Archaeological Approaches To Lithic Production PDF

J Archaeol Method Theory (2008) 15:127
DOI 10.1007/s10816-007-9043-3
Introduction: Archaeological Approaches to Lithic

Production Skill and Craft Learning
Douglas B. Bamforth & Nyree Finlay
Published online: 15 January 2008

# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007
Abstract This paper introduces the volume by considering what skill is and how
archaeologists have looked at issues of skill in stone tool production, along with
anthropological and archaeological approaches to the ways in which individuals
become skilled craftworkers. Archaeological studies of flintknapping skill tend to be
isolated from most larger debates, but both the archaeological and the non-
archaeological literature highlight how intimately skill and craft learning are woven
into the fabric of society, although they also highlight significant methodological and
interpretive issues.
Keywords Skill . Learning . Knapping . Ceramic sociology
Skill: . . . 2: the ability to use ones knowledge effectively and readily in

execution or performance; technical expertness . . . 3: a learned power of doing
a thing competently: a developed aptitude or ability (Websters Seventh New
Collegiate Dictionary).
Skill is at once a form of knowledge and a form of practice, or-if you will-it
is both practical knowledge and knowledgeable practice (Ingold 1993, p. 433).
Skill is goal-directed, well-organized behavior that is acquired through
practice and performed with economy of effort (Proctor and Dutta 1995, p. 18).
Some things are harder to do than others, and some people are better than other
people at doing them. Becoming good at some tasks is much easier and less time-
D. B. Bamforth (*)
Anthropology Department, 233 UCB, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
e-mail: bamforth@colorado.edu
N. Finlay
Department of Archaeology, The University of Glasgow, The Gregory Building, Lilybank Gardens,
Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland
e-mail: n.finlay@archaeology.gla.ac.uk
2 Bamforth and Finlay
consuming than becoming good at other tasks. In addition, some human social
groups prize the ability to accomplish difficult tasks more than other human groups,
and often distinguish among such tasks in seemingly random, or at least impractical,
ways. For example, modern American society places great value on excellence in
athletics, a domain of activity with essentially no practical utility, but ignores, and
even demeans, excellence in many essential tasks (like operating large cranes on
construction projects, a difficult and extremely stressful job whose proper execution
is essential to safety while at work and to the successful completion of the structure
being builtTerkel 1974). That is, technical skill in the sense in which the quotes
above define it is differentially necessary in human activity, differentially distributed
among individual humans, differentially time and labor-intensive to acquire, and
differentially, and sometimes arbitrarily, valued by human societies.
For archaeologists, all of this implies that skill differences manifested in material
culture should have the potential to inform us about many aspects of past human
societies. However, while archaeologists often observe and remark on examples of
great skill in ancient craftwork, our field has devoted relatively little structured
attention to the issues of what skill is, how we recognize it, and what an
understanding of skill can tell us. With this in mind, this volume is concerned with
skill in the production of flaked stone tools, and particularly focuses on the criteria
used to identify skill in flintknapping, how people become skilled stoneworkers, and
the myriad implications of skill as a variable in understanding lithic assemblages and
past societies. Rather than providing a prescriptive definition of lithic skill, our
intention here is to explore skill and recognise the diverse implications of its study.
This volume provides a showcase for the various ways in which researchers are
beginning to engage with skill in a diverse range of lithic assemblages using an array
of methods and theoretical strategies.
Defining Skill
As outlined in the above quotations, while skill is a notion that defies a single
definition, general characterizations of the concept stress the active engagement in
action and the interplay between abstract and tangible knowledge. There is also the
implication that skill is something that can be transformed via practice and
application: we can learn to become more skilled. But equally it can be considered
an innate property and regarded as the embodied capabilities of particular human
agents (Layton 1974), raising the issue of natural talent and whether all humans can
acquire exceptional prowess in a given activity solely through practice and
application (Ericsson and Lehmann 1996; Olausson 1998 and this volume). Skill
is also as dependent on the social contexts of production and the particular demands
of, and for, certain types of product as it is on the natural abilities of the individual.
Skill and its material expression in lithic technology encompass a broad range
of situations and contexts. A distinction is commonly drawn between the different
types of knowledge and abilities required during knapping. We can draw a contrast
between practical knowledge and knowledgeable practice; between what has been
termed connaissance and savoir-faire (Fig. 1). On one hand, there is connaissance,
knowledgeable practice and the cognitive understanding and strategic decision
Skill and Craft Learning 3
Fig. 1 Skill as the intersection of connaissance and savoir-faire.
making processes, the abstract engagement with what to do next. On the other,
savoir-faire is concerned with practical knowledge, which is influenced by motor
skill: dexterity, motivation, fatigue, practice, and advice (Pelegrin 1990, p.118). As
we develop our own practical know-how, we also enter a tactile engagement with
stone as a medium, so we should overlook neither the sheer pleasure and rewards
of stonecraft nor the physical and mental challenges it creates (for further
discussion of these issues see Whittaker 2004). Skill in flintknapping is found in
the intersection between knowledge and practice; the relationship between them
changes in terms of experience and the complex interplay of mind and material as
each flake is struck.
Archaeological approaches to skill in lithic studies can be considered under a
number of themes. In this Introduction, we focus on two of the larger issues that
emerge from teasing out the latitudes of skill in relation to stone tools as well as
reviewing both theoretical and methodological trends in isolating knapping skill.
These are how archaeologists recognize variation in levels of knapping skill and the
way(s) by which individuals become skilled. We begin by reviewing how
archaeologists have approached skill in relation to flintknapping and issues of
specialised production before turning our attention to the contexts of craft learning.
Here, we discuss insights from ceramic sociology and review and critique models of
cultural transmission. The next section introduces the papers within this special issue
and we conclude by highlighting some alternative and future directions for
engagements with skill in lithic studies.
Archaeological Approaches to Flintknapping Skill
In contrast to many other technologies, flaked stone tools and production debris
provide a unique and durable medium for documenting the acquisition and inferring
the social context of knapping skills. Acquiring what we now see as the arcane
knowledge of the knapper would have been a universal process in stone-dependent
communities, and both the process of learning and the outcome of this process must
be recorded in the mountains of debitage that characterise the archaeological record.
Furthermore, a century or more of experimental replication (see Lewis-Johnson
1978) provides a sophisticated and detailed body of knowledge that helps to make
sense out of the data provided by the archaeological record: we know what it takes to
make flaked stone tools.
Extracting information on skill from the wealth of material available for analysis,
though, is a complex problem, in part because of the ambiguity in the meaning of the
word skill. Following Andrews (2003, p. 209), we note that there are at least two
general uses of this term that are important here. On one hand, we often think of a
skilled person as one who is technically expert, implying real excellence in a
particular activity. On the other hand, all of us have learned competenc[ies],
whether we are experts or not. In Andrews (2003, p. 209) terms, the first of these
conceptions refers to artisanal skill, which often relates to the aptitude involved in
the production of high quality ceremonial/wealth items. In contrast, Andrews refers
to the abilities required for more everyday tasks as efficiency skill.
As Andrews discusses, how we approach the study of knapping skill depends in
part on whether we are focusing on the work of master artisans or on such topics as
how skills are learned and the degree to which a society relies on more or less skilful
stoneworkers. Recognizing this, we consider the problem of recognizing levels of
knapping skill from three perspectives: identifying the level of skill required to
produce particular artifacts or kinds of artifacts, identifying the products of knappers
of differing skill, and characterizing the overall or aggregate level of skill
represented by a particular archaeological assemblage.
In a general sense, the first of these is common in our field. To date, much
attention has focused on the first view of skill just noted, what Jacques Pelegrin
(1990, p. 16) terms elaborate knapping activities. Archaeological studies of skill
often focus on expert and masterful performances, as evidenced by Danish flint
daggers, Solutrean bifaces, and Paleoindian projectile point and biface production
(Apel 2001; Flenniken 1978; Frison and Bradley 1999; Whittaker 1987). This
research has often emphasized the identification of craft specialisation and the place
of specialized production in ancient societies (e.g., Olausson 1997; Stafford 1998).
Evidence from replicative experimentation and other sources makes it possible to
identify variables that should characterize classes of implements that require great
skill to produce. Table I lists a number of these variables, along with archaeological
examples of tools that illustrate them and the authors in this volume who rely on
them.
More often than not, we rely on a number of subjective value judgements about
the relative merits of particular artifacts and what constitutes a skilful piece. Values
such as aesthetics, symmetry, regularity, and precision are often cited in this regard.
Skill is, after all, a relative measure more than an absolute standard. Standardization
is linked to the notion of conforming to a perceived ideal whilst realising a mental
template (Keller and Keller 1996 p. 156). Archaeologically, discussion of
standardization tends to be bound up with the identification of craft specialization
in particular contexts of manufacture (Arnold 1987; Clark 2003; Cross 1993; Gibson
1982; Roux et al. 1995; Torrence 1986).
While studies of standardization are applicable to those archaeological situations
where we can clearly document specialization, we must ask how relevant
standardization is for the mainstay of our material and how much variation we
should anticipate among individuals. A key issue in this regard is what levels of
consistency in production we should expect in pre-industrial contexts and whether
skill can be isolated as a determining factor in these. Eerkens and Bettinger (2001)
argue convincingly from psychological and other research that humans cannot
Table I Characteristics of Stone Tools that Indicate High Levels of Skill
Characteristic Some Examples
Unusually large size Clovis ceremonial points: Frison and Bradley 1999
Bamforth and Hicks, this volume
Scandinavian daggers: Callahan 2006; Nunn, Apel, this
volume
Extreme thinness relative to width Folsom ultrathin bifaces: Root 2000
Ferguson, this volume
Extreme length relative to width or thickness Adzes in Irian Jaya; Stout 2002, 2005; Scandinavian
daggers, Callahan 2006
Extremely complex outline form Mayan eccentrics; Fash 1991:100, pp. 103104, 1478;
Titmus and Woods 2003
Regularity of form Whittaker 1987; Finlay; Sinclair, this volume
Volume Bamforth and Hicks, this volume
Plan-view symmetry
Smooth/symmetric cross-section Bamforth and Hicks, this volume
Precise and regular finishing flaking Post-Folsom Paleoindian points: Bradley and Frison 1987
Intentional overshot flaking Clovis bifaces: Frison and Bradley 1999
Minimal platform preparation Mesoamerican blades: Andrews 2003
Very low metric variation in artifact size
Reliance on complex, patterned multistage Folsom points: Winfrey 1990
reduction strategies Bleed, this volume
Apel 2001; Apel and Knutsson 2006, this volume
Consistency in production Finlay, this volume
recognize variation in the size of objects that is less than about 2.0% of any given
measurement of those objects. They suggest use of the coefficient of variation (CV;
this statistic expresses the standard deviation of a group of measurements as a
percentage of the mean of those measurements) to assess this, and note that a set of
measurements produced without any attempt at standardization should produce an
expected CV of 57.7. They suggest further that CVs for most archaeological datasets
will fall between about 2% and about 60%, and that values above this upper value
likely reflect deliberate attempts to produce variability.
In a related analysis of errors making paper cutouts, Eerkens (2000) speculates
that samples of standardized flaked stone artifacts should have CVs of 1015%.
However, Eerkens and Bettinger (2001, p. 494) also note that the kinds of artifacts to
which their discussion pertains are those made by a skilled stone knapper. This
implies both that these values require experimental verification by stoneworkers
rather than paper cutters and that less skilled knappers, which is to say, all knappers
before they became fully skilled, have the potential to produce assemblages with
higher CVs than more skilled knappers. However, as Ferguson (this volume) notes,
this is not always the case: metric standardization may have different meanings for
different measurements and is dependent on artifact type and the character of a given
teaching and learning regime.
There has been less attention devoted to identifying the work of novice
stoneworkers and, by implication, contexts of learning. Approaches to the
identification of novice knappers have relied heavily on core and debitage analysis.
Here the impact of modern replication has had a profound impact on the clarification
of skill signatures, focusing analysis less on metric variation and more on the
predictable kinds of strategic errors that novices make as they learn to work stone.
These include such things as stacked step scars, hinge terminations and hammer-
marks on the core face (Ahler 1989; Andrews 2003; Clark 2003; Sheets 1975;
Shelley 1990). Table II summarizes some of the expected characteristics of novice
knappers.
Identifying individual variation among the skill levels within a social group has
also occupied archaeological attention. A small number of studies have attempted to
identify the characteristic handiwork of individual, generally highly skilled, artisans
(e.g., Roux et al. 1995; Bril et al. 2005). Although controlled study of the products
of known individuals suggests that this should be possible (Hill 1978), studies
specifically focused on flintknapping have been somewhat problematic. In particular,
when dealing with highly skilled individuals, it can be difficult to distinguish
markers of skill from markers of individual/idiosyncratic style (although we might
argue that these are closely linked). For example, several early studies sought to
quantify differences in knapping style and ability in both biface and blade
production. Joel Gunn (1975, 1977) separated the products of six modern and one
prehistoric knapper using laser diffraction analysis to record biface scar patterns.
While Gunns analysis was a pilot study in identifying individual style, it is not clear
to what extent the individuals are being distinguished on the basis of personal style
per se rather than technical ability. Similarly, Young and Bonnichsen (1984)
conducted an exhaustive analysis of the differences in manufacturing techniques
between two equally experienced knappers. Their results illustrate the subtle
variations in technique that can produce five-hours difference in manufacturing
time for the same replica artifact between knappers of equivalent talent, not to
mention more subtle technical points of departure. Often the boundaries between
style and skill are blurred. In this volume, two papers specifically address individual
and novice skill signatures: Finlay considers the variation produced by knappers of
mixed ability in relation to simple blade production, while Ferguson explores
learning modes for pressure flaked projectiles.
Table II Indicators of Novice/Unskilled Knappers
Characteristic Some Examples
Irregularity in form Ferguson, this volume

