CHAPTER 1 Toolstone Geography and the Larger Lithic Landscape
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CHAPTER 1 Toolstone Geography and the Larger Lithic Landscape Terry L. Ozbun Archaeological Investigations Northwest, Inc. ([email protected]) What Is Toolstone Geography? “Toolstone” is a combination of two terms that Jackson 1984). One aspect of geography that was form a compound word referring to lithic materials particularly import for ancient economies was the used for technological purposes – quite literally, raw material sources for stone tool industries. The stone for making into tools. Since time immemorial Pacific Northwest contains abundant geological ancient people of the Pacific Northwest made and deposits of lithic materials suitable for making used stone tools as critical components of stone tools. However, these geological deposits of technology, economy and culture. These ranged toolstones are not uniformly distributed across the from simple hand-held lithic flake tools (Crabtree landscape. Instead, there are distinct variations in 1982) to sophisticated composite tools containing the quantities and qualities of toolstones in different hafted stone elements (Daugherty et al. 1987a; places. This geographical variability in toolstone is 1987b) to elaborately flaked masterpieces of expert poorly understood by archaeologists, largely knappers (Meatte 2012; Wilke et al. 1991). Over because the characteristics of useful toolstone are many thousands of years, myriad lithic not always obvious to people who have not used technologies in the region have been introduced or stone to make a living and are not familiar with the invented, developed and proliferated, then been mechanics of stone tool use. Conversely, traditional adapted or replaced by newer lithic technologies native people maintained intimate knowledge of the better suited to changing needs and lifeways. These natural landscape, including the toolstones and their lithic technologies represented complex systems of geological and geographical contexts – also known knowledge and skills for obtaining suitable raw as the lithic landscape or toolstone geography materials, along with hundreds or thousands of (Gould and Saggers 1985:127; Reid 1997:67). techniques for manufacture, use, maintenance, Traditional practitioners of lithic technologies knew repair, and recycling of stone tools (Flenniken where to find different types of lithic resources 1981). The highly-developed ancient systems of within the territories they traveled. As mobility and lithic technological knowledge and skills are trade were key components of culture and economy largely lost today. Few modern people maintain the in the ancient Pacific Northwest, certain cultural practice of traditional lithic technologies and these groups may have been associated with premium or are small surviving remnants of a rich heritage in abundant mineral resources endemic to their stone working and use in the Pacific Northwest. respective home ranges. Also lost is much of the knowledge of the toolstones used in traditional lithic technologies Why Is Toolstone Geography Important? (Andrefsky 1998:40). Geography is the study of the physical features Ancient lithic technological traditions have of the earth’s surface and their arrangement and survived in ways similar to native languages. From relationships, especially with regard to human the eighteenth century to today, European and other interaction with the environment (Bates and non-native invasions of the Pacific Northwest led to Toolstone Geography of the Pacific Northwest Edited by Terry L. Ozbun and Ron L. Adams, pp. 1-11 Archaeology Press, Simon Fraser University, 2015 catastrophic changes devastating native populations for artifact to source attribution. However, the and cultures. During this period, very small peculiar geological classificatory schemes numbers of native people have maintained the emanating from the academy were not part of the knowledge and practice of both languages and traditional technologist’s nomenclature for traditional lithic technologies. Now, native toolstones. Ancient knappers likely identified languages are resurgent and a small cadre of materials according to visual and technical technicians works to bring back lithic tool attributes. For the purposes of this paper a simpler traditions as well. For both language and lithic division of toolstones is used to bridge the divide technology, vast bodies of traditional knowledge between geological and technological have been lost. Oral traditions have maintained classifications. some languages or remnants thereof. Rare historical These basic toolstone types are flakeable, transcripts and recordings of native speakers are meaning that they exhibit smooth conchoidal (shell- mined for clues to language traditions, but these go like form) fracture characteristics and, for the most back a few hundreds of years, at best. However, suitable varieties, tend not to break along natural clues to ancient lithic technological traditions are planes in the material. Thus, they can be written indelibly in stone going back to the earliest predictably shaped through specially directed inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest. If we can application of percussion and pressure forces to learn to read these clues encoded into the lithic particular configurations of the exterior surfaces of flakes and stone tools left behind by ancient people, the stone in controlled breakage or fracture we can begin to reconstruct lost lithic technological processes (Cotterell and Kaminga 1987). Pieces traditions. removed in this way are called flakes mirrored by Knowledge of the raw materials used in these concavities remaining on the parent stone called ancient lithic technologies is one aspect of these flake scars. The flakeable toolstones also generally traditions that we can begin to understand at both share the characteristic of sharp edges on the flakes local and regional levels. This chapter takes a broad and flaked pieces. The sharp edges are usually the regional look at toolstone geography in the key functional attribute of the tools made by flaking southern Columbia Plateau and adjacent areas. stone as these sharp edges are useful for a variety of Most other chapters in this book deal with cutting, piercing, scraping, and shaving activities. subregions and more local toolstone geography. Although hardness and durability of the stones and their sharp edges vary considerably within and Classes of Flakeable Toolstones between the three basic toolstone types described here, stone is generally more durable than the Three basic classes of flakeable toolstones are organic materials it is most often intended to work. common at archaeological sites in the Pacific For example, stone tools are typically tougher than Northwest. These are cryptocrystalline silicates or plant fibers they might be used to cut, or hides they CCS; volcanic glasses, particularly rhyolitic might be used to pierce, or wood they might be obsidian; and crystalline volcanic rocks such as used to scrape, or bone they might be used to shave. basalt, andesite, dacite, and rhyolite. In local areas Nonetheless, tool use cuts both ways and wear other types of toolstone such as orthoquartizites, analysts observe that stone tool edges dull or break- silcretes, and mudstones or argillites are important down. Therefore, more durable toolstones were for certain tool types. Voluminous descriptions and sought for rough-duty tasks and for situations sometimes acrimonious debates can be found in the requiring tool longevity. archaeological literature regarding specific geological or mineralogical names for toolstones Cryptocrystalline silicates (CCS) and whether it is nobler to subdivide them into ever finer categories. Certainly the geological Cryptocrystalline silicates or CCS is a catch-all classifications of positivist, reductionist, western category traditionally used in American science (Mazzocchi 2006:464) has its place and can archaeology to lump together a variety of fine- be useful in archaeological studies. In fact, grained, silica-rich, sedimentary rocks composed petrographic and geochemical analyses are the only primarily of microcrystalline, cryptocrystalline and reliable methods available to most archaeologists microfibrous varieties of quartz (in geology often 2 | Ozbun called secondary siliceous sediments). “Crypto,” provides several definitions of jasper and describes meaning hidden, refers to the small size of quartz “true jasper” as a term widely used “…for SiO2 crystals, or the stone’s fine crystalline texture, bearing rocks of predominantly metasomatic or which is not visible to the naked eye or even with metamorphic origin.” The term metasomatic refers ordinary light microscopes. Microcrystalline to the process by which the chemical composition textures are slightly coarser and visible with light of a rock is changed through the introduction or microscopy. Since the early use of these terms, extraction of chemicals dissolved in fluids that electron and other high-powered microscopes have migrate through rock pores. Chalcedony can form been developed which allow virtually any size of in a variety of contexts, often as a precipitate during crystal to be seen so that the original meaning of emplacement of silicic to intermediate volcanic the terms cryptocrystalline and microcrystalline is rocks. Chalcedonies have a microfibrous structure, obscured. Also, the continuous distribution of meaning that the crystals “…grow as radiating crystal sizes in these rocks reduces the utility of fibers in bundles” and are typically translucent and distinctions