Scalar Effects in Ground Slate Technology and the Adaptive Consequences for Circumpolar Maritime Hunter-Gatherers

Abstract

Ground slate technology is a trademark of circumpolar hunter-gatherers occupying coastal ecotones. However, a causal framework for explaining what drives the apparent adaptive success of slate technology is lacking. Attempting to remedy this, the current paper provides the first palaeodemographic and environmentally informed review of a maritime slate complex. Employing what is arguably the best documented and contextually controlled slate industry in Holocene Eurasia as a high-resolution case study (the Arctic Norwegian slate industry), the system components of demography, ecology and technology are integrated to get at (1) why slate technology appears to be a particular maritime success, (2) what causal contribution slate technology makes to population-scale adaptive success, (3) why slate technology was eventually abandoned. Based on extensive empirical investigations, the results demonstrate synchronous changes in population size, maritime intensification and the use of slate technologies. It is suggested that the mechanism responsible for this correspondence is that the slate industry facilitated a heightened adaptive success, reinforcing population growth and maritime intensification. Technological results indicate that superior properties for standardization make the slate technology ideal for establishing a scale economy in maritime resource exploitation when surpassing critical thresholds in population packing. Causal modelling demonstrates that, under particular demographic and ecological conditions, the scalar properties of slate technologies can offset high- and density-dependent start-up costs, by increasing return rates and reducing handling costs of hunting/processing of marine resources. Satisfying all criteria for tool “efficiency”, it is concluded that slate industries have causal efficacy as an “enabling technology” in circumpolar, maritime settings.

Peopling Prehistoric Coastlines: Identifying Mid-Holocene Forager Settlement Strategies in Northern Norway

“…This could be a result of a combination of limited availability of protected sites in the early Holocene and the later transgression of such. It is, however, likely that also differences in species diversity and stability between the cold early Holocene Northern Norway and the warmer and more stable mid-Holocene with a possibly early emphasis on sealing and a later on fishing are part of the explanation (Bjerck 2017;Jørgensen 2020b). The early Holocene cold climate resources presumably had a higher degree of seasonality and fluctuation in quantity and location, resulting in an even greater need for monitoring the surroundings.…”

Cut Above the Rest: A Multi‐disciplinary Study of Two Slate Knives From Forager Contexts in Coastal Norway

“…For several millennia tools in coastal northern Norway were predominantly of ground slate, a sedimentary siltstone (Gjessing 1942; Simonsen 1975; Jørgensen 2021). Slate tools are also common in other circumpolar foraging contexts (Gjessing 1942; 1944; Fitzhugh 1974; 1975; Graesch 2007; Prentiss et al .…”

“…The visual similarities between the two large knives suggest a degree of contemporaneity based on traditional archaeological typological assumptions. Further, a general size reduction over time for slate implements has recently been suggested (Jørgensen 2021). However, despite the small sample size, the combination of evidence through our analyses finds strong support for the notion that slate knife morphology is related to function, and that size is more functionally than chronologically determined.…”