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1 Lithic Studies in the Southeast retrospective and Future Potential Philip J. Carr, Andrew P. Bradbury, and Sarah E. Price The southeastern united states, referred to in this volume as the southeast, has a rich and varied natural landscape. The people who occupied this region for over 10,000 years before european contact were just as culturally rich and variable. one aspect of prehistoric research, often undervalued in the southeast , is the study of lithic assemblages. More specifically, holistic integrated studies of lithic artifacts that contribute to our understanding of the past are accomplished only rarely. This is despite exemplars of the use of lithic data to provide insights into prehistoric lifeways (e.g., Anderson and hanson 1988; Daniel 1998; Johnson 2000; sassaman 1994) and early application of an organization of technology approach in the southeast (e.g., Amick 1987; claggett and cable 1982; Goodyear 1979). Jay Johnson’s (1993a:51–52) hopeful discussion concerning the future application of this approach as part of the processual paradigm in which “behavioral models could best be addressed through careful analysis of patterns in stone tool production, use, and discard” largely has remained unrealized. A decade ago, carr and bradbury (2000) examined archaeological studies in the southeast and found a general lack of lithic data usage. The arguments made for the application of an organization of technology approach 10 years ago remain valid today, as does their discussion of various methods of lithic analysis. There are still too few lithic specialists as practitioners in the region and too few specialized lithic studies (microwear analysis, refitting, minimum analytical nodule analysis), and there is too little concern with method and theory and a general lack of knowledge concerning advances and debates in lithic analysis. These shortcomings have resulted in a deficiency of contributions to lithic analysis in general from the southeastern perspective, a general stagnation of lithic analysis in the region, and a lack of understanding the potential contributions of lithic studies to the goals of archaeology. 2 / Carr, Bradbury, and Price with few exceptions, lithic analysis in the southeast is approached with overly simplistic methods that lead to gross descriptions of assemblages by way of artifact counts and types from which few behavioral inferences can be made. lithic analysis languished around the mid-twentieth century in the cultural historical paradigm and is too often mired there today. such a tradition of emphasis on culture history to derive queries about prehistoric life and methods to answer them provides little consideration of cultural lifeways other than simplistic statements regarding stone tool manufacture. in an effort to not “point the finger” at one contemporary study, we refer the reader to the excellent discussion by Johnson (1993a:37–38) of how the typology employed for the Pickwick report resulted in the designation of a “workshop” but no discussion concerning biface production strategies. similar contemporary statements , based on typologies or methods demonstrated to be flawed, show a lack of middle range theory and evaluation of low-level theory is rare. The use of flawed methods and lack of theory building have resulted in a failure to build accurate culture histories due to naïve definitions of artifact types that do not allow for a distinction between homologous and analogous traits. year after year we are discouraged by the number of reports, conference papers , and journal publications either not incorporating lithic data or employing outdated and flawed methods, especially regarding flake debris. For example, issues with the Primary, secondary, tertiary method (Pst) of flake analysis have been recognized since the 1980s (ingbar et al. 1989; Magne 1985; sullivan and rozen 1985). Pst analysis generally involves the assignation of a flake to one of three types based on decreasing amounts of cortex. inconsistency in its application was heavily criticized by sullivan and rozen (1985). bradbury and carr (1995) used an experimental data set to demonstrate that employing cortex as the only attribute for assigning a flake to a reduction stage is no better than a random guess. unfortunately, this typology is still used today and its use compels us to question the validity of the lithic data. As sullivan and rozen (1985) noted, researchers use different definitions of primary, secondary, and tertiary flakes (if definitions are included at all), which makes comparisons across data sets impossible. with no attention paid to such fundamental considerations, why should one think greater care is taken with other aspects of the analysis? Flawed analytical methods go beyond the lack of a concrete, tested lithics lexicon...

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