Chipped Stone Technological Organization: Central Place Foraging and Exchange on the Northern Great Plains by Craig M. Johnson (review)

Craig Johnson’s book presents an extensive examination of prehistoric chipped stone technology from 169 archaeological sites along the Missouri River in South Dakota and North Dakota. Although this study includes PaleoIndian and Archaic sites, more attention is given to the lithic technology of late prehistoric and early historic horticultural Plains villages (AD 1000– 1886). Johnson suggests that chipped stone technology from this region has received less attention than subjects such as ceramics and architecture. Consequently, he examined flaked stone artifacts recovered by archaeologists since the mid-1950s. These stone artifacts are commonly referred to as arrow and “dart” points, hide scrapers, knives, and small tools used for cutting, boring, and whittling.

Johnson personally examined more than 100,000 chipped stone tools and pieces of processing debris or debitage. He compiled invaluable data from extant publications as well as from the less accessible “gray literature” that was the result of government-sponsored cultural resource management (CRM) studies. He used comparative geological collections to link chipped stone tools to known source areas for a variety of flints, cherts chalcedonies, jaspers, and silicified sediments that had been collected or “mined” by prehistoric peoples in the Middle Missouri subregion. Previous excavations along the Missouri River, including the Smithsonian Institution’s River Basin Survey work in the 1950s to 1960s, produced biased samples of stone artifacts and debris since the deposits often were not screened or were selectively screened at best. Consequently, Johnson used more representative archaeological samples from 30 relatively recent excavations that made use of systematic, controlled screening methods.

The author pointed out that many excavations in this region had been “salvage” projects in advance of dam construction on the Missouri River. Archaeologists focused more upon constructing chronologies and artifact taxonomies than on past human behavior. Johnson adopted a conceptual framework based upon human behavioral ecology and, by extension, central place foraging models. Ecologists have used these models to predict optimal food choice(s) made by animals inhabiting a fixed location. Food resources are not consumed at their source but are transported back to a “central place.” Given this strategy, the time and energy invested in making a round trip to a distant food source involves “decisions” about transport utility. In such cases, additional time and energy must be invested in processing the food resource at a remote location. Waste byproducts are left behind to “lighten the load,” and the quality of the resource is enhanced prior to returning to a central place.

Archaeologists have used central place foraging and load utility models to examine the exploitation of resources such as acorns, pine nuts, shellfish, and animal carcasses. The costs and benefits can be operationalized in terms of currencies, including energy, nutrients, and time. Johnson suggests that tool stone procurement and transport can also be examined within the context of central place foraging models. He chose to investigate field processing of tool stone obtained at geological locations in the Middle Missouri subregion and adjacent areas of the Great Plains. Field processing, then, ensures that higher-quality stone is transported back to the residential locations or villages.

Johnson found that quantities of specific raw materials decrease in archaeological sites that are farther removed from their source. In addition, he found that the size of flaking debris is smaller and less frequent in sites farther away from preferred stone sources. These findings lend support to a conservation model in which higher-quality raw materials are utilized more economically as one moves away from stone quarries and source areas.

In this important study, Johnson presents five appendixes replete with descriptive site summaries and quantitative data for chipped stone tools and flaking debris. He lays the groundwork for further studies of lithic technology in the Great Plains, particularly for past Plains villagers. The challenge that his investigation presents for archaeologists revolves around how the return rates...