The Organization of North American Prehistoric Stone Tool Technologies (Archaeological Series, 7)

In this volume Carr assembles a series of papers that examine and analyze archaeological lithics from an “organization of technology” approach. This approach relates artifacts such as chipped stone tools and debitage to a variety of economic and social parameters that allow sound inferences concerning the dynamics of past cultures, thus relating data generated from lithic analysis to larger anthropological questions within an explicit theoretical framework. Rather than a static indicator of types of activities and the frequency with which they were carried out, chipped-stone assemblages are examined as a source of information concerning mobility, social strategies, subsistence, risk, and other aspects of behavior. The papers in this volume explore current methods and theories concerned with the organization of stone tool technology through a variety of studies covering theoretical questions, methods, and models in conjunction with the examination of particular archaeological data sets. The volume concludes with overviews and discussion of the successes of an “organization of technology” approach so far and of possible directions for future research in this area.