Ground stone implements are found across most Australian landscapes and are often regarded as Aboriginal tools that were used for processing or modifying other items. Less common are ground stones modified for non-utilitarian, symbolic purposes (e.g., polished and carved stone ornaments; ritual implements such as cylcons and tjuringa sacred stones; and unused, well-crafted ground-stone axes). In this

Nowadays, the fruitful discussion regarding the morphological variability of handaxes during the Middle Pleistocene has reached a decisive moment with the use of more accurate statistical methods, such as geometric morphometrics (GM) and multivariate analyses (MA). This paper presents a preliminary methodological approach for checking the utility of these new approaches on the analysis of the tools’

Despite its strategic location within the continent, Central Africa is rarely integrated into the reconstruction of population dynamics during the Middle Stone Age (MSA) of Africa, especially in terms of the emergence, diffusion and behavioural patterns of Homo sapiens. However, hundreds of sites have been discovered in Central Africa during the 20th century and attributed to the Lupemban, one of the

Article template for articles in the proceedings of the 2015 International Symposium on Knappable Materials. (For bilingual articles, use the generic bilingual research article template.)

The present archaeometric study focuses on a set of archaeological siliceous lithic tools that are assigned to the early Vinca culture period (Vinca A and Vinca B1). They were found in several pit-houses at Limba-Oarda de Jos (SW Transylvania, Romania), an open settlement that has been dated to 5,405-5,310 cal. BCE, a period in the Middle Neolithic. A total of 322 retouched tools and debitage pieces

We describe a tanged point and a blade technology from Rubha Port an t-Seilich, Isle of Islay, Scotland that provides further support to a Late Pleistocene or Early Holocene presence in Scotland prior to the establishment of the narrow blade Mesolithic industry. The existing evidence for a Late Pleistocene or early Holocene presence comes from isolated finds of tanged points (Tiree, Shieldig, Brodgar)

The goal of this study is to report the progress regarding the procurement and circulation of obsidian by hunter-gatherer populations during the Late Holocene in the province of La Pampa, Argentina. A total of 25 samples were analyzed in two stages; in the first stage neutron activation analysis (INAA) was used, while X-ray fluorescence (XRF) was employed in the second stage. This work adds nine archaeological

This work is focused in the study of Patagonian lithic projectile points shape variation from a phylogenetic perspective pursuing three main aims: first, generate a model of projectile point shape diversification and morphospace evolution; second, estimate shape variation through time, and finally, assess the robustness of previous results using the same methods but in a larger sample with better spatial

Regional provenance analyses of obsidian have enabled to identify so far twelve sources in Northwest of Argentina and defined two main and stable areas of distribution along the pre-Hispanic period. The aim of this paper is to report the first analyses carried out on obsidian artifacts recovered from two archaeological sites of the Tafí valley (Tucumán, Argentina), dating to the first and second millennium

The Oscurusciuto rock shelter (Ginosa, Puglia, southern Italy) is a Middle Palaeolithic site characterized by a significant stratigraphy made up by several anthropic levels. The stratigraphic unit 13, consisting of a sandy compact deposit mixed with pyroclastic sediment, is a short palimpsest situated on a layer of tephra, identified as Mt. Epomeo green tuff (dated Ar/Ar ~ 55 ka BP). From a technological

The archaeological evidence from the end of the Middle Holocene and the beginning of the Late Holocene (ca. 5000-2000 years BP) shows a period of great changes. These appear to be the main result of low residential mobility occupations and subsistence strategies based in the specialized hunting of camelids, their domestication and further herding. Even though there is no consensus over the relative

This paper discusses different aspects related to the andesite and obsidian availability and circulation routes in different moments of the occupation sequence in the Pueyrredón-PosadasSalitroso (PPS) Lake Basin in the north, and the Burmeister-Belgrano (BB) Lake Basin to the south (north-west Santa Cruz province, Argentinian Patagonia). The distribution of raw materials both in space and time allows

