Article1986

Technological Efficiency and Tool Curation

638 citations0/0 files storedAmerican Antiquity

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Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology Archaeology and ancient environmental studies Archaeological and Geological Studies

Abstract

Archaeologists frequently explain tool curation by its efficiency. Such explanations ignore the fact that curation is a complex activity and that its component parts are efficient in different ways. I argue that the nature and distribution of lithic resources critically affect technological efficiency and I discuss two aspects of curation, maintenance and recycling, asserting that they are responses to raw material shortages. Shortages result from regional geological conditions and from behavior patterns that restrict access to raw material in certain contexts. Ethnographic and archaeological examples support this hypothesis and highlight the relationship between subsistence-settlement organization, raw material distribution, and technology.

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References

1979Organization and Formation Processes: Looking at Curated Technologies 1982Hafting and Retooling: Effects on the Archaeological Record

Cited by

1994Raw-Material Availability and the Organization of Technology 1988The Three Sides of a Biface 1994A Formal Approach to the Design and Assembly of Mobile Toolkits 2006Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology 2004Flaked stones and old bones: Biological and cultural evolution at the dawn of technology 1995Middle paleolithic scraper reduction: Background, clarification, and review of the evidence to date 2008The Analysis of Stone Tool Procurement, Production, and Maintenance 1996An Exegesis of the Curation Concept

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