Generalized Core Technology and Tool Use: A Mississippian Example

Abstract

Generalized core technologies are commonly regarded as relatively unstructured chipped-stone technologies, lacking a standardized set of products; flakes display no consistent set of formal or technological attributes and cores are described as amorphous. Cores are reduced in a relatively unsystematic manner and flakes are then used, usually without any modification. This paper examines the technological structure and patterns of tool use for a generalized core technology. In so doing, two related issues are addressed. The first issue concerns analytic strategies and tactics in evaluating the technological structure of lithic assemblages based on debitage analysis. The second issue concerns patterns of tool use in generalized core technologies in light of recently developed arguments regarding the procurement, manufacture, and use of lithic materials and the way in which these factors are constrained by the nature of human settlement systems and the distribution of lithic materials across the landscape. Specific reference is made to the use of generalized core technology in a Mississippian cultural context.