Geological–Geochemical approach to “sourcing” of prehistoric chert artifacts, northwestern Alaska

The Analysis of Stone Tool Procurement, Production, and Maintenance

“…In other words, there can be more geochemical variation within chert samples than between chert samples. This does not mean that geochemical analysis cannot be performed on chert (Hess 1996;Hoard et al 1992Hoard et al , 1993Malyk-Selivanova et al 1998); it simply means that the geochemical signature from a lithic artifact often cannot be reliably associated with one particular source location.…”

Neutron activation analysis of 12,900-year-old stone artifacts confirms 450–510+ km Clovis tool-stone acquisition at Paleo Crossing (33ME274), northeast Ohio, U.S.A.

“…When mega-and macroscopic identifications are tested for accuracy, the results are often surprisingly poor (Calogero, 1992;Ives, 1984Ives, , 1986Luedtke, 1992Luedtke, , 1993Nance, 1984). The problem is not the use of qualitative traitsdsystematic studies of qualitative traits such as fluorescence under ultraviolet light, color, texture, and presence of inclusions may provide reasonably confident provenance assignments (e.g., Hofman et al, 1991;Luedtke 1992;Lyons et al, 2003;Malyk-Selivanova et al, 1998)dbut few such systematic studies have been undertaken. Rather, the problem arises from a conflation of extensionally derived descriptional ideational units, i.e., "types" of stone within a folk geological taxonomy, with empirical units, i.e., stone available from a specific locationda problem not unique to lithic-sourcing studies in archaeology (O'Brien and Lyman, 2002).…”

Geology and lithic procurement in Upper Palaeolithic Europe: a weights-of-evidence based GIS model of lithic resource potential

“…The topography and geology of the Brooks Range therefore facilitate embedded procurement. Elsewhere in northern Alaska, however, tool-quality chert is not locally available, and geochemical provenancing demonstrates that western Brooks Range chert was transported to archaeological sites as far as 300 km from the quarry source (Malyk-Selivanova et al, 1998).…”