Lithics in the West is published by University of Montana Press and is edited by Douglas H. MacDonald, William Andrefsky, Jr., and Pei-Lin Yu. The geographic coverage arcs from eastern Oregon and Washington, through southern Idaho and Montana, and then south into northern Wyoming and northern Colorado. The temporal span ranges from Paleoindian through Archaic and into Late Prehistoric and underlying interpretive theories that repeatedly appear in many chapters stem from work by Andrefsky, Jr., Bamforth, Binford, Kelly, Kuhn, Shott, and Surovell. The 10 chapters are written by 15 authors comprising 191 pages with abundant black and white figures and tables. The topics vary from a modern replicative study to single-site analyses to broader landscape-scale interpretations of human behavior. The first chapter by Andrefsky, Jr. reports the results of a controlled wood whittling experiment that tested the efficiency and effectiveness of unmodified chert and obsidian flake tools. The underlying premise is that we need to consider flake tools as preferred over shaped tools for conducting specific tasks, and not just think about them as debitage that was coincidentally utilized. The author clearly explains the limitations of his test and how the results may be applied to archaeological situations and make a sound argument that we may be missing a lot in our interpretations of human behavior associated with this oft overlooked tool class. His results provide support for interpretive models that favor flake tools over shaped tools under conditions of raw material abundance and add an important functional dimension to the debate on the benefits of transporting flakes versus cores over long distances. The second chapter by Yu and Cook presents a novel approach to analyzing stone tools used to process salmon on the upper Columbia River. To provide context, the authors present an ethnographic overview of fish processing for the region and from this develop model expectations for assemblage level characteristics of large-scale fish processing tools. Yu and Cook analyze a sample of tools from the Kettle Falls area of northeastern Washington and evaluate the observed traits against model predictions, with three of the four predictions supported. Finally, the authors offer some suggestions for how their results might be applied to hunter-gatherer stream fishing in the RockyMountains. Overall, the research is interesting. However, the reliance on morpho-functional classifications for segregating their sample prior to analysis, in combination with a lack of microscopic use-wear study, results in a bit of tautological reasoning. Yu and Cook lay out certain morphological characteristics associated with ethnographically documented fish processing tools, and then select a sample of tools with these same basic characteristics and conclude that they were used to butcher salmon. Their interpretation is based as much on the provenience and general shape of the artifacts as it is on any independent line of functional evidence for how the objects were actually used. This creates a problem when the authors then apply their results to Rocky Mountain settings that lack similar large-scale fish processing sites. Even so, Yu and Cook’s model may be very applicable to large regions of the Pacific Northwest where hunter-gatherers processed seasonal salmon runs for millennia. Chapter 3, by Waguespack and Surovell, provides an insightful and creative method for exploring the delineation of indoor and outdoor space at mobile hunter-gatherer sites by evaluating the relationship between artifact density and frequency of burned items from the plains anthropologist, Vol. 63 No. 246, May, 2018, 191–194

中文翻译：

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西方石器学：用石器分析解决北美西部的考古问题

《西部石器》由蒙大拿大学出版社出版，由 Douglas H. MacDonald、William Andrefsky, Jr. 和 Pei-Lin Yu 编辑。地理覆盖范围从俄勒冈州东部和华盛顿州开始，经过爱达荷州南部和蒙大拿州，然后向南进入怀俄明州北部和科罗拉多州北部。时间跨度从古印度到古代，再到史前晚期和基础解释理论，这些理论反复出现在许多章节中，这些理论源于 Andrefsky, Jr.、Bamforth、Binford、Kelly、Kuhn、Shott 和 Surovell 的工作。10 章由 15 位作者撰写，共 191 页，包含丰富的黑白图和表格。主题从现代复制研究到单点分析，再到对人类行为的更广泛的景观尺度解释。Andrefsky, Jr. 的第一章。报告了一项受控木材削削实验的结果，该实验测试了未经修改的燧石和黑曜石薄片工具的效率和有效性。基本前提是，我们需要将薄片工具视为执行特定任务的首选工具，而不是将它们视为偶然使用的借方。作者清楚地解释了他的测试的局限性以及如何将结果应用于考古情况，并提出一个合理的论点，即我们在解释与这个经常被忽视的工具类相关的人类行为时可能会遗漏很多。他的研究结果为在原材料丰富的条件下偏爱薄片工具而不是成型工具的解释模型提供了支持，并为关于长距离运输薄片与核心的好处的辩论增加了一个重要的功能维度。Yu 和 Cook 的第二章介绍了一种分析用于加工哥伦比亚河上游鲑鱼的石器的新方法。为了提供背景信息，作者介绍了该地区鱼类加工的民族志概述，并由此开发了对大型鱼类加工工具的装配水平特征的模型预期。Yu 和 Cook 分析了来自华盛顿东北部 Kettle Falls 地区的工具样本，并根据模型预测评估了观察到的特征，四个预测中的三个得到支持。最后，作者提供了一些关于如何将他们的结果应用于 RockyMountains 的狩猎采集河流捕鱼的建议。总的来说，这项研究很有趣。然而，在分析之前依赖形态功能分类来分离样品，再加上缺乏微观使用磨损研究，导致了一些重言式推理。Yu 和 Cook 列出了与人种学记录的鱼类加工工具相关的某些形态特征，然后选择具有这些基本特征的工具样本并得出结论，它们被用来屠宰鲑鱼。他们的解释既基于人工制品的出处和一般形状，也基于任何独立的功能证据线，以证明这些物体的实际用途。当作者随后将他们的结果应用于缺乏类似大型鱼类加工场所的落基山环境时，这会产生一个问题。即便如此，Yu 和 Cook 的模型可能非常适用于太平洋西北部的大片地区，那里的狩猎采集者加工季节性鲑鱼已有数千年的历史。第 3 章由 Waguespack 和 Surovell 撰写，提供了一种富有洞察力和创造性的方法，通过评估平原人类学家第 2 卷第 2 卷中的文物密度和烧毁物品频率之间的关系，探索移动狩猎采集地点的室内和室外空间的划分。63 No. 246, May, 2018, 191–194 Yu 和 Cook 的模型可能非常适用于太平洋西北部的大片地区，那里的狩猎采集者加工季节性鲑鱼已有数千年历史。第 3 章由 Waguespack 和 Surovell 撰写，提供了一种富有洞察力和创造性的方法，通过评估平原人类学家第 2 卷第 2 卷中的文物密度和烧毁物品频率之间的关系，探索移动狩猎采集地点的室内和室外空间的划分。63 No. 246, May, 2018, 191–194 Yu 和 Cook 的模型可能非常适用于太平洋西北部的大片地区，那里的狩猎采集者加工季节性鲑鱼已有数千年历史。第 3 章由 Waguespack 和 Surovell 撰写，提供了一种富有洞察力和创造性的方法，通过评估平原人类学家第 2 卷第 2 卷中的文物密度和烧毁物品频率之间的关系，探索移动狩猎采集地点的室内和室外空间的划分。63 No. 246, May, 2018, 191–194