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13 The Organization of Technology Approach in the Southeast A call to Arms or a requiem? George H. Odell Andrew bradbury and Philip carr, along with sarah Price, have once again (carr and bradbury 2000) issued a call to lithic analysts in the American southeast for more frequent employment of an “organization of technology” approach to the study of stone artifacts. A useful definition of this concept was provided by Koldehoff (1987:154): “The way in which a culture or society designs its tools and structures tool production, use, and maintenance, so that the tools can respond effectively to the demands placed upon them by the society in its daily interactions with the environment (both biophysical and social), is considered the organization of technology.” As described by carr (1994a:1) from the standpoint of the lithic analyst, “The key to studies of technological organization is relating 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” (see also Kelly 1988:717; nelson 1991:57). expressed another way, the organization of technology approach examines the ways that technology is manipulated to promote the successful adaptation of human groups. Manipulation is considered broadly and, with regard to stone tools, includes all endeavors of which these objects formed a conceptual or material part, from procurement to discard. This is little different from what is regarded as behavioral archaeology (schiffer 1976), with an emphasis on the dynamic interchange with prehistoric cultural systems. it is also almost identical to the French chaîne opératoire as conceived most broadly (Franklin et al. this volume; Geneste and Maury 1997; odell 2001; sellet 1993). in this collection, carr and colleagues have decried the paucity of lithic studies in the southeast employing an organization of technology approach, despite a strong start in this region (Amick 1987; carr 1991). how is this initiative to be interpreted? As a nudge to awaken slumbering minions, who will forth- A Call to Arms or a Requiem? / 195 with don their armor and proceed to the battlements? or as a pathetic dirge to mourn the passing of missed opportunities? Perhaps these chapters provide clues to the state of lithic research in the southeast and the likelihood that integrative approaches to archaeological remains, such as the organization of technology, will be embraced in the near future. taking as a premise the idea that this collection is at least minimally representative of lithic research in the southeast, i will discuss the contribution from an organization of technology perspective. Procurement and Use of Raw Material The choice of raw material for tools is crucial to the prehistoric organization of technology because it conditions all other decisions regarding the technology. Thus one could ask, what do people do when the only tool stone available is of poor quality? This was an issue that randall cooper (this volume) confronted when analyzing tools from the elk Fork site in eastern Kentucky. As if to highlight the power of raw material constraints to influence other parts of the technological system, cooper found that cultural responses were similar in both the late Archaic and Fort Ancient occupations. That is, faced with relatively low-quality local material in the form of newman chert, occupants in both periods made an effort to conserve tools brought with them from other regions. worn-out tools they discarded, while the abundance at the site of small sharpening flakes of these substances suggests that tool users maintained still-usable implements for transport to another locale. The paucity of cores in both components is to be expected in this situation, as bipolar nodule-bashing would destroy the very characteristics that enable their identification as cores. This behavior might occur less frequently in the Fort Ancient occupation if these people were stockpiling their chert. none of these comments are meant to suggest that responses to tool resource adversity will always be uniform or easy for an archaeologist to ascertain. neither is the case, as tara Potts’ study shows. her archaeological results demonstrate that one cannot assume that local or subpar tool stone (in this case, quartz) will always be made into expedient tools or fashioned through bipolar techniques (see Andrefsky 1994b). but in attempting to understand the dimensions of the problem through experimental means, she noted several anomalies that will have to be ironed out through additional experimentation. This is an excellent beginning in what one hopes might turn into an ongoing experimental...

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