Designing Experimental Research in Archaeology: Examining Technology through Production and Use

4: Flake Debris and Flintknapping Experimentation

71 Arguably, flintknapping experimentation is part of the core of modern lithic analysis . In addition to providing possible means for the manufacture of particular stone implements, exploring the effects of heat treatment on specific raw materials, and provisioning other experimenters with suitable tools for use in modern contexts such as studying use-wear, flintknapping experimentation has proved extremely valuable for the analysis of flake debris. Here, we briefly examine the variety of flintknapping experiments conducted in the past several decades aimed at understanding chipped-stone tool technologies. This is followed by a lengthier discussion of the qualities of a “good” flintknapping experiment designed to provide insight into the technological origin of flake debris. Subsequently, we review exemplars of different experimental approaches. We conclude with directions for future research in flake debris experimentation. “Flake” is a generic term in archaeological lexicons, used most often in Ameri­ canist archaeology to refer to chipped-stone debris produced during tool manufacture but sometimes applied in a different sense to its practitioners, in a somewhat unkind manner. Michael Shott (1994:70) has pointed out that the term “flake,” also applied to “breakfast cereals and ice crystals,” is difficult to define and that archaeologists use a variety of other terms to refer to these artifacts, such as debitage, chips, [ c h a p t e r f o u r ] Flake Debris and Flintknapping Experimentation Philip J. Carr and Andrew P. Bradbury m m m m m m m m m 72 Philip J. Carr and Andrew Bradbury and debris. In an attempt to add clarity, William Andrefsky (1998:9–10) employs the term “objective piece” in a lithics manual to refer to “stone items that have been hit, cracked, flaked, or modified in some way” and uses “detached pieces” for “stone items that have been removed from objective pieces during the modification process .” Perhaps the new generation of lithic analysts will employ these terms, but we will follow Shott (1994) in using flake and flake debris, as opposed to detached pieces, because of the way we were trained in lithic analysis and how we conceptualize the flintknapping process. It is easy to argue that flake debris constitutes the majority of the archaeological record prior to the modern age of mass production and a penchant for disposable items. Flakes were part of the toolkit of early hominids over 2.5 million years ago, and knapping stone for tools continued well into the historic period with the production of gunflints and, more recently, obsidian scalpels (e.g., Buck 1982; Disa, Vossoughi, and Goldberg 1993). Over this time span, innumerable archaeological sites were produced, from quarry sites with massive amounts of flakes to “temporary camps” at which the only artifacts remaining are a few flakes. Unlike stone tools, flake debris was rarely curated and therefore generally remains at the site of production. These characteristics—abundance and infrequently curated, combined with the fact that a flake retains evidence of the technology used in its production —spurred some lithic analysts in the 1970s and 1980s to consider this rather unimpressive artifact class in more detail. Andrefsky (2001:2) and others (Johnson 2001:18–19; Magne 2001:22) have pointed specifically to 1985, with the publication of “Debitage Analysis and Archaeological Interpretation” by Alan Sullivan and Kenneth Rozen (1985), as a major turning point in Americanist flake debris analysis because of the increased number and types of flintknapping experiments the article engendered and the desire to use flake debris to make behavioral inferences. Introduction to Flintknapping Experiments Experimental archaeology, middle-range theory building, and replicative studies are all terms that describe the present conduct of behaviors considered relevant for understanding the past. Textbooks that discuss this theoretical and methodological aspect of archaeology inevitably employ flintknapping as an exemplar (e.g., Feder and Park 2001:181–182; Hayden 1993:50–51; Renfrew and Bahn 1991:271–283; Staeck 2002:162–174; Thomas 1999:46). Flintknapping experiments have a long history in archaeology (i.e., Evans 1860; Nilsson 1868; cited in Johnson 1978) and illustrate for students how the archaeological record formed and how to make inferences from that record. However, textbooks generally focus on stone tools, not flake debris. John Staeck (2002:168–169) is an exception, as he provides a relatively detailed discussion of flake debris and the “reduction sequence” but fails to cite relevant discussions and experimental literature that have shown the primary-secondary -tertiary approach to flake debris analysis used in his discussion to be flawed (e.g., [3...