Change and Adaptation in Stone Tool Technology in Jordan ca. 1000 BCE

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The decline and replacement of stone tools with their metal counterparts in regions with traditions of metallurgy has been shown to have been a slow and variable process that involved specific types of tools marking the metallurgic transition at different times and in specific contexts.  For example, in the region of the southern Levant (Jordan, Palestine, Israel), studies have demonstrated the stone-to-metal transition at a variety of sites in which chipped stone ad hoc tools and sickles persisted up to 2000 years after the introduction of metal counterparts ca. 3000 BCE. This study presents a lithic assemblage from the archaeological site of Dhiban, Jordan dating to approximately 1000 - 700 BCE that consists of small blades, debris associated with blade production, and some possible ad hoc flake tools.  The results of a formal analysis of these lithics align with models of technology adoption in Levantine sites of this period, where these types of implements were the last to decline and be replaced by metal. This study therefore raises broader questions about the presumed inherent advantages of metal tools, and explores what advantages these specific types of stone tools offered that allowed their use to persist until potentially 700 BCE.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33117