In
archaeologyArchaeology or archeology is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material culture and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, and landscapes...
,
lithic analysis is the analysis of
stone toolA stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made partially, or entirely out of stone. Although stone-tool-dependent cultures exist even today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric societies that no longer exist....
s and other chipped stone
artifactsAn artifact or artefact is any object made or modified by a human. In archaeology, an artifact is an object recovered by some archaeological endeavor, which may have a cultural interest. Examples include stone tools such as projectile points, pottery vessels, metal objects such as buttons or guns,...
using basic scientific techniques. At its most basic level, lithic analyses involve an analysis of the artifact’s morphology, the measurement of various physical attributes, and examining other visible features (such as noting the presence or absence of
cortexIn lithic analysis in archaeology the cortex is the outer layer of rock formed on the exterior of raw materials by chemical and mechanical weathering processes. It is often recorded on the dorsal surface of flakes using a three class system: primary , secondary , and tertiary...
, for example).
The term 'lithic analysis' can technically refer to the study of any
anthropogenicAnthropogenic effects, processes or materials are those that are derived from human activities, as opposed to those occurring in biophysical environments without human influence....
(human-created) stone, but in its usual sense it is applied to
archaeologicalArchaeology or archeology is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material culture and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, and landscapes...
material that was produced through
lithic reductionLithic reduction involves the use of a hard hammer precursor, such as a hammerstone, a soft hammer fabricator , or a wood or antler punch to detach lithic flakes from a lump of tool stone called a lithic core . As flakes are detached in sequence, the original mass of stone is reduced; hence the...
(knapping) or
ground stoneIn archaeology, ground stone is a category of stone tool formed by the grinding of a coarse-grained tool stone, either purposely or incidentally. Ground stone tools are usually made of basalt, rhyolite, granite, or other macrocrystalline igneous stones whose coarse structure makes them ideal for...
.
In
archaeologyArchaeology or archeology is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material culture and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, and landscapes...
,
lithic analysis is the analysis of
stone toolA stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made partially, or entirely out of stone. Although stone-tool-dependent cultures exist even today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric societies that no longer exist....
s and other chipped stone
artifactsAn artifact or artefact is any object made or modified by a human. In archaeology, an artifact is an object recovered by some archaeological endeavor, which may have a cultural interest. Examples include stone tools such as projectile points, pottery vessels, metal objects such as buttons or guns,...
using basic scientific techniques. At its most basic level, lithic analyses involve an analysis of the artifact’s morphology, the measurement of various physical attributes, and examining other visible features (such as noting the presence or absence of
cortexIn lithic analysis in archaeology the cortex is the outer layer of rock formed on the exterior of raw materials by chemical and mechanical weathering processes. It is often recorded on the dorsal surface of flakes using a three class system: primary , secondary , and tertiary...
, for example).
The term 'lithic analysis' can technically refer to the study of any
anthropogenicAnthropogenic effects, processes or materials are those that are derived from human activities, as opposed to those occurring in biophysical environments without human influence....
(human-created) stone, but in its usual sense it is applied to
archaeologicalArchaeology or archeology is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material culture and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, and landscapes...
material that was produced through
lithic reductionLithic reduction involves the use of a hard hammer precursor, such as a hammerstone, a soft hammer fabricator , or a wood or antler punch to detach lithic flakes from a lump of tool stone called a lithic core . As flakes are detached in sequence, the original mass of stone is reduced; hence the...
(knapping) or
ground stoneIn archaeology, ground stone is a category of stone tool formed by the grinding of a coarse-grained tool stone, either purposely or incidentally. Ground stone tools are usually made of basalt, rhyolite, granite, or other macrocrystalline igneous stones whose coarse structure makes them ideal for...
. A thorough understanding of the lithic reduction and ground stone processes, in combination with the use of statistics, can allow the analyst to draw conclusions concerning the type of lithic manufacturing techniques used at a prehistoric
archaeological siteAn archaeological site is a place in which evidence of past activity is preserved , and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology and represents a part of the archaeological recordBeyond this, the definition and geographical extent of a 'site' can vary widely,...
