From Artifacts to Cultures: Technology, Society, and Knowledge in the Upper Paleolithic

Barton, C. Michael; Clark, Geoffrey A.

doi:10.1007/s41982-021-00091-8

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 103 publications

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“…It has nothing to do with social identity writ small in artifact form, the mental templates by which formal similarity is conveyed, nor lithic traditions passed down from one generation to the next. The rationale for the approach is explicated elsewhere (e.g., Barton, 1991Barton, , 1998Clark & Riel-Salvatore, 2006) but is based on solid evidence that-with very rare exceptions-all Pleistocene sites are palimpsests, depositional composites that do not reflect the contemporaneous activities of any narrowly circumscribed group of people (see, e.g., Barton, 1991;Barton & Clark, 2021;Barton & Neeley, 1996;Clark & Barton, 2017). Put another way, no face-to-face interaction drives a pattern in the coarse-grained time/space grid of the archeology of "deep time".…”

Section: Approaches To Modeling Hunter-gatherer Settlementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing Settlement Organization in the Late Pleistocene of the Wadi al-Hasa, West-Central Jordan

Neeley,

Clark

2024

J Paleo Arch

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Since the 1980s, surveys in Jordan’s Wadi al-Hasa document dozens of Late Pleistocene hunter–gatherer sites, some of them tested or partly excavated. To track landscape-scale forager mobility and settlement patterns over time, we examine 26 levels from 13 sites dated to the Middle, Upper, and Epipaleolithic using aspects of Barton’s whole assemblage behavioral indicators research protocol, a collection of methods designed to extract patterns from archeological palimpsests. Because forager ethnographies document adaptive strategies that do not map onto the discrete site types employed by archeologists, we evaluate the utility of the latter so far as behavioral inferences are concerned. We show that discrete bimodal contrasts like “curated” and “expedient” and their archeological correlates fail to capture the much more complex reality. Only by using these methods in conjunction with these analytical contrasts can a realistic picture of forager mobility and land use approximating that known from ethnography be attained.

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Section: Approaches To Modeling Hunter-gatherer Settlementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing Settlement Organization in the Late Pleistocene of the Wadi al-Hasa, West-Central Jordan

Neeley,

Clark

2024

J Paleo Arch

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“…However, theoretical explications of the generative mechanisms, and rigorous comparative systematics backed by transparent and replicable analytics as demanded by Dunnell, remain exceptions rather than the rule (Tostevin, 2013). Today, a great deal of attention is again being paid to systematics in prehistory, and as Barton and Clark (2021) have pointed out, the continuing adherence to outmoded classifications is preventing the exploration of more relevant and pressing research questions. Several researchers are tackling classificatory issues with novel and mostly quantitative means (Grove & Blinkhorn, 2021;Ivanovaitė et al, 2020;Leplongeon et al, 2020).…”

Section: Systematics In Prehistory and The Emergence Of Evolutionary ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Robert C. Dunnell’s "Systematics in Prehistory" at 50

Riede¹,

Araújo²,

Marwick³

2022

Preprint

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Systematics in Prehistory. At the height of the debate between Culture History and New Archaeology, Dunnell’s work sought to address a more fundamental issue that was and still is relevant to all branches of prehistoric archaeology, and especially to the study of the Palaeolithic: systematics. Dunnell himself was notorious and controversial, however, but the importance of his work remains underappreciated. Like other precocious works of that tumultuous time Systematics in Prehistory today remains absent from most course reading lists and gathers dust on library shelves. In this contribution we argue for a greater appreciation of its as yet unfulfilled conceptual and analytical promise. In particular, we briefly chart its somewhat delayed impact via evolutionary archaeology, including how it has also influenced non-Anglophone traditions, especially in South America. The obstinate persistence of classification issues in palaeoanthropology and palaeoarchaeology, we argue, warrants a second look at Dunnell’s Systematics.

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“…However, theoretical explications of the generative mechanisms, and rigorous comparative systematics backed by transparent and replicable analytics as demanded by Dunnell, remain exceptions rather than the rule (Tostevin, 2013). Today, a great deal of attention is again being paid to systematics in prehistory, and as Barton and Clark (2021) have pointed out, the continuing adherence to outmoded classifications is preventing the exploration of more relevant and pressing research questions. Several researchers are tackling classificatory issues with novel and mostly quantitative means (Grove & Blinkhorn, 2021; Ivanovaitė et al, 2020; Leplongeon et al, 2020).…”

Section: Systematics In Prehistory and The Emergence Of Evolutionary ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Robert C. Dunnell's Systematics in prehistory at 50

2022

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2021 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Robert C. Dunnell's (1971) diminutive yet dense Systematics in Prehistory. At the height of the debate between Culture History and New Archaeology, Dunnell's work sought to address a more fundamental issue that was and still is relevant to all branches of prehistoric archaeology, and especially to the study of the Palaeolithic: systematics. Dunnell himself was notorious and controversial, however, but the importance of his work remains underappreciated. Like other precocious works of that tumultuous time Systematics in Prehistory today remains absent from most course reading lists and gathers dust on library shelves. In this contribution we argue for a greater appreciation of its as yet unfulfilled conceptual and analytical promise. In particular, we briefly chart its somewhat delayed impact via evolutionary archaeology, including how it has also influenced non-Anglophone traditions, especially in South America. The obstinate persistence of classification issues in palaeoanthropology and palaeoarchaeology, we argue, warrants a second look at Dunnell's Systematics.

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From Artifacts to Cultures: Technology, Society, and Knowledge in the Upper Paleolithic

Cited by 11 publications

References 103 publications

Changing Settlement Organization in the Late Pleistocene of the Wadi al-Hasa, West-Central Jordan

Changing Settlement Organization in the Late Pleistocene of the Wadi al-Hasa, West-Central Jordan

Robert C. Dunnell’s "Systematics in Prehistory" at 50

Robert C. Dunnell's Systematics in prehistory at 50

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