American Antiquity

It is argued that archaeology has made few contributions to the general field of anthropology with regard to explaining cultural similarities and differences. One major factor contributing to this lack is asserted to be the tendency to treat artifacts as equal and comparable traits which can be explained within a single model of culture change and modification. It is suggested that “material culture” can and does represent the structure of the total cultural system, and that explanations of differences and similarities between certain classes of material culture are inappropriate and inadequate as explanations for such observations within other classes of items. Similarly, change in the total cultural system must be viewed in an adaptive context both social and environmental, not whimsically viewed as the result of “influences,” “stimuli,” or even “migrations” between and among geographically defined units.

Three major functional sub-classes of material culture are discussed: technomic, socio-technic, and ideo-technic, as well as stylistic formal properties which cross-cut these categories. In general terms these recognized classes of materials are discussed with regard to the processes of change within each class.

Using the above distinctions in what is termed a systemic approach, the problem of the appearance and changing utilization of native copper in eastern North America is discussed. Hypotheses resulting from the application of the systemic approach are: (1) the initial appearance of native copper implements is in the context of the production of socio-technic items; (2) the increased production of socio-technic items in the late Archaic period is related to an increase in population following the shift to the exploitation of aquatic resources roughly coincident with the Nipissing high water stage of the ancestral Great Lakes; (3) this correlation is explicable in the increased selective pressures favoring material means of status communication once populations had increased to the point that personal recognition was no longer a workable basis for differential role behavior; (4) the general shift in later periods from formally “utilitarian” items to the manufacture of formally “nonutilitarian” items of copper is explicable in the postulated shift from purely egalitarian to increasingly nonegalitarian means of status attainment.

Ethnographic examples of stone-tool makers in Australia and archaeological examples from three different areas in the western United States indicate that the availability of lithic raw materials is an important variable conditioning stone-tool production technology. Attributes of availability such as abundance and quality of lithic raw materials condition the production of formal- vs. informal-tool types. Poor-quality raw materials tend to be manufactured into informal-tool designs. High-quality lithic raw materials tend to be manufactured into formal-tool designs when such materials occur in low abundance. When high-quality materials occur in great abundance both formal- and informal-tool designs are manufactured. Other factors, such as residential mobility or sedentism, are found to be less-important determinates of lithic-production technology.

Archaeologists frequently explain tool curation by its efficiency. Such explanations ignore the fact that curation is a complex activity and that its component parts are efficient in different ways. I argue that the nature and distribution of lithic resources critically affect technological efficiency and I discuss two aspects of curation, maintenance and recycling, asserting that they are responses to raw material shortages. Shortages result from regional geological conditions and from behavior patterns that restrict access to raw material in certain contexts. Ethnographic and archaeological examples support this hypothesis and highlight the relationship between subsistence-settlement organization, raw material distribution, and technology.

Design engineers share archaeologists' interest in material culture, but unlike archaeologists, engineers have developed concepts for determining the suitability of technical systems to perform specific tasks. Given the difficulty archaeologists face in developing theories of material culture, I suggest that guiding principles of engineering design offer potentially useful insights.

In this article I discuss two design alternatives for optimizing the availability of any technical system - reliability and maintainability. Reliable systems are made so that they can be counted on to work when needed. Maintainable ones can easily be made to function if they are broken or not appropriate to the task at hand. Because these design alternatives have markedly different optimal applications and observably different physical characteristics, archaeologists can link the design of prehistoric weapons to environmental constraints and to specific hunting strategies. Ethnographic examples indicate that primitive hunters do use both reliable and maintainable systems in optimal situations.

Detailed behavioral observations permitted the dimensional analysis of formation processes operative on the Mask site, a Nunamiut Eskimo hunting stand. Activity structure, technological organization, disposal mode, and spatial organization were all seen as behavioral dimensions that could each vary, altering the patterns of assemblage content and spatial disposition at an archaeological site. These ethnoarchaeological experiences were then contrasted with those recently reported by John Yellen (1977), and a critical evaluation of his “conclusions” was conducted from the perspective of the Eskimo experience. It was pointed out that basic differences in philosophy and approach to research largely conditioned the contrasting character of the conclusions drawn from the different experiences.

Certain aspects of what archaeologists have traditionally called stylistic variation can be understood as the result of the introduction of selectively neutral variation into social-learning populations and the sampling error in the cultural transmission of that variation (drift). Simple mathematical models allow the deduction of expectations for the dynamics of these evolutionary mechanisms as monitored in the archaeological record through assemblage diversity and interassemblage distance. The models are applied to make inferences about the causes of change in decorative diversity and interassemblage distance for Woodland ceramics from Illinois.

Three different sorts of bifacial tools-by-products of the shaping process, cores, and long use-life tools-are used to consider the role mobility plays in producing variability in hunter-gatherer lithic technologies. The relations among tool roles, raw-material distribution, and mobility as well as the archaeological consequences of the different roles are key factors. An examination of temporal trends in the use of bifacial implements in the Carson Sink of western Nevada shows how the proposed perspective on lithic technology can help to elucidate change in mobility strategies. A shift from the use of bifaces as cores to an infrequent use of bifaces as tools suggests a shift from logistical to short-term residential use of the raw-material-poor Carson Sink; a later shift to the use of small, frequently unifacial, nonresharpenable points may indicate a shift to target-specific hunting strategies.

Our understanding of the archaeological record has been developed under the culture history paradigm. Its fundamental structure is shown to be stylistic; this characteristic, coupled with historical factors, is seen as the major reason why evolutionary processes have not been extensively employed in explaining cultural change. Consideration of an evolutionary approach suggests that such processes as natural selection have considerable explanatory potential, but it is also suggested that a substantial segment of the archaeological record is not best understood in terms of adaptation. The potential of an evolutionary approach cannot be realized without making a fundamental distinction between functions, accountable in terms of evolutionary processes, and style, accountable in terms of stochastic processes.

The animal body-part utility indices developed by Lewis Binford have been used to interpret faunal assemblages ranging from Plio-Pleistocene sites in East Africa to a late prehistoric bison kill in the High Plains of North America. Little attention, however, has been placed on refining or further developing these scales of economic utility. We examine Binford's derivation of the modified general utility index (MGUI) and demonstrate that it is needlessly complex. A nearly identical index, the food utility index (FUI), is presented. It simply scales variation in the amount of meat, marrow, and bone grease associated with different caribou body parts. We then use the insights provided by this simple scale to explore relations among economic utility, differential body-part representation, and human decision making.

The frequency and morphology of notches produced on bovid long bones by carnivore gnawing (tooth notches) and hammerstone-on-anvil breakage (percussion notches) are quantified. Notches are semicircular- to arcuate-shaped indentations on fracture edges with corresponding negative flake scars on medullary surfaces. We restrict our analysis to notches produced under controlled conditions by either carnivores or hammerstones when diaphyses are breached to extract marrow. Percussion notches are characteristically more frequent, and, in cortical view, broader and shallower than tooth notches. The flakes removed from percussion notches are typically broader, and have a more obtuse release angle, than those removed from tooth notches. These morphological differences are statistically significant for notches on Bovid Size 1 and 2 long bones but not on Bovid Size 3 long bones.

Notches should be more durable than marks produced by carcass consumers on bone surfaces because they penetrate the entire thickness of the bone. As a result, notches are not easily obscured by weathering, chemical corrosion, or adhering matrix. Given this durability, and the initial success we have had in distinguishing the actor responsible for notch production on modern bones, notches can be used, with some limitations, to identify bone consumers archaeologically.