The Time of the Stones: A Call for Palimpsest Dissection to Explore Lithic Record Formation Processes

Abstract

The dissection of archaeological palimpsests has become a crucial process for achieving a diachronic understanding of the history of human groups. However, its widespread application to archaeological deposits has been hampered by both methodological and theoretical limitations, as well as by the inherent characteristics of the deposits. This paper explores whether overcoming these barriers, both methodological and theoretical, truly represents a significant shift in understanding past human behaviour, thereby motivating the pursuit of shorter timescales. To this end, we have analysed the lithic assemblages of Unit Xb from the Neanderthal site of El Salt (Alcoi, Iberian Peninsula) focusing on lithic attributes and raw material analyses, enabling the definition of raw material units and refitting sets. Considering these variables, we have applied archaeostratigraphic and spatial analyses in order to generate units of analysis whose content is compared to that of the entire unit. The defined archaeostratigraphic units display different spatial distributions and lithic composition. Some of them are attached to certain hearths and composed of refitted sets, while other units are related to areas without combustion evidence and integrated with bigger and heavier single products. Through this approach, here, we show that reducing the spatiotemporal scale of the record helps to unravel behavioural variability, reducing interpretative errors implicit in the assemblage-as-a-whole approach. This highlights the role of temporal resolution in reconstructing site formation processes and challenges research perspectives that assert the unnecessary or impossible nature of palimpsest dissection.