IS THE FUNCTIONAL APPROACH HELPFUL TO OVERCOME THE TYPOLOGY DILEMMA OF LITHIC ARCHAEOLOGY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA?

Abstract

This article is based on the presentation “Typology, technology and function: a use-wear analyst’s perspective” in Session 1C, “Missing types: overcoming the typology dilemma of lithic archaeology in Southeast Asia”, at the Congress of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association in Manila in March 2006. A large interest in Palaeolithic archaeology and lithic analysis could be noted during the last IPPA congress in Manila in March 2006. However, is it obvious that Palaeolithic archaeology in Southeast Asia is still in its methodological beginning. Most of all, a useful and applicable classification of lithic artefacts seems to be a difficult undertaking. Since its introduction by Oskar Montelius (1903), typology is the basic analytical method for the classification of artefacts, connecting them to time periods, regions and “cultures”. However, classification into “tool types” is a subjective view from a far distance in time. Until the late 1950s and early 1960s, the decision if an artefact made of stone is a tool was rather simple: Any artificial modification of a blank form, flakes, blades, even shattered pieces would create a “tool”. “Types” were those tools with a characteristic recurring modification (Bordes 1961). The origin and nature of the modification, however, were not further scrutinized. As a result of improving excavation and sampling methods during the second half of the past century, lithic assemblages contained more and more unmodified artefacts and non-formal tools. Consequently, lithic archaeologists shifted to a technology-based analysis, investigating the production methods of their artefacts. The recording and statistic evaluation of a wide range of morphological attributes allowed the recognition of significant differences and strategies of core preparation, core reduction and blank modification. Implemented in technological analysis are the study of fracture mechanics, experimental flint knapping and the reconstruction of reduction strategies by refitting. In the 1980s, a holistic method enhancing the technological analysis of reduction sequences would become popular: the “chaine operatoire” (Geneste 1985). Techniques and strategies of raw material acquisition, core preparation, reduction and modification of usually flaked stone tools were treated and analysed as parts of one manufacturing cycle and, altogether, addressed lithic assemblages more comprehensively (Fig. 1).