. These data can then be used to draw an understanding of socioeconomic and cultural organization.
The term
knapped is synonymous with "chipped" or "struck", but is preferred by some analysts because it signifies intentionality and process. Ground stone generally refers to any tool made by a combination of flaking, pecking, pounding, grinding, drilling, and incising, and includes things such as mortars/
metateA metate is a mortar, a ground stone tool used for processing grain and seeds. In traditional Mesoamerican culture, metates were typically used by women who would grind calcified maize and other organic materials during food preparation...
s, pestles (or manos),
grinding slabthumb|250px|Stone slab in east-central California used to grind acorns.In archaeology, a grinding slab is a ground stone artifact generally used to grind plant materials into usable size, though some slabs were used to shape other ground stone artifacts...
s,
hammerstoneIn archaeology, a hammerstone is a hard Cobblestone used to strike off lithic flakes from a lump of tool stone during the process of lithic reduction. Often, a hammerstone is made of a material such as limestone or quartzite, is often ovoid in shape , and develops telltale battering marks on one...
s, grooved and perforated stones,
axeThe axe, or ax, is an implement that has been used for millennia to shape, split and cut wood, harvest timber, as a weapon and a ceremonial or heraldic symbol...
s, etc., which appear in all human cultures in some form. Among the tool types analyzed are
projectile pointright|100pxIn archaeology, a projectile point is an object that was hafted and used either as knife or projectile tip or both, commonly called an arrowhead. Occasionally, projectile points made of worked bone or ivory are found at archaeological sites, but generally the term is reserved for a...
s,
bifaceIn archaeology, a biface is a two-sided stone tool, manufactured through a process of lithic reduction, that displays flake scars on both sides. A profile view of the final product tends to exhibit a lenticular shape . Bifacial artifacts can be made on large flakes or blocks, and may be grouped...
s,
unifaceIn archeology, a uniface is a specific type of stone tool that has been flaked on one surface only. Such tools can be placed into two general classes: 1) modified flakes and 2) formalized tools, which display deliberate, systematic modification of the marginal edges and were often formed with a...
s,
ground stoneIn archaeology, ground stone is a category of stone tool formed by the grinding of a coarse-grained tool stone, either purposely or incidentally. Ground stone tools are usually made of basalt, rhyolite, granite, or other macrocrystalline igneous stones whose coarse structure makes them ideal for...
artifacts, and
lithic reductionLithic reduction involves the use of a hard hammer precursor, such as a hammerstone, a soft hammer fabricator , or a wood or antler punch to detach lithic flakes from a lump of tool stone called a lithic core . As flakes are detached in sequence, the original mass of stone is reduced; hence the...
by-products (
debitageThe term debitage refers to all the waste material produced during lithic reduction and the production of chipped stone tools. This assemblage includes, but is not limited to, different kinds of lithic flakes, shatter, and production errors and rejects....
) such as
flakeIn archaeology, a lithic flake is a "portion of rock removed from an objective piece by percussion or pressure," and may also be referred to as a chip or spall, or collectively as debitage. The objective piece, or the rock being reduced by the removal of flakes, is known as a core. Once the proper...
s and
coreIn archaeology, a lithic core is a distinctive artifact that results from the practice of lithic reduction. In this sense, a core is the scarred nucleus resulting from the detachment of one or more flakes from a lump of source material or tool stone, usually by using a hard hammer percussor such...
s.
Materials
StoneIn geology, rock is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.The Earth's outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock. In general rocks are of three types, namely, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic...
is the one category of material which is used by (virtually) all human cultures and, for the vast majority of the human past, is the only record of human behaviour. The end of
prehistoryPrehistory is a term used to describe the period before recorded history. Paul Tournal originally coined the term Pré-historique in describing the finds he had made in the caves of southern France...
does not signify the end of stone working; stones were knapped in Medieval
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
, well into the 19th century in many parts of Europe and the
AmericasThe Americas, or America, are lands in the Western hemisphere or New World, comprising the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. America may be ambiguous in English, as it is more commonly used to refer to the United States of America...