Predictable errors Experiemental: Ahler 1989; Shelley 1990; Upper Palaeolithic: Pigeot
1990
Stacked steps & hinge Nichols and Allstadt 1978; Ahler 1989; Shelley 1990; Andrews 2003;
terminations Clark 2003; Milne 2005
Mis-hits and hammermarks Shelley 1990; Pigeot 1990; Clark 2003; Finlay, this volume
Inconsistency in production Finlay, this volume.
Wasteful and ineffectual use of Shelley 1990; Ferguson, this volume; Hgberg this volume
raw material
Failure to rejuvenate Pigeot 1990.
Low length/breath flake ratio Fischer 1989, 1990; Stout 2002, 2005
Deviation from expected chane Grimm 2000; Fischer 1990; Hgberg 1999, this volume
opratoire
Peripheral spatial knapping Bodu et al. 1990, 1996; Pigeot 1990; Grimm 2000; Hgberg 1999, this
location volume
A second approach focuses on identifying interindividual differences in skill

levels and idiosyncratic knapping signature (or style) within communities. This
domain of research often emphasizes refitting of reduction sequences (particularly
blade reduction sequences) and relies on reconstructions of chanes opratoires (e.g.,
Pigeot 1987; Fischer 1989, 1990). There have been a number of studies that have
examined skill levels in relation to Upper Palaeolithic blade production, where the
identification of skill is bound to the separation of different individuals (e.g., Bodu
1996; Bodu et al. 1990; Pigeot 1987, 1990). While these studies appear to reliably
distinguish the products of reduction events that differ in skill, they tend to assume
that knappers always apply their maximum skills, and, as Bamforth and Hicks
discuss here, this is unlikely to be the case. Moreover, there is an implication that
refitting is the only mechanism to directly address issues of skill. Many refitting
studies also assume a Pompeii-like degree of site preservation that may not always
reflect the complexity of the occupation sequences that produced a given collection
of archaeological material.
A more general level of analysis that avoids these last problems attempts to assess
the overall level of skill represented by a given assemblage or set of assemblages.
Assertions that particular periods of time are characterized by especially sophisti-
cated (or unsophisticated) flintworking are fairly common, but these are often fairly
impressionistic and tend to use evidence very selectively. For example, it is common
to assert that the Paleoindian period on the North American Great Plains was marked
by exceptionally skilled stoneworking, particularly in comparison with the
succeeding Archaic period (i.e., Bradley 1991; Hayden 1982). However, this
reconstruction derives mainly from studies of projectile points and neglects the more
mundane majority of the available evidence (Bamforth 2002a, 2003). More holistic
and systematic assessments are rare (but see Clark 2003 for a particularly creative
approach to this). However, two papers here analyze data at this level: Bamforth and
Hicks compare measures of aggregate skill in projectile point and biface production
at two sites on the North American Great Plains, and Bleed relies on analysis of
failure rates at each step of the manufacture of microblades to compare the overall
level of skill represented at two Japanese Paleolithic sites (also see Bleed 1991;
Winfrey 1990). Instead of considering intra-group variation in skill specifically,
these studies reframe the problem of skill differences to analyze data at the
assemblage level, thereby avoiding many of the problems encountered in the kinds
of studies discussed above.
Becoming Skilled and Becoming Very Skilled: Craft Learning
The detailed study of craft-learning contexts must rank as one of the most
neglected areas of study in the realm of ethnography. Where the topic is dealt
with at all, observations are usually restricted to one- to two-sentence
generalizations meant to apply to entire communities. Data are usually lacking
on: sex, class, wealth, status, types of activities, secondary modes of learning,
and reasons for learning. (Hayden and Cannon 1984, p. 329).
I was about seven when I got my first toolbox for Christmas, a metal box
called a Handy Andy. . . . From age eleven or twelve I had my own workbench
with a light over it near [my fathers]. I cant begin to guess how many hours I
spent there. . . . People often ask me where I went to school to learn carpentry. I
absorbed all I know from watching my dad in his basement workshop or by
observing him and others on a job and then trying the techniques myself. Or
just by experimenting. I still do that. (Abrams 1996, pp. 79).
Our craft can only be learned by a teacher guiding your hands with his hands
(Yang Fuxi, traditional Chinese bow maker, interview on National Public Radio
Morning Edition, 8 May 2007).
As children, budding artisans were guided by experienced community
members, who were models for observation and imitation, critics of finished
products, and sometimes collaborative partners in the creation of artifacts. Such
collaborative work raised the skill level of the child artisan, while reproducig
community standards for how to create. (Crown 2007a, p. 687).
Being able to recognize skill differences, of course, does not account for the ways
in which those differences developed. There is no doubt that the archaeological
record must contain the products of both incompletely trained knappers and fully
competent knappers, and this suggests that we may often be able to examine the
ways in which ancient stoneworkers learned their craft. The basic knowledge and
motor abilities required to flake conchoidally fracturing solids are straightforward
and simple to acquire, although anyone who has taught novice knappers (or
remembers her or his own novice experiences) knows that training and practice are
necessary at even the most introductory levels of learning.
In culture-historical terms, though, such basic knowledge and abilities correspond
roughly to the ability to carry out Oldowan patterns of core reduction [although basic
biface reduction/Acheulean skills can be acquired in a few weeks of intensive
practice and close instruction (Johnson 1976)]. More sophisticated knapping is a
complex and difficult craft to master. For example, knappers must be able to identify
and/or prepare platforms suitable for striking the kinds of flakes they need to remove
and must know where, at what angle, and how hard to strike a platform. They must
also know how to hold or otherwise support the parent nodule of stone as it is struck
and how to choose a suitable percussor or other tool to remove flakes. At a higher
level of abstraction, they must understand how to adapt this technical knowledge
strategically to the idiosyncracies of their raw materials, how to design a sequence of
flake removals that will produce a desired outcome, and how to overcome the
inevitable mistakes that even the most skilled knappers make without compromising
this outcome.
Experience, conversations with highly skilled modern knappers, and the
archaeological literature indicate that, as is true for many other activities, mastering
flintknapping-integrating practical knowledge, motor skills, and strategic reasoning-
takes years of practice (Howe et al. 1998; Callahan 2006; Moran 1996; Nunn 2006;
Roux 1990; Roux et al. 1995; Roux and Bril 2005; Stout 2002; Whittaker 1994,
2004); it can take as long as 23 years to become skilled at even just retouching a
worn edge (Weedman 2002). Humans are not born as skilled knappers. Rather, they
progress from being novices to attaining whatever degree of skill they ultimately
achieve, and even the most exceptionally skilled artisans started out as complete
incompetents. Furthermore, like practitioners of other culturally significant crafts,
skilled flintknappers work within particular traditions, and, although individual
invention and experimentation are clearly essential to learning, these traditions must
be learned as members of a social group. These issues are addressed in papers by
Apel and Olausson in this volume. For our purposes, these observations have two
particular implications. First, they make clear that, even in societies that relied
extensively on highly-skilled knappers, novices must have contributed significantly
to the archaeological record of stone tool production. Second, they indicate that the
way(s) in which novices became skilled must have varied greatly among societies
with different traditions and different social structures. Understanding something
about learning and apprenticeship ought then to help us to make sense out of the
variability we see in archaeological contexts and, at the same time, should help us to
explore ancient social formations.
Humans learn many kinds of things over the course of their lives, and we learn
them in many different ways: we absorb cultural norms by one process but are taught
the proper technique of kicking a soccer ball by quite another. Our focus here is
specifically on craft learning-on how we learn to make things, as distinguished from
how we learn, for example, cultural values or religious beliefs. In particular, craft
learning produces both abstract knowledge (often visual knowledge-Keller and
Keller 1996) and physical abilities that have to be developed through practice/
repetition. In this context, it is important to recognize that the models of learning that
modern archaeologists have experienced in their own lives, which often involve
separation from family and formal training carried out in specialized locales at
specific designated times, are artifacts of the kind of society we live in and differ
from the contexts in which humans probably learned for most of our history.
One important distinction that archaeology has not examined in any depth is the
difference between societies in which craft skills are learned within a domestic
setting and societies that rely on the more formal kinds of training that are often
referred to as apprenticeships. Structured apprenticeships (which often include
formal agreements about fees and duration of training) tend to develop in societies
with complex divisions of labor in which individuals often seek work that differs
from that of their parents (Coy 1989; Goody 1989). One aspect of such training is
control over craft knowledge by skilled workers (cf. Apel 2001 and this volume;
Olausson 1997, this volume). One way to move the study of craft specialization
beyond the simple question of whether or not a given group has specialists may thus
be to learn to identify the archaeological traces of different modes of specialist
training. Upper Paleolithic blade makers must have learned their craft in different
ways than did Aztec blade makers, and understanding these differences should have
important implications for the study of societies that are intermediate in complexity
between these two examples.
Unfortunately, as the quote above by Hayden and Cannon notes, systematic and/
or synthetic studies of the contexts within which humans learn that have concrete
implications for archaeological analysis are rare. Despite recognition of the central
role that learning plays in the transmission of cultural information from generation to
generation (see below), archaeology has devoted little systematic attention to the
ways in which humans specifically acquire craft knowledge (see Washburn 2001).
Studies of craft learning in our field have often been carried out as secondary
adjuncts to research focused on other topics (most often on craft specialization and
the study of social interaction; i.e., DeBoer 1990; David and Kramer 2001, pp. 311
321; Hayden and Cannon 1984; Stanislawski 1978), and generalizations about
overall patterns of craft learning based on these studies are often problematic (cf.
David and Kramer 2001, pp. 314315). However, some basic patterns are evident in
the limited available information.
Perhaps most generally, detailed ethnographic studies often note considerable
diversity in learning within and between communities, both in the sense that
different crafts can be learned in different ways and that different individuals can
learn a single craft in different ways. For example, individuals may begin learning at
different times in their lives, may learn within their nuclear family or from unrelated
individuals, and may receive different levels of close or formal instruction from
skilled teachers. Despite this potential variety, though, the data suggest two
important points. First, Shennan and Steeles (1999) review of ethnographic
information indicates that artisans in traditional societies overwhelmingly learn their
crafts within their family, although at least some of the detailed studies that Shennan
and Steele cite (for example, Hayden and Cannon 1984) show significant intra-
community variation in this. In general, boys learn crafts from their fathers or other
older male relatives and girls learn crafts from their mothers or other older female
relatives, and this learning is often integrated, formally or informally, into the flow of
everyday community life. Stout (2002, 2005) documents a group rather than
individual learning pattern for flintworking in Irian Jaya, although this also involves
older experts and younger novices who are the sons or nephews of the experts.
Apprenticeship in Stouts study group lasts five years or more, although it can take
10 years or more to acquire the highest levels of skill (Stout 2002, p. 702).
Second, Hayden and Cannon (1984, pp. 331332) assert that at least in non-
stratified societies, there is little or no teaching which occurs in the modern sense.
Children are expected to learn by watching others and then attempting the same task
by themselves. However, the data, including Hayden and Cannons data, suggest
otherwise. For example, Hayden and Cannons (1984, Tables 25) tabulations of
learning contexts for a variety of activities indicate that their informants
overwhelmingly acknowledged specific teachers in most cases, and this is most
clearly so in craftwork. In their data, self-taught activities tend either to be those that
are not related to craft production (for example, hunting and butchery) or that rely
more on coarse-motor skills (for example, general wood construction) than on highly
developed fine-motor skills. The Chinese bow maker quoted above clearly speaks to
an extreme example of the critical role that active teaching can play in craft learning,
and Crown (2007b, p. 204) notes that, in at least some cases in which experts assert
that novices learn through individual experimentation, observation documents active
teaching by those same experts.
More detailed studies of the process of learning to produce both ceramics and
flaked stone tools attest to frequent close relations and intensive interaction between
skilled teachers and novices. For example, skilled Shipibo-Conibo potters sometimes
mark designs for children to paint over and skilled knappers in Irian Jaya often assist
novices (Deboer 1990; Stout 2002). In fact, the process of integrating novices into
the work of expertsoften referred to as scaffolding (Brunner 1976; Crown
2007b; David and Kramer 2001, p. 318; Greenfield 1984; Minar and Crown 2001,
p. 370; Rogoff and Gardner 1984; Wood et al. 1976)is a widespread and
extremely effective way of training craftworkers (Ferguson [this volume] illustrates
some of the potential archaeological effects of scaffolding in the training of novice
flint knappers). Teachers interact with novices in a wide variety of ways, including
physically demonstrating techniques with no verbal explanation, verbal explanations
with no demonstration, and the extreme of actually moving a novices hands to
accomplish a task correctly, but some form of interaction appears to be an essentially
universal component of learning a craft.
In contrast to archaeologys neglect of learning, this topic is prominent in
psychology and in cognitive anthropology. As Minar and Crown (2001) note in a
rare archaeological discussion of this, there are two broad themes in the more
general study of human learning. On one hand, research growing out of
developmental psychology has emphasized universal regularities in the stages of
learning that all humans appear to pass through over the course of their lives;
Piagets (1972) developmental stages in children are perhaps the best known
reconstruction of these. As Crown (1999, 2001, 2007b) shows in the context of
ceramic production, the apparent universality of basic human patterns of biological
and cognitive development can provide archaeology with ways of identifying the
products of childrens craft production, offering the possibility of distinguishing this
from the work of fully skilled adults. Age-related increases in the ability to
conceptualize solutions to problems and in hand-eye coordination and strength are
also likely to produce predictable differences in the debris produced in juvenile and
adult stoneworking, as both Ferguson and Hgberg suggest in their chapters in this
volume, although more work is required to evaluate this issue fully.
However, a second stream of research on learning rests on the recognition that,
although humans grow and develop biologically in much the same way in all times
and places, this growth and development occurs in, and is profoundly influenced by,
a tremendous variety of social contexts. In the specific context of craft learning, the
ways in which an individuals learning potential actually develops depend
particularly on the way(s) in which skilled and unskilled practitioners interact
(Keller and Keller 1996; Lave and Wenger 1991; Rogoff 1995), and this can vary
widely from context to context. The contrast between the nonfamilial context of craft
(and other learning) in modern Western society and the pattern noted above for tribal
societies suggests that we might expect very different patterns of training in more
complex and less complex societies (although one of the quotes that introduce this
section should make clear that there is more than one mode of craft learning in
Western society). The degree to which societies rely on craft specialists is likely to
produce similar variation, and we might further see variation in training within a
single social group for crafts carried out by specialists and crafts that all group
members are expected to carry out.
Archaeological Approaches to Craft Learning
Anthropological research on craft learning among living people, limited as it may be,
thus documents a pattern of great complexity and variability, both within and
between communities. However, archaeological attempts to address the process of