In this paper we present the results of the study of 32 projectile points from Hangar site, located in the Salado creek basin (centre of the province of Buenos Aires). Archaeological materials recovered from the site include some isolated human remains, several potsherds, faunal materials, and lithic artefacts. The presence of pottery and small triangular points, together with the radiocarbon dating

In the wake of the discovery of numerous large blade workshops at Le Grand-Pressigny site (Indre-et-Loire, France), which initially aroused great interest, the mid-Loire Valley region became central to studies of flint diffusion. Despite the quality of the initial work, the widely shared view now is that the capacity for this concept to continue to provide useful archaeological modelling has diminished

This work introduces a comparative collection located in the Prehistory Laboratory at the University of Leon (Spain) specialised in knappable raw materials, mainly comprising radiolarite and black chert (micro-crypto crystalline quartz), from the western Cantabrian Mountains (north of Iberian Peninsula). A standardised protocol of sample collection and data organisation was developed, which includes

The study size patterns in projectile points (n=39) from six sites in the Argentine Andes (29–34°S) associated with 17 radiocarbon dates with medians spanning 3080–470 cal BP. This is the region’s first attempt to metrically distinguish arrows and darts, which is based on shoulder or maximum width, following Shott. The northern part of the study area (29°S) includes the earliest arrow point, slightly

Flaked stone artefacts found on the quarry Lojanik in west-central Serbia are good examples of how the function of non-diagnostic pieces could be determined through technological and use-wear analysis. In this study, we present the examples of surface clusters and artefacts from stratigraphic layers. Our attention is focused on the prevailing category of fragmented raw materials in the initial phase

The high-altitude site of Karmir Sar is located around 2850 m a.s.l. on the southern slopes of Mt. Aragats (Armenia). Numerous stone structures (including vishaps, cromlechs, stone enclosures) are found all over the 40 ha-sized meadow, out of which three vishaps, four cromlechs and one circular stone structure have been investigated since 2012. According to 14C-dates, pottery and diagnostic lithic

Taphonomic experiments in lithic technology have been used to understand many facets of the archaeological record including site-formation processes, artifact displacement, and wear damage. The North American grooved-axe - an artifact type of which little technological attention has been given in the literature - is examined as a case study for a taphonomic experiment conducted in Central Connecticut

Despite Greece’s key geographic position between southeast Europe and southwest Asia, and its potential for documenting hominin dispersals, Lower and Middle Palaeolithic sites are rare. This suggests the need for research to identify deposits that may contain Palaeolithic artefacts. Here we describe 165 quartz and quartzite artefacts with Palaeolithic characteristics (based on technical and morphotypological

A microwear analysis of recycled lithic artefacts from late Pottery Neolithic Wadi Rabah and Early Bronze Age layers at Ein-Zippori, Israel included cores-on-flakes (COFs) which are discarded blanks made into cores, and the flakes detached from them. COFs may have microwear traces that formed before they were recycled. The focus here is on how blanks removed from recycled COFs were used. Discarded

The practice of lithic heat treatment creates a combination of initial dull flake scars and subsequent smooth flake scars when the implement is finished after heating. Experiments were done to test the susceptibility of dull and smooth flake scars to etching. The points were etched in 40% hydrofluoric acid for either 40 or 60 seconds. In the 40 seconds experiment, the smooth flake scars of 9 (out of

This paper presents a new techno-typological analysis of a sample of small flakes that were produced through recycling from discarded blanks at the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age site of Ein-Zippori, Lower Galilee, Israel. This study shows that the systematic production of small flakes from previously discarded blanks was not related to a scarcity in raw materials, but rather to specific decisions

Lithic blades are long and narrow flakes produced from prepared cores which form part of different technological complexes all around the world. In South America, the production and use of blades has been reported in different settings which include early hunter-gatherer occupations of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, as well as Middle and Late Holocene occupations. Until now, the only reference

