Lithics After The Stone Age

Not everyone bought into the Bronze Age right away, and Rosen describes and classifies the stone tools that continued to be made and used in the Middle East for the next two thousand years. He considers subtypes, function, distribution, chronology, the organization of production, styles, the relationship between lithic and metal technology, and other aspects. Over 100 drawings and maps provide archaeologists with a guide to identifying finds. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Written in Stone: The Multiple Dimensions of Lithic Analysis demonstrates the vitality of contemporary lithics analysis by examining material from a variety of geographical locations. This edited collection is primarily concerned with the link between craft production and social complexity, the nature of trade, and the delineation of settlement patterns and manipulation of landscape. While deconstructing the present to reconstruct the past, each chapter incorporates a technological dimension shaped by the type of analysis utilized. Methods include microwear analysis, which adds significant understanding of stone tool function, to the identification of obsidian sources, which illustrates the potential of lithic provenance studies for reconstructing trade. This book verifies and expands on the notion that lithics play an integral role in our understanding of past societies at all levels of complexity, from Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to archaic states.

This volume offers a system for the hierarchical classification of British lithic artefacts from the Late Glacial and Holocene periods, and it is hoped that it may find use as a guide book for, for example, archaeology students, museum staff, non-specialist archaeologists, local archaeology groups and lay enthusiasts.

Lithic analysts have been criticized for being atheoretical in their approach, or at least for not contributing to building archaeological theory. This volume redresses that balance. In Stone Tools, renowned lithic analysts employ explicitly theoretical constructs to explore the archaeological record and use the lithic database to establish its points. Chapters discuss curation, design theory, replacement of stone with metal, piece refitting, and projectile point style.

The original research papers in the volume provide a broad review of current approaches to the study of lithic technology from the Palaeolithic to the present. The contributions address both with analytical techniques and interpretive issues. Collectively, they increase our understanding of issues such as tool function, means of production, raw material sourcing and exchange systems, and the evolution of human cognition, social organization and symbolic behavior.

This volume examines the large flint knife blade asking why these artefacts were so common in the late Bronze Age of southern Scandinavia, a time which is supposed to be characterised by the transition from bronze to iron technology.

Lithic Technologies in SedentarySocieties examines lithic technology from ancient societies in Mesoamerica, the Near East, South Asia, and North America, showcasing the important contributions in-depth lithic analysis can make to the study of sedentary societies around the world. Using cutting-edge analytical techniques these case studies address difficult anthropological questions concerning economic, social, and political issues, as well as global trends in lithic production. Lithic analysis focused on sedentary societies, especially in places like Mesoamerica, has previously been neglected mostly because of the high frequency of informal tools, but such bias limits the ways in which both lithic production and economic organization are investigated. Bringing the importance of studying such technologies to the fore and emphasizing the vital anthropological questions that lithics can answer, Lithic Technologies in Sedentary Societies is a valuable resource for scholars and students of lithic technology and sedentary, complex societies. Contributors: Fumi Arakawa, Mary A. Davis, James Enloe, Dan Healan, Francesca Manclossi, Theodore Marks, Jayur Madhusudan Mehta, Jason S. R. Paling, Steve Rosen, John Whittaker