craft learning rarely grapple either with this or with the considerable difficulty of
translating what we know about learning into patterns in the archaeological record.
American ceramic sociology of the 1960s and 1970s (Hill 1970; Longacre 1970;
also see Deetz 1965) illustrates both these problems and important methodological
solutions to them.
This work argued from ethnographic data that Southwestern potters were women
who learned their craft from their mothers and grandmothers, and it searched for
spatial clusters of painted designs on potsherds within excavated sites, arguing that
such clusters should indicate the existence of matrilocal postmarital residence
patterns. However, as many critics have pointed out, Puebloan potters can be either
men or women, and, while most learning occurs within families, painters copy
designs form each other and from archaeological pots. That is, the learning process
is more complex than early studies suggest, and learning occurs in a variety of ways
(Kramer 1985; Stanislawski 1978). Making meaning of spatial clusters of similar
designs has also been problematic, both because these studies implicitly assumed
incorrectly that pots were made, used, and discarded in exactly the same places
(Schiffer 1972) and because at least some of the cluster differences mirror known
sequences of temporal ceramic change and therefore are likely to monitor temporal
shifts in occupation of different parts of a pueblo rather than contemporaneous social
groups (Dumond 1977). Other clusters reflect the analytic practice of counting
potsherd instead of pots: repeating design elements on a single vessel produces
clusters of sherds that actually represent only a single instance of ceramic
production (Schiffer 1987, pp. 323338).
That is, the early ceramic sociology lacked necessary information on how
learning really occurs and relied largely on untested, and, in retrospect, incorrect
assertions regarding linkages between the behavior at issue and archaeologically
detectable patterns. Recognizing these problems, ceramicists have developed more
sophisticated efforts to take account of site formation processes (i.e., Schiffer 1987,
pp. 323338) and, perhaps more importantly, have generated a substantial body of
experimental and ethnoarchaeological research. These latter efforts (i.e., Beck 2006;
Kramer 1985; Krause 1985; Longacre 1991; Longacre and Skibo 1994; Stark 1998,
2003) have confronted the assumptions of the early ceramic sociologists with
observations of the way living people really do the kinds of things earlier workers
hoped to study, and have thereby significantly advanced our ability to make meaning
of patterns in the archaeological record.
Craft learning (often subsumed under the general heading of cultural
transmission) has continued to be an important topic of research for ceramicists
(i.e., Stark 2003, p. 204). In lithic analysis, though, this topic has been emphasized
mainly within the domain of evolutionary archaeology, where it relies almost
entirely on Boyd and Richersons (1985, 1993) models of learning (i.e., Bettinger
and Eerkens 1999; Shennan 2002; Shott 1997; also see Smith 2000). Drawing on the
general results of social learning research in psychology as of the late 1970s, Boyd
and Richerson defined four different kinds of human learning. The first of these
(guided variation) refers to learning that involves copying of a pattern of behavior
and modifying it by individual trial and error. The other three (direct bias,
frequency-dependent bias, and indirect bias) refer to learning in situations where
a learner must choose among two or more alternatives: direct bias involves trying the
alternatives and choosing the one an individual likes best, frequency-dependent bias
involves choosing the most commonly used of the alternatives, and indirect bias
involves choosing the alternative used by a particularly successful or otherwise
attractive model.
These models provide important guides to thinking about learning, both in the
structure they give to that thinking and in their explicit emphasis on a diverse set of
possible ways to learn. However, Boyd and Richerson (1985) note quite explicitly
that they propose their models only as first approximations in need of considerable
refinement, and almost no such refinement is evident in more recent literature. This
is important because, while archaeologists often write as if these models describe
widespread and well-documented patterns in which real humans learn real things
(i.e., Bettinger and Eerkens 1999, pp. 236237), this is not the case. These models
are theoretical constructs, not observations of actual learning patterns, and it is not at
all clear that they exhaust the range of ways in which it is possible for humans to
learn. Boyd and Richersons models also do not deal directly with issues of craft
skill and appear to have been developed more to account for the transmission of
language and ideology than of the standards, techniques, and physical skills of craft
production. Certainly, they effectively ignore the active role played by experienced
teachers in craft learning, focusing instead on the ways in which individuals process
observations of the world around them (as indicated, for example, by assertions like
Individuals observe the behavior of others, induce the cultural rules that generated
the observed behavior, and then incorporate those rules into their own cultural
repertoire [Boyd and Richerson 1985, p. 79]). The active teaching role played by
expert practitioners in ethnographically documented cases of craft learning, a key
aspect of the critically important social context of learning in general (cf. Lave and
Wenger 1991), plays a very limited role at best in these models. The few attempts to
go beyond Boyd and Richersons models have done little to address this issue. For
example, Henrichs (2004; also see Read 2006; Henrich 2006) use of these models to
explain temporal changes in Tasmanian technology focuses entirely on learning,
suggesting that small populations are more likely to lose technological knowledge
because the chances of inadequate copying of skilled behavior than large
populations. How teaching might affect this process is unclear: it is at least likely
that active engagement between teachers and learners could impact information loss
profoundly.
Archaeological arguments regarding the ways in which Boyd and Richersons
different modes of learning can be seen in the archaeological record are also wholly
unsupported by controlled observation. As is common in evolutionary archaeology
(Bamforth 2002b, pp. 440441), these models have been linked to archaeological
data almost entirely by assertion rather than demonstration. In particular, archae-
ologists applying these models have claimed that guided variation should involve
more individual experimentation than indirect bias and therefore should produce
more variable archaeological results (how either of these might differ from direct
bias or frequency-dependent bias is unclear). In practice, this has meant asserting
that the former should produce collections of artifacts with more variable metric
attributes than the latter, although no archaeologist has presented any evidence that
this is so. Similarly, Shennan (2002, pp. 4851) offers an evolutionary perspective
grounded in Boyd and Richersons work that recognizes a variety of potential

relationships between teachers and learners (one teacher instructing one learner, one
teacher instructing many learners, many teachers instructing one learner, etc.), and
outlines his sense of how these differences ought to be manifest in the degree of
variation in what is learned. Both he (Shennan 2002, p. 50) and McClure (2007)
translate these expectations directly into rules for interpreting patterns in the
archaeological record, again focusing on degrees of variation in artifact form and
construction, despite a total absence of evidence linking learning patterns and
artifacts in known cases.
This is a fundamental problem because, as we note above, Stouts (2002, 2005)
data indicate that at least metric variability need not reflect learning styles at all, but,
instead, can mirror skill differences, sometimes in counterintuitive ways (also see
Bamforth and Hicks, this volume, and Ferguson, this volume). Fergusons
experiments (this volume), indicate that intensive training by a master role
modelindirectly biased learning in Boyd and Richersons termscan take
place in more than one way and can produce a range of archaeological signatures.
Significantly, Fergusons results depend on how the skilled role model actively
interacts with learners, a factor that, as just noted, Boyd and Richersons models
do not address. Without actualistic studies like Stouts and Fergusons to guide
them, interpretations of learning patterns from archaeological data are supported
by little more than the common sense opinions of the archaeologists making
them. In effect, attempts to apply Boyd and Richersons ideas or expansions of
those ideas to understand past patterns of craft production have replicated most of
the fundamental problems that archaeology encountered some decades ago in the
early work on ceramic manufacture discussed above. In particular, these attempts
oversimplify the learning process and build bridges between behavior and
material culture by assertion rather than by systematically investigating how the
particular behavior at issue is actually reflected in archaeological data in known
cases. As ceramicists responses to these problems show, these difficulties can be
solved, and ceramic studies point the way to the kind of research that can help to
solve them. In the absence of such research, evolutionary studies of learning/
cultural transmission in archaeological contexts have essentially the same
scientific standing as ceramic sociology as it was practiced in the late 1960s
and early 1970s.
Ceramic studies also underscore the kinds of insights into learning and its social
implications that a closer integration with the wider literature on social learning can
provide. In particular, Crowns (1999, 2001, 2007a, b) work indicates that
archaeological data can allow us to address the complexity and variety of craft
learning in at least some situations. Focusing on pottery, Crown was able to
differentiate the products of skilled adults and unskilled children in the Mimbres and
Hohokam areas of the American Southwest and in producers of Cibola Whiteware in
eastern Arizona. Her analysis of her Mimbres and Hohokam data documents
differences in learning sequences and in the degree and character of adult
involvement in the learning process in these two areas. For example, like the
Shipibo-Conibo potters noted above, skilled Mimbres potters sometimes sketched
lines for children to paint over; no such sketches are apparent on Hohokam pots.
Similarly, skilled potters in both areas sometimes made pots that children then
painted, but did so less often in the Hohokam area. Overall, Crown (2001, p. 465)
argues that her results
suggest that Mimbres children began decorating pottery at an earlier age than
Hohokam children, often painting vessels made by more skilled potters and
sometimes painting over designs laid out by experienced potters. Mimbres
learning led to a greater freedom of expression and a greater error rate. The
results also suggest that Hohokam children began with nontraditional
construction techniques, only learning the more difficult aspects of the
technology once they had mastered other aspects of the production process.
The emphasis among the Hohokam seems to have been on children doing only
what they were capable of doing, but doing it correctly, so that the error rate
was considerably lower.
More generally, Crown (2001, p. 465) suggests that the Mimbres/Hohokam

contrast may correspond to Wallaert-Petres (2001, p. 482) distinction between
closed abilities, those shaped to respond to stable and predictable situations, to
demand standardized answers to problems, and to limit the ability to adapt to new
tasks (corresponding to the Hohokam case), and open abilities, those that are
shaped to respond to unstable situations and to develop a good level of adaptability
to unknown situations (corresponding to the Mimbres case). In addition, it is also
interesting that this distinction parallels a difference between the apparently more
centralized and socioeconomically complex Hohokam way of life and the more
egalitarian Mimbres way of life (Cordell 1997; Fish 1999). Just how learning styles
and/or closed and open abilities are linked to social formations is unclear (also see
Wallaert-Petre 2001), but the possibility of examining such linkages highlights our
argument that analyses of skill and learning can illuminate social relations in
important ways.
Similarly, Crown (2007b, pp. 207214) documents a significant increase over
time in the frequency with which children and adults worked on the same Cibola
Whiteware pots, implying a substantial increase in the intensity of interaction
between teacher and learners. In contrast to the Mimbres case, though, children
appear to have both made and painted their own pots in the initial stage of learning,
particularly prior to AD 1100; after this date, there is a sharp increase in the number
of pots shaped by skilled potters and decorated, at least in part, by unskilled (or less
skilled) painters. Again in contrast to the Mimbres case, though, the most common
combination of skilled and unskilled painting involves a less skilled painter filling in
a specific portion of a design that was otherwise precisely painted by a skilled
artisan. In this case, the shift she documents may reflect a substantial increase in the
complexity of painted designs over time rather than an indicator of changes in social
structure or ideology.
The range of variation in the role played by teachers that is evident in Crowns data
underscores the degree of abstraction of Boyd and Richersons theoretical models of
learning. For example, Crowns data seem to imply simultaneously that Mimbres
teachers were more intimately involved in novice learningthat (in Boyd and
Richersons terms), biasing forces were probably stronger in the Mimbres region
and also that Mimbres novices relied more on trial and error experimentation, which
should be characteristic of guided variation, not biased transmission. At minimum,