This paper sheds light on the presence and significance of unusually small, colorful, unmodified, flint pebbles unearthed at Qesem Cave, a late Lower Paleolithic site in Israel. For over two million years, early humans were noticing, collecting and bringing "home" various non-utilitarian objects with aesthetic visible characteristics, in what seems to reflect a basic human trait. Archaeological findings

At the end of the Pleistocene (25,000-15,000 BP), there is a shift to more arid conditions in the Negev and the Sinai corresponding to the Last Glacial Maximum. For the Nile Valley and the Levant, the lowering of the Mediterranean sea level, the expansion of the Sahara and the desiccation of some major eastern African lakes had important consequences on: (1) the general behaviour of the River Nile;

This work presents the first results about the use of siliceous raw materials by the hunter-gatherer societies during the Late Glacial in the level 5 of El Pirulejo. El Pirulejo is located within the municipality of Priego de Cordoba (Cordoba, Spain).The archaeological level P/5 is classified as a Solutrean, according to the technological analysis of the lithic assemblage. The methodology used about

The archaeological site of Meu Jardim (municipality of Nazare) is a shell-midden with several phases of occupation dated to the Middle Neolithic period. It is located near flint deposits, on the Atlantic seaboard of the Portuguese Estremadura. Its excavation, that took place in the context of salvage archaeology, was due to the building of a bridge. The fieldwork consisted of the excavation of three

The development of experimental flint knapping programs allowed for the identification of stigmas related to the use of soft hammerstone percussion. Pelegrin (2000) explored the limits and constraints of the use of this type of percussion and since the first publication of these distinctive stigmas this technique was identified in assemblages from different chronologies in Europe and the Near East

Organizing a collection of articles on lithic studies in Portuguese does not seem, at first, a challenging task. After all, Portugal already has a tradition of decades of research on the subject, which has also increased in Brazil in recent years. Therefore, it was expected that most of the articles published in this edition would come from these two countries. The challenge was to include articles

De acordo com os organizadores do livro, as universidades de Portugal usufruem muito de manuais de analise de vestigios liticos escritos em lingua estrangeira. Isto se justifica pela falta destes manuais em lingua portuguesa, e este livro se apresenta com a pretensao de preencher esta lacuna. O livro e dividido em duas partes. A primeira parte trata de “metodologias”, e possui quatro capitulos; enquanto

Although many important prehistoric sites are known from South Africa, few comparable contexts have been discovered and documented in the northern Namibia and southern Angola borderlands. During a geomorphic assessment of riparian corridors in Namibia’s Kaokoveld region, Middle Stone Age (MSA in Africa; broadly correlative with European Paleolithic) lithic artifacts were found preserved in unstratified

This contribution is part of a larger work developed since 2014 on Zambujal’s flaked stone mainly focusing on siliceous resources’ petrographic characterization, strategies of management and procurement. The enclosure of Zambujal distinguishes itself, in the Portuguese Estremadura, by the larger number of flint artefacts recovered within a chronological context. As well, the Sizandro’s valley was recently

The state of Sao Paulo is a favorable area for karst formation. This occurs due to its geomorphology that presents lithological characteristics that favor the formation of caves and shelters in sandstone and limestone. Whether by speleologists or archaeologists, many archaeological sites in sheltered contexts have been discovered in the interior of Sao Paulo, however, their studies have not yet been

Style and function in archaeological or ethnographic artifacts have been studied by a myriad of researchers through the most diverse theoretical approaches. In this context, the study of projectile points has been particularly useful in generating a greater knowledge of these artifacts as markers of identity, reflecting potential boundaries between groups. This work aims at exploring the differences

Blade debitage is a characteristic production pattern of specific periods and regions during Prehistory. In South America, it is well documented in Argentina, in contexts dating back to early Holocene. In Brazil, it was unknown until 2006, when it was found in three archaeological sites (ACH-LP-01, ACH-LP-03, ALP-AA-03) in the Foz do Chapeco area, upper Uruguay River, South Brazil, in layers from early

