has the ability to preserve the complex three-dimensional morphology of artifacts; and the measurement of whole artifact forms may provide insights into geographic and temporal learning patterns of stone toolmakers. Specifically, I will investigate hafted bifaces created by communities of stone toolmakers during the Archaic period in southeastern North America because of the existence of spatial and temporal morphological trends in this tool type. Data from a preliminary study of Early Archaic hafted bifaces from a lithic manufacturing site in Kentucky will be discussed. Intensively occupied during the Early and Middle Archaic periods, site 15TR1 has extensive lithic deposits that represent all stages of manufacture. Hafted bifaces typed as Kirk and Kirk-Like make up approximately 70% of the total hafted biface assemblage (n=455). This paper presents analysis results and discusses how such an approach is useful when exploring communities of practice.

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): 25515