. Contemporary stone tool manufacturers often work stone for experimentation with past techniques or for replication.
FlintFlint is a hard, sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as a variety of chert. It occurs chiefly as nodules and masses in sedimentary rocks, such as chalks and limestones. Inside the nodule, flint is usually dark grey, black, green, white, or brown in color, and...
and
chertChert is a fine-grained silica-rich microcrystalline, cryptocrystalline or microfibrous sedimentary rock that may contain small fossils. It varies greatly in color , but most often manifests as gray, brown, grayish brown and light green to rusty red; its color is an expression of trace elements...
are the most commonly knapped materials and are compact
cryptocrystallineCryptocrystalline is a rock texture which is so finely crystalline, being made up of such minute crystals, that its crystalline nature is only vaguely revealed even microscopically in thin section by transmitted polarized light. Among the sedimentary rocks, chert and flint are cryptocrystalline....
quartzQuartz is the second most abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust . It is made up of a continuous framework of SiO
4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall formula SiO
2.There are many different varieties of...
. The difference between the two terms is colloquial, as they are geologically the same type of material. In common usage, flint may refer more often to high quality material from chalky matrix (i.e. "chalk flint" as found in Britain) and chert refers to material from
limestoneLimestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the mineral calcite . The deposition of limestone strata is often a by-product and indicator of biological activity in the geologic record...
matrices. To avoid this, the term "
silicateA silicate is a compound containing an ion in which one or more central silicon atoms are surrounded by electronegative ligands. This definition is broad enough to include species such as hexafluorosilicate , [SiF6]2−, but the silicate species that are encountered most often...
" may be used to describe the family of quartzes that are suitable for knapping.
In
North AmericaNorth America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and in the western hemisphere. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the southeast by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific...
,
Central AmericaManagua
Guatemala City
San Salvador
San Pedro Sula
Panama City
San José, Costa Rica
Santa Ana, El Salvador
León
San Miguel|-|}...
, and other places around the world, such as
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
and
New ZealandNew Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses , and numerous smaller islands, most notably Stewart Island/Rakiura and the Chatham Islands. The indigenous Māori named New Zealand Aotearoa, commonly translated as The Land of the Long White Cloud...
,
obsidianObsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock. It is produced when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools without crystal growth...
, or volcanic
glassIn general Glass refers to a solid, brittle, transparent material, commonly used for windows, bottles, or eyewear. Examples of glassy materials include, but are not limited to, soda-lime glass, borosilicate glass, acrylic glass, sugar glass, Muscovy-glass, or aluminium oxynitride. The term glass...
, was also a highly sought-after material for knapping and was widely traded. This is due to the quality of the stone, the razor sharpness of edges that can be created, and the fact that it fractures in highly predictable ways.
SoapstoneSoapstone is a metamorphic rock, a talc-schist. It is largely composed of the mineral talc and is rich in magnesium. It is produced by dynamothermal metamorphism and metasomatism, which occurs in the areas where tectonic plates are subducted, changing rocks by heat and pressure, with influx of...
, or steatite, has been a popular rock for grinding and carving among many cultures worldwide. It has been used for production of such disparate items as vessels/bowls, pipes, cooking slabs, and sculptures.
Areas of study
Conventional approaches to the analysis of knapped stone can be grouped into three elementary, yet ultimately interconnected, areas of study: typological analysis, functional analysis, and technological analysis. Additional areas of study, such as geochemical analysis, have been developed in recent decades.
Typological classification
In reference to lithic analyses,
typological classificationIn archaeology a typology is the result of the classification of things according to their characteristics. The products of the classification, i.e. the classes are also called types. Most archaeological typologies organize artifacts into types, but typologies of houses or roads belonging to a...
is the act of artifact
classificationClassification may refer to:* Library classification and classification in general* Taxonomic classification* Biological classification of organisms* Medical classification* Scientific classification * Classification...
based on morphological similarities. Resultant classes include those artifacts subsumed by tool, production, and
debitageThe term debitage refers to all the waste material produced during lithic reduction and the production of chipped stone tools. This assemblage includes, but is not limited to, different kinds of lithic flakes, shatter, and production errors and rejects....
categories.