The main purpose of the current study is to help researchers and students studying lithics in Brazilian archaeology to understand, through a macro-regional scale, the potential sources of the main occurrences of lithic raw materials in Brazil. This potential is presented from a qualitative point of view and has been divided along two perspectives. The first approach recalls the geological areas known

Because of their geomorphological and sedimentary records, rivers provide relevant archives of palaeoenvironmental change, namely palaeoclimatic and palaeogeographic. Well-dated long-term sedimentary successions sequences are of the most value, with the ages of sedimentary events, included fossils and archaeological materials provided by a range of numerical dating techniques. The Quaternary fluvial

One of the most important megalithic groups in Western Europe in terms of number and characteristics is the group of over 200 monuments of various types in Sardinia. It now seems to be confirmed that the rise of the megalithic phenomenon was during the culture of San Michele of Ozieri (Late Neolithic, 4000-3300 B.C.E.). The Sardinian dolmen graves, however, had a maximum distribution during the Chalcolithic

UISPP has a long history, starting with the old International Association of Anthropology and Archaeology, back in 1865, until the foundation of UISPP itself in Bern, in 1931, and its growing relevance after WWII, from the 1950’s. We also became members of the International Council of Philosophy and Human Sciences, associate of UNESCO, in 1955. In its XIVth world congress in 2001, in Liège, UISPP started

Drawing up a synthesis on the prehistory of an archipelago and its lithic assemblages is not an easy thing because of the vastness of the island space with a total surface of two millions km2, and because the notion of Palaeolithic is inapplicable, especially the “Upper Palaeolithic” or “Epipalaeolithic-Mesolithic” used for Western Eurasia. Indonesia and its myriad of islands and islets (about 18,000)

This article presents data on chipped stone techno-economic patterns of nomadic hunters-gatherers at a quarry source area in the Temiscouata region (Quebec, Canada) during the Middle late Woodland (1500-1000 BP) and the Late Woodland (1000-450 BP) and also the early historic period (450-250 BP). Located in the hinterland of the Bas-Saint-Laurent, in the upper St-John river drainage, the Temiscouata

The Itaparica technocomplex encompasses most of the lithic productions in Central Brazil from the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and early Holocene. It is characterized by industries based on a techno-functional complementarity between tools made from unifacially shaped blanks and retouched flakes. The unifacially shaped artefacts, designated by different names in the literature (for example, limaces

For many decades, a number of sites from the Early Neolithic (Villeneuve-Saint-Germain) and Middle Neolithic (Cerny and northern Chasseen) periods have been discovered in Upper Normandy. Three of them have been recently excavated and the subject of technological descriptions (Aubevoye “La Chartreuse”, Saint-Pierre-d’Autils “Le Plaquis” and Porte-Joie “La Couture aux Rois, zone C”). The lithic assemblages

This paper is about the origin and development of the French school of Prehistoric Technology. Going back to the sources, the authors show how the concept of « chaine operatoire », a concept proposed by Andre Leroi-Gourhan, who was both an anthropologist and a prehistorian, was first developed by social anthropologists, and then applied to the analysis of prehistoric lithics in strong connection with

En 1964 s'est tenu aux Eyzies un symposium franco-américain auquel participèrent notamment Fr. Bordes, D. E. Crabtree et J. Tixier, décrit ensuite comme « une pierre de fondation de l’approche technologique » par C. Perlès en 1991. Un quart de siècle plus tard, faisant écho à cette rencontre, sont publiés les actes du colloque d'Antibes « 25 ans d’études technologiques en Préhistoire. Bilan et perspectives

La lame d'herminette en pierre, element ubiquiste des cultures materielles polynesiennes, a toujours ete utilisee pour etablir une periodisation des sequences culturelles pre-europeennes. Bien que cette approche ait permis d'aborder la diversite des traditions culturelles et de definir une typo-chronologie des occupations pre-europeennes dans la region, tres peu de travaux ont pris en compte les aspects