these data indicate that the learning process is more complex, and more complexly
variable, than Boyd and Richersons models imply. Levins (1966, p. 422) notes that
theoretical models ideally are widely applicable (or generalizeable), realistic, and
precise, but that most models sacrifice one of these goals in order to achieve the
others. Patterns like the Mimbres/Hohokam distinction and the difference between
both of these and the patterns in the production of Cibola Whiteware suggest that
Boyd and Richersons models sacrifice realism in order to achieve generalizability
and (possibly) precision. This makes them problematic tools for investigating the
archaeological record, which monitors real, not ideal, patterns of behavior (contrast
this with optimal foraging theorys emphasis on realism and generality [Winterhalder
1980, p. 18], an emphasis that helps to explain the powerful insights this theory has
provided to archaeology).
Salient Issues in Skill Acquisition
While existing archaeological approaches to skill acquisition thus offer a limited

basis for our work here, recognizing problems and potentials like those noted above
underscores the complexity of the problem of conceptualizing and studying the ways
in which humans become skilled. Skill is not a static phenomenon but, instead, is
fluid and contingent. In examining skill, we have to consider the dynamics of
knowledge gain and loss. The acquisition of knapping skills varies throughout the
lifespan of an individual, not only because of the transformation of the apprentice
child (by whatever learning mode) into a proficient adult knapper but also because
an individuals products change as she or he acquires skill and loses it (even
temporarily) through fatigue or trauma. Long-term loss resulting from degenerative
changes in vision or motor skills through aging, arthritis, or injury will also have an
influence (Cross 1983, p. 92, 1993; Weedman 2002). Given that the contexts for
obtaining knapping skills are embedded within the human lifecycle, skill also may
thus enable us to identify and explore the child and adolescent archaeologically
(Finlay 1997; Hgberg 1999, this volume; Grimm 2000).
Furthermore, individuals may learn alone, but they are not divorced from the
wider context afforded by the transformation of their abilities and status. The
apprenticeship model is one that has been most prevalent to date, but equally we
need to consider both other (possibly less formalized) modes of training, the extent
to which the learner is transformed by the learning experience, and the implications
this has with respect to personhood and identity. This is the value of the legitimate
peripheral participation model as proposed by Lave and Wenger (1991), for it
acknowledges the socially situated context of learning. Here, the focus is not so
much on skill acquisition per se but on the shifting character of involvement in a
community of practice. Focusing attention on this topic takes us beyond the issue of
how a single artisan acquires the ability to make a tool to consider the nature of the
society in which that artisan lives and works.
We can document skill at many levels, from that of the individual through to the
complex networks of technology, communities and landscapes. It is a dynamic that
resonates within a spectrum of possibilities (Fig. 2). Acquiring the arcane knowledge
Fig. 2 Range and archaeological correlates of skill from novice to expert.
of the knapper takes experience and is a complex process that requires practice as
well as ability. Opportunities for instruction as well as practice are potentially
constrained both by the quality and the abundance of the available raw material. This
means that we can explore the spatial and social dimensions of the acquisition of
skill across a given landscape, and it could be argued that raw material constraints
will impact on the prevalence of different skill signatures within an assemblage
(Fig. 3). In certain contexts, novice knapping might have been an activity more
prevalent at quarry locales and other primary sources of raw material where plentiful
supplies would have provided ample opportunities for practice (although, as
Ferguson, Bamforth and Hicks argue in this volume, novices can gain instruction
and practice beyond the confines of the raw material source).
Knapping is such an esoteric activity for the majority of modern people that it is
difficult to gain a realistic impression of how abilities develop over the life-course.
The commercial nature of the modern knapping market also tends to promote an
artificial reality where diversity in techniques and materials tends to replace
proficiency (Whittaker and Stafford 1999; Whittaker 2004). There is also the
significance of gender and age bias promoted (Gero 1991; Bird 1993; Finlay 1997).
Lithic technology has long been considered as an exclusively masculine domain
which impacts on discussion of skill levels with more attention to the skilled male
knapper than the more expedient and less skilled domestic or female knapping
strategies. Yet even simple routines, such as bipolar knapping, can be skilful in their
execution (Lingren 2004) and the contingency and effectiveness of apparently
simple reduction is often denied. Archaeologists particularly need to remember that
Fig. 3 Possible relationship between raw material availability and frequency of opportunities to learn
flintknapping.
unskilled knappers certainly contributed substantially to the archaeological record

and that the gender and age of these individuals needs to be critically explored rather
than simply assumed. Studies using children and ethnographic perspectives provide
some alternative templates to consider the dynamics of play and more formalized
contexts of learning. The former is the subject of the paper here by Hgberg, where
criteria can be developed for identifying playful knapping events and the place these
may have in the acquisition of skills.
Just as most knapping experiments have focused on adults, those that have
considered skill are conducted as discrete, short term eventssnap-shots of a
knappers actions. This limits current methodological approaches but is difficult to
avoid given the time-consuming and small-scale nature of most experimental
programmes. Yet, despite these caveats, there are important lessons to be learned,
and papers in this volume address the context of learning in different technologies.
Learning the sequential pattern of tool sequences has been likened to a string of
beads through repetition and rote (Wynn 1993). However, the mechanism by which
this is delivered is one of the key elements, as Ferguson demonstrates in an
exploration of the variation in an individuals performance depending on the level of
instruction in the production of bifacial projectile points.
The Present Volume
The papers we present here surely do not exhaust the ranges of either the possible
approaches to studying the lithic signatures of skill or the kinds of questions that
attending to skill can help us to answer. However, they highlight the breadth of both
of these issues.
The first group of papers here focuses on modern flintknapping. These include
analyses by Finlay and Ferguson that provide new experimental data on skill
differences and Olaussons study of self-perceptions of modern knappers. Olausson
addresses the topic of skill and inherent ability as she considers the probable
manipulation of skilled knappers and control over their abilities and products. The
challenge in teasing apart the threads of skill, defined by Olausson as something that
can be learned and improved by practice, in contrast to ability or inherited talent, are
complex. Using modern knappers and the results of a questionnaire, she argues for
the role of natural talent and artistry in the realization of elaborate knapping routines
evident for the Scandinavian Later Neolithic bifaces, arguing that practice alone will
not create a piece like the Hindsgavl dagger (see also Apel, this volume, Fig. 1).
Similarly, Fergusons paper considers the array of considerations involved in
training of novices, although he focuses on more everyday tool production and
emphasizes more pragmatic issues, including physical strength, the danger involved
in knapping, and the need to conserve raw material. With issues like these in mind,
he considers the archaeological visibility of novices trained under two learning
regimes, one involving practice guided only by verbal encouragement and one
involving the integration of novices in the teachers own craftwork. His results
indicate that there may be many cases where novices may not be identifiable in
studies that focus on finished pieces, and highlight the difficulty of attributing
particular meanings to degrees of variation in artifact measurements.
Like Ferguson, Finlay emphasizes more ordinary production, and examines the
problem of differentiating individuals via their skill level. Prompted by the
identification of different skill levels in a Scottish Later Mesolithic assemblage, a
series of replication studies explored the relationship between expectation and
performance. Novice knapping signatures in cores and debitage are consistently
recognized providing the mechanism to identity novice products. The variation
within individual performances has not been the focus of much attention in
replication (Cross 1993). Hence the importance of consistency more so than
standardization as a guide to categorize skill as it is evident that knappers in the
middle of the novice-expert spectrum often exhibit conflicting skill signatures. Again
the contexts and individual circumstances of knapping are significant as is the
importance of evaluating a suite of assemblage attributes.
Both replication studies raise the question as to how to discern individual ability
and recognize equivalency in skill levels. Modern replication frequently provides a
snap-shot of performance and the challenge lies in developing studies to
compensate for this often biased perspective.
The second group of papers draws on these and on the general information
discussed above to consider the implications of skill in specific archaeological
contexts. These include Bleeds discussion of differences in blade production in
Japan, Bamforth and Hicks examination of Paleoindian projectile point and biface
production in southwestern Nebraska, Hgbergs identification of the products of a
childs flint working in Neolithic Sweden, and Apels discussion of control over craft
production in the Scandinavian Later Neolithic.
Apel uses the chanes opratoire to define the stages and skill levels involved in
the creation of Late Neolithic flint daggers. Like Olausson, he speculates on the
social standing and manipulation of the knappers ability to produce these exceptional
objects. Drawing on both the extensive experience of Errett Callahan and his own
apprenticeship in replicating the type IV Hindsgavl forms, he charts the novice and
allocates potential age-grades and time frames to this process (see also Callahan
2006). His discussion emphasizes that understanding the abstract theoretical