The best known lithic typology is the series established by
Francois BordesFrançois Bordes , also known by the pen name of Francis Carsac, was a French scientist, geologist, and archaeologist. He was a professor of prehistory and quaternary geology at the Science Faculty of Bordeaux...
(1950) for the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic of
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
, where sixty three types of stone tools were defined on the basis of manufacturing techniques and morphological characteristics. According to Bordes, the presence or absence of tool types, or differences in the frequency of types between assemblages, were manifestations of cultural differences between ethnic groups. Notwithstanding that there have been several re-evaluations of Bordes’ interpretation of the "ethnicity" of variations in assemblage type composition, the basic assumption that there is explanatory value in the construction of morphologically defined types of artifacts has remained. For instance, the use of typologies as indicators of chronological and/or cultural affiliations is rarely disputed and is acknowledged as an invaluable analytical tool for this purpose.
Function
Functional analysis of stone tools – a term given to a variety of approaches designed with the aim of identifying the use of a stone tool – is based on the argument that the uses to which tools were put in antiquity leave diagnostic damage and/or polish on their working edges. This type of analysis is also known as
use-wear analysisUse-wear analysis is a method in archaeology to identify the functions of artefact tools by closely examining their working surfaces and edges. It is mainly used on stone tools....
Although there are debates concerning the physics of both edge polishes and edge damage which draw on the science of
tribologyTribology is the science and technology of interacting surfaces in relative motion. It includes the study and application of the principles of friction, lubrication and wear...
, modern microwear analysis usually depends on the comparisons of the edge wear of modern experimentally produced samples with archaeological and/or ethnographic tools. The ability of a microwear analyst has been tested in the past using sets of experimentally utilised tools. The mode in which these tools have been applied is unknown to the analyst before analysis. After analysis, comparison can be made between the actual use and the analyst's interpretation (this is known as "blind-testing"). The overall purpose is to provide an accurate, and precise, analytical instrument for the identification of stone tool function. It is worth noting that the precision of functional identifications may range considerably, from "scraping soft material" to "scraping fresh hide for 10 minutes" with a corresponding drop in accuracy as precision increases.
Technology
Technological analysis is concerned with the examination of the production of knapped-stone artifacts. The study of the attributes of waste products (
debitageThe term debitage refers to all the waste material produced during lithic reduction and the production of chipped stone tools. This assemblage includes, but is not limited to, different kinds of lithic flakes, shatter, and production errors and rejects....
) and tools are the most important methods for the study of knapped-stone technology, backed up with experimental production. A very wide range of attributes may be used to characterize and compare assemblages to isolate (and interpret) differences across time and space in the production of stone tools.
Petrological and geochemical analysis
Petrological and geochemical analysis can be useful in identifying the sources of lithics and assist in establishing trade and migration routes. Methods used are typical of those used in geologic research, such as
petrographicPetrography is a branch of petrology which focuses on detailed descriptions of rocks. Someone who studies petrography is called a petrographer. The mineral content and the textural relationships within the rock are described in detail. Petrographic descriptions start with the field notes at the...
thin sectionIn optical mineralogy and petrography, a thin section is a laboratory preparation of a rock, mineral or soil sample for use with a polarizing petrographic microscope...
analysis,
neutron activation analysisNeutron Activation Analysis is a nuclear process used for determining certain concentrations of elements in a vast amount of materials. NAA allows discrete sampling of elements as it disregards the chemical form of a sample, and focuses solely on its nucleus...
,
stable isotopeStable isotopes are chemical isotopes that are not radioactive . By this definition, there are 256 known stable isotopes of the 80 elements which have one or more stable isotopes. A list of these is given at the end of this article...
analysis, and
X-ray fluorescenceX-ray fluorescence is the emission of characteristic "secondary" X-rays from a material that has been excited by bombarding with high-energy X-rays or gamma rays...
.