Doctoral Dissertation Research: Assessing Variability within Lithic Production Sequences

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

Much of archaeological research seeks to understand the origins and diffusion of human culture. Without the option of observing living populations, archaeologists must rely solely on the objects produced by prehistoric peoples (i.e. the material culture record) when reconstructing the evolutionary history of prehistoric cultures. Distinguishing “related” or “unrelated” cultural groups in prehistory has to date relied largely on similarities among stone tool assemblages.

But, how much variation one can expect within a single assemblage remains unknown. Only after quantifying the amount of variation one can expect within a single occupation can one begin to distinguish populations which fall outside of the expected amount for a shared cultural group. This project helps to fill this void by developing a new analytical approach to stone tool technology, advancing the field of stone tool analysis and researchers’ abilities to extract human behavioral practices in prehistory.

A key component is the digitization of unique stone tool collections which will not only ensure their longevity but will ensure their accessibility to researchers and the public without typical constraints such as travel and finances. In addition to the digital heritage preservation impact, this project provides an example to the public of a young female scholar working at a rare intersection of multiple fields.

Materials produced will be incorporated into K-12 education modules to inspire students from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds in science, evolution, and archaeology.

This project addresses the degree to which stone tool production varies within a single population and between two different populations. This project will focus on very specific types of stone tool artifacts because these have the greatest potential for storing and thus yielding human actions at the individual level. These objects are referred to as refits in the archaeological community, meaning all of the material which was produced during the production of stone tools (i.e. flintknapping) by a prehistoric person are preserved in the archaeological record and eventually pieced back together.

These “refits” therefore display the actions taken by an individual while they were working towards a goal. It is the very sequence of actions recorded in these refits coupled with variables which have been demonstrated to be meaningful proxies for cultural relatedness which are analyzed. Because of the sequential nature of the data, time-series statistical analyses is performed in collaboration with mathematician colleagues to quantify the amount of variability present within a single population and among populations.

From this, a quantitative standard by which archaeologists can evaluate cultural continuity versus independent convergence in stone tool technological behavior can be produced. The results from this project will contribute to the field of archaeology by advancing analytical techniques for stone tool technology, demonstrating the utility of collaborations with mathematicians, and providing a quantitative standard by which other teams may test hypotheses concerning convergence vs. cultural continuity in prehistory.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.