Simulating Lithic Assemblage Composition and Its Relationship to Mobility

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Variability: A Reassessment of Its Meaning, Afforded Range, and the Relation to Process" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Artifact density and techno-morphological form distribution in lithic assemblages are often used to make inferences about mobility. However, the relationship between such observations and mobility strategies varies with socio-natural contexts, leading to contrasting interpretations of the same data. To overcome such indeterminacy, we investigate the physical movement of artifacts as a proxy for the movement of people. An exploratory agent-based simulation indicates how different combinations of lithic reduction, reuse, selection, and transport affect assemblage composition, modeled using nodules of raw material (cores) and the pieces of stone struck from them (flakes). The simulated artifact distributions serve as hypotheses that are tested with empirical data from two surface stone artifact assemblages from semiarid Australia: one low-density record dating to the late Pleistocene, where raw material is not locally available; and one higher-density record from the late Holocene from a context of raw material abundance. These records should exhibit differences in formational processes and the use of stone. However, thought of in relation to the simulation outcomes, similarities in place use are suggested for both records, with a similar set of simple processes responsible for the emergent patterning observed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Variability: A Reassessment of Its Meaning, Afforded Range, and the Relation to Process   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36940.0