Assessing Variability in Refitted Lithic Reduction Sequences at Boker Tachtit (Israel)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Distinguishing cultural relatedness from independent convergence in lithic technological behavior requires high-resolution behavioral data. Arguably, the best source of such high-resolution data comes from refitted reduction sequences because these sequences illustrate the procedural steps taken by individuals to produce stone tools. But much remains to be understood about the degree of variability in production that is possible among individuals within a single population (i.e., shared cultural environment). Before one can assess the degree to which something is “culturally related,” one must identify the range of acceptable variability. Simply put, what is “different” enough to be considered culturally unrelated? This project first measures variability within a single occupation utilizing refitted lithic reduction sequences from the earliest occupation (Layer 1) at Boker Tachtit, an Initial Upper Paleolithic site in the Negev (Israel). Secondly, once a range of variability has been established for a single occupation, I assess the likelihood that subsequent occupations (Layers 2 and 4) produced tools in a culturally-similar manner by an iterative comparison of individual nodular reductions (as proxies of an individual’s learning environment) within and between occupations to produce a quantitative measure of variation that falls within/outside of the range observed within the first occupation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40374.0