knowledge required to create a dagger is one thing, but acquiring the practical
know-how is quite another. Gestures and actions have to become part of the muscle
memory and learnt by the body as well as the mind, a combination that takes time
and ability.
In his paper, Hgberg presents another aspect of the skill debate by addressing the
role of play and its identification archaeologically. In his Swedish case study, he
details the juxtaposition of two contrasting elements: the systematic routinized
strategies involved in creating a Neolithic square-sectioned axe and the presence of
an unstandardized form that shares an axe shape but is realized using ad hoc
knapping of poorer quality flint. He interprets these as the actions of adult and child,
respectively, mirroring some of Fergusons observations. His study prompts an
exploration of the place of knapping within a given society. Central is the
relationship between form and technology and measures of establishing technolog-
ical achievement. In order to see play we have to reconsider the unstandardized
forms rejected in conventional typological analysis and look for contradictions in
realization. As with Crowns (1999, 2001, 2007a, b) ceramic studies, there is the
potential to infer contexts and visibility of artifact creation and consider the inclusion
of children in knapping arenas and the social mechanisms for imitation and learning.
The presentation of an experimentally produced assemblage by a child also
highlights the general lack of attention given to nonadult subjects within replication.
Both of the last two papers (by Bleed, and by Bamforth and Hicks) also consider the
possibility and potential of recognizing aggregate differences in skill level within a
particular technology, although they search for such variation to address different
problems. Bamforth and Hicks argue that a range of factors influence the degree to
which a knappers skill level is manifest in any particular finished piece. With this in
mind, they examine variation in skill manifest in contemporary archaeological sites
located almost within sight of one another in a single drainage on the North American
Great Plains. These sites differ largely in proximity to raw material outcrops, and the
evidence indicates that that the site located at the outcrops was used mainly as a
workshop area, while the site located farther away from them was a residential area.
They attribute differences in the aggregate level of knapping skill represented in these
sites (higher at the outcrop/lower in camp) to the organization of raw material
procurement and to the training of novices in residential rather than quarry contexts.
Finally, Bleeds study of Japanese blade technology emphasizes the complexity of
the skill concept and considers aspects of skilled production that archaeologists rarely
consider, including the possibility that some assemblages may represent nothing more
than knapping practice and that knappers may have used production aids (such as jigs)
to help to reduce failure rates and standardize output. Like Bamforth and Hicks, he
documents aggregate skill differences among contemporary sites, and attributes this to
the differing conditions under which knappers labored at these locales.
Alternative and Future Approaches to Lithic Skill
Finally, while the papers here highlight the potential importance of studying how
humans become skilled craftworkers and the ways in which studying skill can
illuminate the archaeological record, they certainly do not exhaust the ways in which
these topics can be approached. In particular, in addition to the assemblage-based
studies discussed in this volume, there are a number of alternative ways of accessing
the knapper, their social status, and the meaning of skill.
One of the most obvious is via burials and the provision of personal knapping
equipment as grave goods. Numerous examples can be found, such as the Middle-
Late Woodland burials at the Island site, Delaware, where the presence of billets and
pressure flakers with women and children challenge traditional gendered interpre-
tations of stoneworking (Custer et al. 1999). Likewise, knapping kits are known
from the sixteenth-century Late Mississippian King site (Cobb and Pope 1998; Cobb
and Ruggiero 2003). Other prehistoric examples from elsewhere include the knapper
identified at the Hazleton North Neolithic long cairn in England: a male inhumation
with a hammerstone by his left knee and a large flint core by his right elbow (Saville
1990). Further examples are likely to be lost in the literature, and it may be
rewarding to review the provision of knapping equipment and consider the status
and visibility of knappers and stonecraft within burials.
There are also the cumulative effects of knapping on the human skeleton to
consider. There may be specific stress indicators resulting from habitual intensive
knapping that can be used to support certain types of specialization. Indeed, the
long-term effects of silicosis may even be discernible if we can refine sampling for
fine fraction debitage in the chest cavity of burials. Meanwhile, recent studies have
monitored motor action control in modern knappers in order to infer tool-making
capabilities in early hominids (Marzke et al. 1998; see also many of the papers in
Roux and Bril 2005; Stout et al. 2000; Stout and Chaminade 2007); such studies
may have profound implications for understanding the archaeology produced by
more modern knappers as well. There is much potential from utilizing advances in
medical technology for exploring the cognitive impact of knapping actions and
perhaps monitoring the differences between novice and experienced knappers in
experimental situations.
Developing our approaches to skill in the production of flaked stone tools also
demands a longer term perspective, both for studies that document the developing
proficiencies of an individual (e.g., Callahan 2006) and for developing intergener-
ational datasets to quantify change in knapping styles and abilities. Archaeology has
addressed issues like this in relation to site formation processes, namely the Overton
Down experimental earthworks project in England (Bell et al. 1996; Ashbee and
Jewell 1998); but equally we may well have to consider mechanisms for larger-scale
and longer-term stoneworking experiments. Such a prospect also raises the issue of
the curation of experimental collections and the daunting impact of discarded
material for future generations of archaeologists. The development of web-based
publication affords an ideal opportunity for innovative practice in this area, from
providing access to comparative studies and data to facilitating the coordination of
integrated research programmes.
In conclusion, flintknapping is in many ways an ideal arena in which to study skill.
Conceptions of skill in craft production typically emphasize the interaction between
learned, practiced behavior and knowledge of problem-solving strategies. On one
hand, the rich experimental literature in lithic analysis provides extensive insights into
both this behavior and the strategies knappers use to adapt their needs to the
idiosyncracies of their material and setting. On the other, the permanence of flaked
stone tools and their production debris preserves concrete and detailed evidence of
both of these in the archaeological record. Archaeology thus has the evidence needed
to see skillful behavior and, potentially, the analytical tools to make sense of it.
It seems apparent that, while we might not always be able to isolate skill, it is a
factor that clearly helps to structure the assemblages we study. Moreover, skill is
intrinsically identified with the individual and embedded within the broader social
contexts of technology and society. To a certain extent we still need to redress the
bias towards the expert and consider skill as a more general variable responsible for
assemblage variation, but we believe that even the current implicit focus on experts
holds more promise than is evident in the existing literature.
While it is unlikely that we will ever fully resolve the myriad complexities of
what skill actually is and generate a satisfactory, all encompassing definition, we can
exploit some of these conceptual ambiguities to explore skill in all its various
manifestations. Acknowledging that lithic skill comprises a spectrum of different
possibilities enables us to recognize the different effects it has on our material. It
cannot simply be reduced to one measure for its influence can be more extensive and
it is for this very reason that skill demands more attention.
Acknowledgements We conceived this project over coffees and lunches at University College, Cork,
Ireland, and we owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Peter Woodman for throwing us together there. All of
the authors presented their papers at a workshop at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and also as a
symposium at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Denver in 2002 (supported
by grants from the CU-Boulder Council on Research and Creative Work, the Department of Archaeology,
The University of Glasgow, and a British Academy International Networks Grant award ). This paper
benefited from the comments of Cathy Cameron, Linda Cordell, Jim Dixon, Art Joyce, Steve Lekson, and
Payson Sheets and two anonymous reviewers. Thanks to Lorraine McEwan for the figures.
References
Abrams, N. (1996). Measure Twice, Cut Once: Lessons From a Master Carpenter. New York: Little
Brown.
Ahler, S. A. (1989). Experimental knapping with KRF and midcontinent cherts: overview and
applications. In D. S. Amick & R. P. Mauldin (Eds.) Experiments in Lithic Technology (pp. 199
234). Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, International Series 528.
Andrews, B. (2003). Measuring prehistoric craftsman skill. In K. Hirth (Ed.) Mesoamerican Lithic
Technology: Experimentation and Interpretation (pp. 208219). Salt Lake City: University of Utah
Press.
Apel, J. (2001). Daggers, Knowledge and Power. Uppsala: Wikstrms.
Apel, J., & Knutsson, K. (Eds.) (2006). Skilled Production and Social Reproduction. Aspects on
Traditional Stone-Tool Technologies. Proceedings from an International Symposium held in Uppsala,
