The Allen Site: A Paleoindian Camp in Southwestern Nebraska

Ch 10: The All en Site Lithic Assemblage

Spatial Structure and Refitting of the Allen Site Lithic Assemblage / 147 sections of the discussion therefore collapse these nine units to avoid this problem. This is particularly true in discussions that attempt to draw together all of the analyses. In these, we ultimately must consider all lines of evidence at a single scale of analysis, and much of the final synthesis is thus necessarily structured in terms of OL 1, the IZ, and OL 2. Beyond this, we note that these results suggest very strongly that we must treat the Allen site assemblage, and any stratigraphic partitions of the Allen site assemblage , as accumulations of material from an unknown number of distinct site uses, not all of which may have occurred for the same purpose (cf. Binford 1982). The real question we ask by considering temporal patterns in the site material, then, is whether or not the aggregate pattern of human occupation of the site area changed over time: the available data do not allow us to identify anything that we can confidently interpret as the results of single occupations. Reconstructing this aggregate pattern in more detail requires more specific information on the kinds of material recovered from the site, and the chapters that follow present this information. 148 This chapter discusses the flaked-stone artifacts from the Allen site; the chapter that follows addresses other archaeological material and features. The relatively uncontrolled 1947 excavations produced a fairly large sample of artifacts, and the lack of vertical provenience for this material limits its analytic usefulness considerably. We include the worked stone from these excavations in some sections of our analysis below but in most cases do not consider it in detail. In the case of the debitage recovered in 1947, we simply note that such material exists but do not include it in any of our analyses. All artifact analyses are inevitably selective, focusing on some aspects of a collection and neglecting others , and this selectivity generally reflects the research issues a given analysis chooses to address (although this may not always be made explicit). Our analysis emphasizes three overriding topics: the universally important issue of culture history, the almost as universal problem of reconstructing site activities, and the organization of technology evident at the site. We therefore classify the Allen site collection into categories that, we argue, reflect patterns of artifact use and manufacture, and we focus particular attention on categories of temporal diagnostics. In addition, our analysis of the flaked stone assemblage emphasizes data that bear on the widespread characterization of Paleoindian technology as carefully designed, heavily reliant on transported bifacial cores, and raw material– conservative, particularly in its regular recycling of tools from one use or form to another (also see Bamforth 2002b, 2003). The remainder of this chapter discusses the ways in which we analyzed the collection, describes the assemblage in terms of our artifact classification (addressing the possibility of use of heat alteration and the kinds of blanks on which tools were made), and presents the results of our microwear and blood residue analyses. It then examines the debitage, the pattern of raw material use, and the problem of distinguishing tools made and used on-site from tools carried in from elsewhere. Finally, it addresses patterns of temporal change in the assemblage. Flaked Stone: Methods The flaked stone assemblage can be divided into worked material (tools and production rejects) and unworked debris (flakes and shatter). Worked stone and debitage were processed separately as follows. Worked Stone The general category of worked stone was sorted into 11 more specific categories based on an inspection of the range of variation in the collection; one of these (edgemodified flakes) can be further subdivided. Table 10.1 summarizes the frequencies of these categories by the nine strata defined in chapters 8–9. We define these types here and discuss them in more detail below. We have taken a conservative approach to identifying flake scars on the edges of artifacts as evidence of intentional retouch. Although Paleoindian faunal analysis has been in the forefront of research into the effects of taphonomic processes, the importance of such processes has yet to be acknowledged in Paleoindian lithic analysis (Bamforth 2002b). There is excellent evidence both that forces like trampling produce traces that Chapter 10 THE ALLEN SITE LITHIC ASSEMBLAGE Douglas B. Bamforth and Mark Becker The Allen Site Lithic Assemblage / 149 look like use and patterned retouch (Bamforth 1998; McBrearty...