A Big Look at Small Tools: An Analysis of the Emergence and Dispersal of Microliths in Eurasia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The appearance of microliths and their rapid spread throughout Eurasia is one of the major developments in the evolution of Paleolithic technologies, since microliths and microblades, as part of complex modular tool packages, became the dominant technology in the Pleistocene (around 25,000 years ago) and persisted into the Holocene. Microliths are small stone blades that measure less than 50 mm in length. Typically assumed to have been hafted to projectile weapons, microliths have been seen as an important innovation because they were portable, multi-purpose, and standardized tools. Despite the importance of microliths in Paleolithic record, there has been no large-scale, comparative analysis of the contexts of the emergence of these miniaturized lithics and, as such, we lack a broader understanding of the drivers of the emergence and spread of these microlithic technologies. In this study, I created a database of microlith site dates and used contemporary spatial and statistical analyses to investigate the environmental and technological contexts of the emergence and dispersal of microliths across Eurasia. This allows researchers to better understand cultural innovation and diffusion in the prehistoric past and how technological innovations facilitate, reflect, and impact human interactions with each other and their environments.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38237.0