August 2024, 2003. Uppsala: Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis, SAU Stone Studies 2.
Arnold, J. (1987). Craft Specialization in the Prehistoric Channel Islands, California. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Ashbee, P., & Jewell, P. (1998). The experimental earthworks revisited. Antiquity, 72, 485504.
Bamforth, D. B. (2002a). High-tech foragers? Folsom and later Paleoindian technology on the Great
Plains. Journal of World Prehistory, 16, 5598.
Bamforth, D. B. (2002b). Evidence and metaphor in evolutionary archaeology. American Antiquity, 67,
435452.
Bamforth, D. B. (2003). Rethinking the role of bifacial technology in Paleoindian adaptations on the Great
Plains. In M. Soressi & D. Dibble (Eds.) Multiple Approaches to the Study of Bifacial Technologies
(pp. 209228). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Beck, M. (2006). Midden ceramic assemblage formation: a case study from Kalinga, Philippines.
American Antiquity, 71, 2752.
Bell, M., Fowler, P. J., & Hillson, S. W. (1996). The Experimental Earthwork Programme 19601992.
London: Council for British Archaeology Research Report 100.
Bettinger, R., & Eerkens, J. (1999). Point typologies, cultural transmission, and the spread of bow and
arrow technology in the prehistoric Great Basin. American Antiquity, 64, 231242.
Bird, C. (1993). Woman the toolmaker: evidence for womens use and manufacture of flaked stone tools in
Australia and New Guinea. In H. Du Cros & L. Smith (Eds.) Women in Archaeology: A Feminist
Critique (pp. 2230), Canberra: Australian National University.
Bleed, P. (1991). Operations research and archaeology. American Antiquity, 56, 1935.
Bodu, P. (1996). Les chasseurs Magdaleniens de Pincevent; quelques aspects de leurs comportements.
Lithic Technology, 21, 4866.
Bodu, P., Karlin, C., & Ploux, S. (1990). Whos who? The Magdalenian flintknappers of Pincevent,
France. In E. Cziesla, S. Eickhoof, N. Arts & D. Winter (Eds.) The Big Puzzle: International
Symposium on Refitting Stone Artifacts, Monrepos, 1987, vol. 1 (pp. 143164). Bonn: Holos Studies
in Modern Archaeology.
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. (1985). Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. (1993). Needs to go in here.
Bradley, B. (1991). Lithic technology. In G. Frison (Ed.) Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains (2nd
Edn.) (pp. 369396). New York: Academic Press.
Bradley, B., & Frison, G. (1987). Projectile points and specialized bifaces from the Horner site. In G.
Frison & L. Todd (Eds.) The Horner Site. (pp. 199232). New York: Academic Press.
Bril, B., Roux, V., & Dietrich, G. (2005). Stone Knapping: Khambhat (India), a Unique Opportunity? In V.
Roux & B. Bril (Eds.) Stone Knapping: the necessary conditions for a uniquely hominin behaviour
(pp. 5371). Cambridge: McDonald Institute.
Brunner, J. (1976). Early social interaction and language acquisition. In H. Schaffer (Ed.) Studies in
Mother-Infant Interaction. London: Academic Press.
Callahan, E. (2006). Neolithic Danish Daggers: an experimental peek. In J. Apel & K. Knutsson (Eds.)
Skilled Production and Social Reproduction. Aspects on Traditional Stone-Tool Technologies.
Proceedings from an International Symposium held in Uppsala, August 2024, 2003 (pp. 115
137). Uppsala: Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis, SAU Stone Studies 2.
Clark, J. (2003). Craftmanship and craft specialization. In K. Hirth (Ed.) Mesoamerican Lithic
Technology: Experimentation and Interpretation (pp. 220233). Salt Lake City: University of Utah
Press.
Cobb, C. R., & Pope, M. (1998). Sixteenth-century flintknapping kits from the King Site, Georgia.
Journal of Field Archaeology, 25, 118.
Cobb, C., & Ruggiero, D. (2003). Lithic technology and the Spanish Entrada at the King Site in northwest
Georgia. In C. Cobb (Ed.) Stone Tool Traditions in the Contact Era (pp. 1328). Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press.
Cordell, L. (1997). Archaeology of the Southwest. New York: Academic Press.
Coy, M. (1989). From theory. In M. Coy (Ed.) Apprenticeship: From Theory to Method and Back Again
(pp. 111). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Cross, J. R. (1983). Twigs, branches, trees, and forests: problems of scale in lithic analysis. In J. A. Moore
& A. S. Keene (Eds.) Archaeological Hammers and Theories (pp. 87106). New York: Academic
Press.
Cross, J. R. (1993). Craft specialisation in nonstratified societies. Research in Economic Anthropology, 14,
6184.
Crown, P. (1999). Socialization in American Southwest pottery decoration. In J. Skibo & G. Feinman
(Eds.) Pottery and People: A Dynamic Interaction (pp. 2543). Salt Lake City: University of Utah
Press.
Crown, P. (2001). Learning to make pottery in the Prehispanic American Southwest. Journal of
Anthropological Research, 57, 451469.
Crown, P. (2007a). Life histories of pots and potters: situating the individual in archaeology. American
Antiquity, 72, 677690.
Crown, P. (2007b). Learning about learning. In J. Skibo, M. Graves & M. Stark (Eds.) Archaeological
Anthropology: Perspectives on Method and Theory (pp. 198217). Tucson: University of Arizona
Press.
Custer, J. F., Rosenberg, K. R., Mellin, G., & Washburn, A. (1999). A Re-examination of the Island Field
Site (7K-F-17), Kent County, Delaware. Archaeology of Eastern North America, 18, 145212.
David, N., & Kramer, C. (2001). Ethnoarchaeology in Action. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Deboer, W. (1990). Interaction, imitation, and communication as expressed in style: the Ucayali
experience. In M. Conkey & C. Hastorf (Eds.) The Uses of Style in Archaeology (pp. 82104). New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Deetz, J. (1965). The Dynamics of Stylistic Change in Arikara Ceramics. Illinois Studies in Anthropology
4. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Dumond, D. (1977). Science in archaeology: the saints go marching in. American Antiquity, 42, 330349.
Eerkens, J. W. (2000). Practice makes within 5% of perfect: visual perception, motor skills and memory in
artefact variation. Current Anthropology, 41, 663668.
Eerkens, J. W., & Bettinger, R. L. (2001). Techniques for assessing standardization in artifact assemblages:
can we scale material variability? American Antiquity, 66, 493504.
Ericsson, K. A., & Lehmann, A. C. (1996). Expert and exceptional performance:evidence of maximal
adaptation to task constraints. Annual Review of Psychology, 47, 273305.
Fash, W. (1991). Scribes, Warriors, and Kings: The City of Copan and the Ancient Maya. New York:
Thames and Hudson.
Finlay, N. (1997). Kid-knapping: the missing children in lithic analysis. In J. Moore & E. Scott (Eds.)
Invisible People and Processes: Writing Gender and Childhood into European Archaeology (pp. 203
212). Leicester: Leicester University Press.
Fischer, A. (1989). A late Paleolithic school of flint-knapping at Trollesgave, Denmark: results from
refitting. Acta Archaeologia, 60, 3349.
Fischer, A. (1990). On being a pupil of a flintknapper of 11,000 years ago. In E. Cziesla, S. Eickhoof, N.
Arts & D. Winter (Eds.) The Big Puzzle: International Symposium on Refitting Stone Artifacts,
Monrepos, 1987, vol. 1 (pp. 447464). Bonn: Holos studies in Modern Archaeology.
Fish, S. (1999). How complex were the Southwestern great towns polities? In J. Neitzel (Ed.) Great
Towns and Regional Polities in the Prehistoric American Southwest and Southeast (pp. 4558).
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Flenniken, J. (1978). Reevaluation of the Lindenmeier Folsom: a replication experiment in lithic
technology. American Antiquity, 43, 473480.
Frison, G. & Bradley, B. (1999). The Fenn Cache: Clovis Weapons and Tools. Santa Fe: One Horse Land
and Cattle Company.
Gero, J. M. (1991). Genderlithics: womens roles in stone tool production. In J. Gero & M. Conkey (Eds.)
Engendering Archaeology (pp. 163193). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Gibson, E. (1982). Upper Paleolithic flintknapping specialists? The evidence from Corbiac, France. Lithic
Technology 11, 4149.
Goody, E. (1989). Learning, apprenticeship, and the division of labor. In M. Coy (Ed.) Apprenticeship:
From Theory to Method and Back Again (pp. 233256). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Greenfield, P. (1984). A theory of the teacher in the learning activities of everyday life. In R. Rogoff & J.
Lave (Eds.) Everyday Cognition (pp. 117138). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Grimm, L. (2000). Apprentice flintknapping: relating material culture and social practice in the Upper
Palaeolithic. In J. Soafer Derevenski (Ed.) Children and Material Culture (pp. 5371). London:
Routledge.
Gunn, J. (1975). Idiosyncratic behaviour in chipping style: some hypotheses and preliminary analysis. In
E. Swanson (Ed.) Lithic Technology: Making and Using Stone Tools (pp. 3561). The Hague: Mouton
Publishers.
Gunn, J. (1977). Idiosyncratic chipping style as a demographic indicator: a proposed application to the
South Hills region of Idaho and Utah. In J. N. Hill & J. Gunn (Eds.) The Individual in Prehistory:
Studies of Variability in Style in Prehistoric Technologies (pp. 167204). London: Academic Press.
Hayden, B. (1982). Interaction parameters and the demise of Paleoindian craftsmanship. Plains
Anthropologist, 27, 109123.
Hayden, B., & Cannon, A. (1984). Interaction inferences in archaeology and learning frameworks of the
Maya. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 3, 325367.
Henrich, J. (2004). Demography and cultural evolution: how adaptive cultural processes can produce
maladaptive lossesthe Tasmanian case. American Antiquity, 69, 197214.
Henrich, J. (2006). Understanding cultural evolutionary models: a response to Reads critique. American
Hill, J. (1970). Broken K Pueblo: prehistoric social organization in the American Southwest. University of
Arizona Anthropological Papers 18. Tucson: University of Arizona.
Hill, J. (1978). Individuals and their artifacts: an experimental study in archaeology. American Antiquity,
43, 245257.
Hgberg, A. (1999). Child and adult at a knapping area: a technological flake analysis of a manufacture of
a Neolithic square sectioned axe and a childs flintknapping activities on an assemblage excavated as
