The Windy Ridge quartzite quarry: hunter-gatherer mining and hunter-gatherer land use on the North American Continental Divide

Abstract

Studies of hunter-gatherer activity at lithic raw material sources are relatively rare and largely descriptive, in part because archaeologists have viewed hunter-gatherer lithic procurement as a casual and low-cost activity. This paper presents the results of fieldwork at a hunter-gatherer quartzite quarry along the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains of northern Colorado that suggests that this perspective is incorrect. Hunter-gatherer groups at the site quarried stone intensively, although they did not often transport this stone any great distance. This suggests that it is useful to reconsider the way we think about lithic procurement, and particularly that we rethink the concepts of 'direct' and 'indirect' procurement. The data presented here highlight the ability of quarry sites to expand our understanding of how mobile human groups used the landscape.

Understanding Prehistoric Lithic Raw Material Selection: Application of a Gravity Model

“…In reviewing parts of this debate, Bamforth (2006) makes the useful point that even when procurement is embedded in overall resource acquisition strategies (lithic material is obtained "along the way" to obtain other resources), obtaining it can still be both costly and deliberate, for example when raw materials are extracted from a quarry. Even if the quarry is located near other resources, the decision to visit it may have been deliberate, and the efforts expended to extract the tool-quality rock should not be ignored.…”

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

“…The ethnographic record indicates however that direct embedded procurement does not always predominate. Gould's observations among the Australian aboriginals of the Western Desert provide a counter-example of direct special-purpose procurement (Andrefsky, 1994;Bamforth, 2006): ''By far the greatest amount of time and effort in the stone toolmaking process occurred during quarrying and transport. Not only did this behavior involve visits to specific localities where stone could be quarried and collected, but it also included transport of the stone back to camp for further shaping and use.…”

The lithology of Ogallala gravels and hunter‐gatherer procurement strategies along the Southern High Plains eastern escarpment of Texas, USA

“…Quarries at in situ locations of high-quality chert, obsidian, quartzite, and other raw materials attested to prehistoric groups intensively and repeatedly using these sources for the production of stone tools (Shaeffer, 1958;Ahler, 1986;Kozlowski, 1991;Reher, 1991;Bamforth, 2006). The main concern of prehistoric flintknappers was seeking high-quality layers and uncovering lithic material below ground unaffected by freeze and thaw fracture.…”