Typology I

1
Typology I

• Lithics Stone Tools

2
Stone Tools and Archaeology

• Common throughout prehistory
• Only durable tool until metallurgy (over 2
  million years)
• Reductive technology manufactured by removing
  material from core (creates substantial residue
  debitage)
• Inorganic do not decay
• Same basic process for manufacture used across
  all of prehistory
• Percussion (grinding later development)

3
Stone Tools Raw Materials

• Needs specific types of stone
• Non-crystalline homogenous Cryptocrystalline
• Conchoidal fracture
• Molecular edge
• Ideal natural glass (obsidian)
• Chert/flint quartzite basalt quartz

4
Conchoidal Fracture
5
Raw Materials
Chert
Obsidian
Quartzite
6
Stone Tools vs. Metal

• Stone Sharper (up to 1000x) ubiquitous raw
  materials
• Brittle high breakage rate
• Metal Durable more flexible
• Require complex technology (smelting, alloying
  (natural cold hammering inferior to stone tools)

7
Stone Tool Manufacture

• Percussion
• using hard or soft hammer to remove flakes from
  core
• Subsequent hammering to shape flake or core to
  desired shape
• Pressure flaking for final shaping and sharpening
• Flintknapping

8
Debitage

• Waste flakes left over from tool manufacture
• Most common artifact throughout most of
  prehistory
• Analysis
• Reconstruct production sequence
• Utilization (retouch, polish)

9
Flake Morphology
10
Debitage
11
Projectile Points

• Projectile Point, not just Arrow Heads
• Knives, spears, darts, Drills also
• Most common type of formal stone tool
• Formal defined shape, extensive shaping, curated
• Informal expedient tools disposable (flake,
  utilized debitage)
• Change over time size, shape, hafting
• Correlating point changes with stratigraphy or
  absolute dates seriation point chronology

12
Stone Tool Typology

• Typology formation and analysis of groups of
  similar artifacts (types)
• Can be used spatially (to distinguish between
  different archaeological cultures)
• Can be used temporally (to interpret changes in
  tools over time)
• Seriation

13
Projectile Point
14
Typology Example (1)
15
Typology Example (2)
16
Typology Example (3)
17
Typology II

• Pottery and Ceramics

18
Ceramics and Archaeologists

• Comparatively recent development
• Clay figurines (Europe) 30,000 BP
• True pottery 10,000 BP (Japan) 8,500 BP
  (Anatolia) 7,000 BP (Iran) 4,800 BP (China) AD
  500 (Mexico)
• Relationship to agriculture?
• Additive technology (less residue)
• Fragile but durable
• Plastic medium lots of possible variation
• Pottery vs. Ceramic

19
Impact of Pottery

• container revolution
• Widespread durable vessel form
• New cooking techniques
• Storage
• New medium for expression and symbolism
• First durable plastic medium

20
Basic Nomenclature

• Jar vs. Bowl
• narrow vs. wide opening storage vs. consumption
• Sherd fragment
• Body vs. Base vs. Rim
• Rim most useful for typology
• Glaze, Slip
• Decorations
• Painting, appliqué, incising, cord impressions

21
Pottery Manufacture

• Clay Temper
• Clay provides strength (lt0.002 mm)
• Temper flexibility prevents breakage during
  firing
• Grit, Grog, Shell, Straw, Sand, etc.
• Firing causes clay particles to sinter (adhere
  to each other)
• Properties related to size of clay and
  temperature of firing
• lt1000º C Terra Cotta
• 900-1200 º C Earthenware
• 1200-1350 º C Stoneware
• 1350 º C Porcelain

22
Manufacture Techniques

• Vessel formation
• Pinching
• Coiling
• Slab Form
• Wheel Thrown
• Surface modification (Incising, Punctates, etc.)
• Drying
• Surface Treatment (slip, glaze, paint)
• Firing (open fire, covered fire, kiln)

23
Pottery Examples
24
What can Pottery Tell Us?

• Chronology
• Type seriations (same as for stone tools)
• Technology
• Crude, coarse earthenwares vs. High-fired
  Porcelain
• Craft Specialization

Pottery Seriation
Ancient Kiln
25
What can Pottery Tell Us?

• Trade/Social Interaction
• Pottery types regionally specific
• Example
• Pennsylvania types (Shenks Ferry) occur in
  Southern New York (AD 1000-1300) along with New
  York types (Owasco)
• Wife Stealing Hypothesis (Marital Exogamy)
• Assumption of female potters supported by
  ethnohistoric sources
• Open question hostile abduction or willing
  exchange between neighboring populations

26
Pennsylvania vs. New York Pottery Types
27
What can Pottery Tell Us?

• Iconography (Ideology)
• Effigies (human, zoomorphic), Painted images
• Examples
• Valdiva Phase pottery (South America) entoptic
  imagery related to hallucinogenic visions

28
What can Pottery Tell Us?

• Subsistence (food production and consumption)
• Analogy certain types of vessels historically
  used for certain foods may have been the same in
  prehistory?
• Residue Analysis (Lipids, Alkaloids)
• GC/MS related chromatographic techniques
• Phytolith analysis
• Raman microscopy
• Alkaloids medicinal/psychoactive
• Nicotine, Morphine, Caffeine, etc.

29
Non-Vessel Pottery

• Plasticity and Flexibility of pottery amenable
  to a variety of functions
• Artistic (figurines, etc.)
• Industrial (Spindle Whorls, etc.)
• Mortuary (e.g., Terra Cotta Sarcophagi)
• Smoking pottery smoking pipes vs. stone smoking
  pipes
• North American Example did the shift to pottery
  smoking pipes after 500 AD lead to a
  secularization of tobacco smoking, as opposed
  to its initial sacred context?

30
Stone vs. Ceramic Pipes