part of the resund fixed link project. Acta Archaeologica, 70, 79106.
Howe, M., Davidson, J., & Sloboda, J. (1998). Innate talents: reality or myth? Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, 21, 399407.
Ingold, T. (1993). Tool-use, sociality and intelligence. In K. R. Gibson & T. Ingold (Eds.) Tools, Language
and Cognition in Human Evolution (pp. 429445). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, R. (1976). Time and flint needed to acquire secondary thinning bifacial reduction skills. Lithic
Technology, 5, 2627.
Keller, C., & Keller, J. (1996). Cognition and Tool Use: The Blacksmith at Work. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Kramer, C. (1985). Ceramic ethnoarchaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 14, 77102.
Krause, R. (1985). The Clay Sleeps. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Layton, R. (1974). Technology as knowledge. Technology and Culture, 15, 3141.
Levins R. (1966). Strategies of model building in population biology. American Scientist, 54, 421431.
Lewis-Johnson, L. (1978). A history of flint-knapping experimentation 18381976. Current Anthropology,
19, 357372.
Lingren, C. (2004). Mnniskor och kvarts. Sociala och teknologiska strategier under mesolithikum i stra
Mellansverige. Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 29. Stockholm: Stockholm University.
Longacre, W. (1970). Archaeology as Anthropology: A Case Study. University of Arizona Anthropological
Papers 17. Tucson: University of Arizona.
Longacre, W. (1991). Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Longacre, W., & Skibo, J. (1994). Kalinga Ethnoarchaeology. Washington: Smithsonian Press.
Marzke, M., Toth, N., Shick, K., Reece, S., Steinberg, B., Hunt, K., Linsheid, R., & An, R. (1998). EMG
study of hand muscle recruitment during hard hammer percussion manufacture of Oldowan tools.
American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 105, 315332.
McClure, S. (2007). Gender, technology, and evolution: cultural inheritance theory and prehistoric potters
in Valencia, Spain. American Antiquity, 72, 485508.
Milne, S. B. (2005). Palae-Eskimo novice flintknapping in the Eastern Canadian Arctic. Journal of Field
Archaeology, 30, 329345.
Minar, J., & Crown, P. (2001). Learning and craft production: an introduction. Journal of Anthropological
Research, 57, 369380.
Moran, A. (1996). The Psychology of Concentration in Sports Performers: A Comparative Analysis.
Hove: Psychology Press.
Nichols, J., & Allstadt, D. J. (1978). Hinge fracture rates of novice flintknappers. Lithic Technology, 7, 12.
Nunn, G. R. (2006). Using the Jultand Type IC Neolithic Danish Dagger as a model to replicate parallel,
edge-to-edge pressure flaking. In J. Apel & K. Knutsson (Eds.), Skilled Production and Social
Reproduction. Aspects on Traditional Stone-Tool Technologies. Proceedings from an International
Symposium held in Uppsala August 2024, 2003 (pp. 81113). Uppsala: Societas Archaeologica
Upsaliensis, SAU Stone Studies 2.
Olausson, D. (1997). Craft specialization as an agent of social power in the south Scandinavian Neolithic.
In R. Schild & Z. Sulgostowska (Eds.) Man and Flint: Proceedings of the VIIth International Flint
Symposium (pp. 269278). Warsaw: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology.
Olausson, D. (1998). Different strokes for different folks. Possible reasons for variation in quality of
knapping. Lithic Technology, 23(2), 90115.
Pelegrin, J. (1990). Prehistoric lithic technology: some aspects of research. Archaeological Review
Cambridge, 9, 116125.
Piaget, J. (1972). The Psychology of the Child. New York: Basic Books.
Pigeot, N. (1987). Magdalniens D'Etiolles: Economie de Debitage et Organisation Sociale (L'Unite
d'Habitation U5), 25th suppl Gallia Prhistoire. Paris: CRNS.
Pigeot, N. (1990). Technical and social actors: flintknapping specialists at Magdalenian Etiolles.
Archaeological Review Cambridge, 9, 126141.
Roux, V., & Bril, B. (Eds.) (2005). Stone Knapping: the necessary conditions for a uniquely hominin
behaviour. Cambridge: McDonald Institute.
Proctor, R. W., & Dutta, A. (1995). Skill Acquisition and Human Performance. Thousand Oaks,
California: Sage Publications.
Read, D. (2006). Tasmanian knowledge and skill: maladaptive imitation or adequate technology. American
Rogoff, B. (1995). Observing sociocultural activity on three planes: participatory appropriation, guided
participation, and apprenticeship. In J. Wertsch, P. del Rio & A. Alvrez (Eds.), Sociocultural Studies
of Mind (pp. 139164). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rogoff, B., & Gardner, W. (1984). Adult guidance of cognitive development. In R. Rogoff & J. Lave
(Eds.) Everyday Cognition (pp. 95116). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Root, M. (2000). The Archaeology of the Bobtail Wolf Site. Pullman: Washington State University Press.
Roux, V. (1990). The psychosocial analysis of technical activities: a contribution to the study of craft
specialization. Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 1, 142153.
Roux, V., Bril, B., & Gilles, D. (1995). Skills and learning difficulties involved in stone knapping: the case
of stone-bead knapping in Khambhat, India. World Archaeology, 27(1), 6387.
Saville, A. (1990). Hazleton North, Gloucestershire, 197982: The Excavation of a Neolithic Long Cairn
of the Cotswold-Severn Group. London: English Heritage.
Schiffer, M. (1972). Behavioral Archaeology. New York: Academic Press.
Schiffer, M. (1987). Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press.
Sheets, P. (1975). Behavioral analysis and the structure of a prehistoric industry. Current Anthropology,
16, 369378.
Shelley, P. H. (1990). Variation in lithic assemblages: an experiment. Journal of Field Archaeology, 17,
87193.
Shennan, S. (2002). Genes, Memes, and Human History. London: Thames and Hudson.
Shennan, S., & Steele, J. (1999). Cultural learning in hominids: a behavioral ecological approach. In H.
Box & K. Gibson (Eds.) Mammalian Social Learning (pp. 367388). New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Shott, M. (1997). Transmission theory in the study of stone tools: a Midwestern example. In G. Clark & C.
Parton (Eds.) Rediscovering Darwin: Evolutionary Theory in Archaeological Explanation (pp. 193
208). Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 7. Washington, D.C.:
American Anthropological Association.
Smith, E. (2000). Three styles in the evolutionary analysis of human behavior. In L. Cronk, N. Chagnon &
W. Irons (Eds.) Adaptation and Human Behavior (pp. 2746). New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Stafford, M. (1998). In search of hindsight: experiments in the production of Neolithic Danish flint
daggers. Antiquity, 72, 338349.
Stanislawski, M. (1978). If pots were mortal. In R. Gould (Ed.) Explorations in Ethnoarchaeology (pp.
201227). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Stark, M. (1998). The Archaeology of Social Boundaries. Washington: Smithsonian Press.
Stark, M. (2003). Current Issues in Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology. Journal of Archaeological Research, 11,
193242.
Stout, D. (2002). Skill and cognition in stone tool production. An ethnographic case study from Irian Jaya.
Current Anthropology, 5, 693722.
Stout, D. (2005). The Social and Cultural Context of Stone-knapping Skill Acquistion. In V. Roux & B.
Bril (Eds.) Stone Knapping: The Necessary Conditions for a Uniquely Hominin Behaviour (pp. 331
340). Cambridge: McDonald Institute.
Stout, D., & Chaminade, T. (2007). The evolutionary neuroscience of toll making. Neuropsychologia, 45,
10911100.
Stout, D., Toth, N., Schick, K., Stout, J., & Hutchins, G. (2000). Stone tool-making and brain activation:
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) studies. Journal of Archaeological Science, 27, 12151223.
Terkel, S. (1974). Working. New York: Pantheon Books.
Titmus, G. L. & Woods, J. C. (2003). The Maya Eccentric. Evidence for the use of the indirect percussion
technique in Mesoamerica from preliminary experiements concerning their manufacture. In K. G.
Hirth (Ed.) Mesoamerican Lithic Technology: Experimentation and Interpretation (pp. 132146). Salt
Lake City: The University of Utah Press.
Torrence, R. (1986). Production and Exchange of Stone Tools: Prehistoric Obsidian in the Aegean. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Wallaert-Petre, H. (2001). Learning how to make the right pots: apprenticeship strategies and material
culture, a case study in handmade pottery from Cameroon. Journal of Anthropological Research, 57,
471493.
Washburn, D. K. (2001). Remembering things seen: experimental approaches to the process of
information transmittal. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 8(1), 6799.
Weedman, K. (2002). On the spur of the moment: effects of age and experience on hafted stone scraper
morphology. American Antiquity, 67, 731744.
Whittaker, J. C. (1987). Individual variation as an approach to economic organisation: projectile points at
Grasshopper Pueblo, Arizona. Journal of Field Archaeology, 14, 465979.
Whittaker, J. C. (1994). Flintknapping: Making and Understanding Stone Tools. Austin: University of
Texas Press.
Whittaker, J. C. (2004) American Flintknappers: Stone Age Art in the Age of Computer. Austin: University
of Texas Press.
Whittaker, J., & Stafford, M. (1999). Replicas, fakes, and art: the twentieth century stone age and its
effects on archaeology. American Antiquity, 64, 203214.
Winfrey, J. (1990). An event tree analysis of Folsom point failure. Plains Anthropologist, 35, 263272.
Winterhalder, B. (1980). Optimal foraging strategies and hunter-gatherer research in Anthropology: theory
and Models. In B. Winterhalder & E. Smith (Eds.) Hunter-Gatherer Foraging Strategies (pp. 1335).
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wood, D., Brunner, S., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child
Psychology and Psychiatry, 66, 181191.
Wynn, T. (1993). Layers of thinking in tool behaviour. In K. R. Gibson & T. Ingold (Eds.) Tools,
Language and Cognition in Human Evolution (pp. 429445). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Young, D. E., & Bonnichsen, R. (1984). Understanding Stone Tools: A Cognitive Approach. Maine:
Centre for the study of Early Man.