This paper presents an overview of the knapping techniques of the Second Mesolithic and Early Neolithic during the 7th and 6th millennium in Northern France. This period is characterised by the emergence of new armatures - the trapezes - and of new techniques of prismatic blade production that show discontinuation from the preceding technical traditions. Basically, if we admit that the success of these

Since the 1970’s, the study of lithic prehistoric collections in France has improved through a profound modernisation. Andre Leroi-Gourhan, first interested in traditional and ethnological techniques, decided to consider all remains and traces left by a human group within a prehistoric site as evidence of its activity, thus opening the “palethnological perspective”. He also promoted the principle of

Aknashen (formerly called Khatunarkh) is a small Neolithic village of the Ararat valley located 25 kilometres away from Yerevan (capital of Armenia) and 5 km South-West of Echmiadzin (Vagharshapat). Aknashen is also located at only six kilometres of another Neolithic village which is contemporary: Aratashen, a site for which we recently published a technological study of the obsidian industry. Excavations

This paper aims to present the last developments about Raysse-burin cores, Picardie bladelets and Raysse bladelets, three typical artefacts of the second stage of French Middle Gravettian a.k.a the “Rayssian” phase (who just follows the classical Noaillian). Through a brief state of the art, reminding how Raysse burins have been discovered by L. Pradel in the 50’s and later described by H.L. Movius

The lithic assemblage of Ribeira da Ponte da Pedra site (OIS8-9) was produced, almost exclusively, through the exploitation of good quality quartzite fluvial pebbles with a regular morphology. Quartzite fluvial pebbles are the most common raw material found in the Middle Pleistocene occupation sites in Portugal. Such feature results from the easy availability of these pebbles in the valleys where the

Ounjougou stratigraphic sequence (Bandiagara, Dogon Country, Mali) is the most complete record in Western Africa for the Middle Pleistocene. This paper focuses on the lithic industry unearthed in the lowest levels of the sequence. Despite the impossibility to fix the dating of those layers, the assemblage clearly presents Oldowan features. A strong erosive process, combined to the absence of Acheulean

The proceedings of the B23 Session held during the XVII UISPP/IUPPS conference (1-7 September 2014, Burgos, Spain) are published in this issue of the Journal of Lithic Studies. The title of the session, "Beyond the reduction sequence: new insights in lithic technology", aimed to increase awareness about current methods in studies on stone assemblages.

Edited by Carolyn D. Dillian (Coastal Carolina University), Twenty-Five Years on the Cutting Edge of Obsidian Studies: Selected Readings from the IAOS Bulletin consists of 19 previously published articles from the International Association for Obsidian Studies (IAOS) Bulletin . Dillian selected these articles because they provide a range of methodological and theoretical approaches concerning archaeological

Turquoise, Water, Sky: Meaning and Beauty in Southwest Native Arts presents an accessible discussion of the importance and utilization of turquoise by Southwestern cultures throughout the past 1500 years, albeit heavily focused on the modern era. Primarily meant for a lay audience, this short volume is divided into six chapters and interspersed by approximately 160 images and illustrations. While beautiful

This is a report of results from a cursory survey of several Middle Paleolithic find spots from the Arava, Israel, conducted as part of a broader collaboration between the Dead Sea and Arava Science Center and the Israel Antiquities Authority. A series of find spots were recorded on the eastern flanks of the Zehiha hills and on the northern terraces of Wadi Paran. These finds consist of mostly Middle

Between 5 and 9 October of 2016 the Seminario Nacional de Tecnologia Litica (National Seminar of Lithic Technology) took place on the campus of the Pontifical Catholic University of Goias, Brazil. The seminar aimed to create a space of exchange and learning among students, researchers and professors which currently work with prehistoric lithic technology, developing studies in different regions of