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13 - Changing Reduction Intensity, Settlement, and Subsistence in Wardaman Country, Northern Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2009

By
Chris Clarkson
Edited by
William Andrefsky, Jr
William Andrefsky, Jr
Affiliation:
Washington State University
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Summary

Abstract

The reduction of stone materials to produce functional tools has formed a vital part of hunter–gatherer technology and land use in Australia for at least the past 45,000 years. Measuring reduction is therefore a vital component of understanding past technology and behavior in Australia, and requires that we develop effective procedures for quantifying reduction for all classes of materials. In this paper, a range of reduction measures are presented for cores, flakes, and different kinds of retouched flakes. These are used to determine the extent to which varying levels of reduction intensity have shaped assemblage composition through time. Changing artefact reduction is tied to systems of land use and provisioning over the past 15,000 years by examining fluctuating occupational intensities, raw material movement, scavenging and recycling of artefacts, and technological diversity. Changes in all of these dimensions of past behavior are linked to Holocene climatic fluctuations and the onset of intensified El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events in the past 3,500 years.

INTRODUCTION

It is now widely held that differences in extent of reduction condition can explain a great deal of the variation observed within and between lithic assemblages. We need no longer debate this proposition given the numerous published quantitative, substantive and rigorous demonstrations that this is unequivocally the case in many times and places (Andrefsky 2007; Blades 1999; Clarkson 2002, 2005; Dibble 1987, 1988, 1995; Gordon 1993; Hiscock and Attenbrow 2002, 2003, 2005; Hiscock and Clarkson 2005a, 2005b, this volume; Holdaway 1991; Wilson and Andrefsky, this volume).

Type
Chapter
Information
Lithic Technology
Measures of Production, Use and Curation
 , pp. 286 - 316
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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