Archaeological Approaches To Lithic Production PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Archaeological Approaches To Lithic Production PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

J Archaeol Method Theory (2008) 15:127

Introduction: Archaeological Approaches to Lithic

Douglas B. Bamforth & Nyree Finlay

Published online: 15 January 2008

Keywords Skill . Learning . Knapping . Ceramic sociology

Skill: . . . 2: the ability to use ones knowledge effectively and readily in

Fig. 1 Skill as the intersection of connaissance and savoir-faire.

Archaeological Approaches to Flintknapping Skill

Table I Characteristics of Stone Tools that Indicate High Levels of Skill

Characteristic Some Examples

Table II Indicators of Novice/Unskilled Knappers

Characteristic Some Examples

Irregularity in form Ferguson, this volume

A second approach focuses on identifying interindividual differences in skill

Becoming Skilled and Becoming Very Skilled: Craft Learning

Archaeological Approaches to Craft Learning

between communities. However, archaeological attempts to address the process of

grounded in Boyd and Richersons work that recognizes a variety of potential

More generally, Crown (2001, p. 465) suggests that the Mimbres/Hohokam

should be characteristic of guided variation, not biased transmission. At minimum,

Salient Issues in Skill Acquisition

While existing archaeological approaches to skill acquisition thus offer a limited

Fig. 2 Range and archaeological correlates of skill from novice to expert.

unskilled knappers certainly contributed substantially to the archaeological record

The Present Volume

2006). His discussion emphasizes that understanding the abstract theoretical

Alternative and Future Approaches to Lithic Skill

You might also like