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Technological Efficiency and Tool Curation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Douglas B. Bamforth
Douglas B. Bamforth*
Affiliation:
Anthropology Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106
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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.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , January 1986 , pp. 38 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1986

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References

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