Evaluating the Impacts of Ethnographic Research among Mobile Populations on Studies of Lithics in Sedentary Societies

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Exploring the Intersection of Ethnography and Technology: Understanding the Evolution of Human Technologies through Ethnographic Research" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Frameworks for the study of lithic technology mainly arose from studies of mobile, hunter-gatherer tool use and discussions of the impact of mobility on tool production and use. Within sedentary societies, however, different constraints on tool form exist than within mobile groups. This presentation examines how ethnographic research on mobile societies, which resulted in technological organization approaches to lithics, can be applied in sedentary societies, while accounting for the impacts of variation in mobility and sedentism. This presentation will utilize a case study of utilitarian bifaces from the lowland Maya region to evaluate similarities and differences in biface production and use in sedentary and mobile societies. I find that while technological organization is a useful framework in sedentary societies, there are important variations in tool use from the mobile societies on which such frameworks were based, and thus some modifications to such frameworks are needed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Exploring the Intersection of Ethnography and Technology: Understanding the Evolution of Human Technologies through Ethnographic Research   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52532