Acknowledging Behavior and Process in Early Caribbean Stone Tools: The Case of the Ortiz Site, Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Since the 1930s, scholars have examined variation in early lithic assemblages across the Caribbean archipelago. Long-held explanations for the genesis of these assemblages (and the differences among them) include cultural/stylistic factors, aspects of raw material availability/quality, or the intended type(s) of activities of specific tool types or industries. Lamentably, such attempts have often served to relegate lithic toolkits to being mere deterministic responses to external stimuli. Analysis of the lithic assemblage from the Ortiz site, an early (2340 cal BC–cal AD 310) habitation site in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico examines the sustained and contemporary manufacture of both blade and expedient flake technologies. We present here the results of morphological, experimental, and use-wear analyses which sought to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the decisions ancient stone tool makers and users made as they undertook processes of lithic procurement, reduction, and use. Using Ortiz as a case study, our hope is to (re)situate the behaviors and processes of lithic procurement and manufacture in the early Caribbean within the hands of ancient knappers whose assemblages were, above all, products of conscious choices, and far more complex than caricatures of their purportedly “simple” hunter-gatherer way of life.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40314.0