La place de la pierre dans l'Âge de la pierre: la perspective de la documentation dans la recherche du Paléolithique

Abstract

Abstract : How much does the stone of the Stone Age matter ? The perspective of the archaeological record on the Palaeolithic research Prehistoric archaeology researches usually face the difficult challenge of random and heavily fragmented data, which persuades a rather materialist approach, especially when it comes to Palaeolithic studies. The latter are typically reduced to more or less imaginative or sophisticated interpretations of the lithic samples, so that the entire chronological and cultural Palaeolithic framework stands on the grounds of lithic implements characteristics. Furthermore, the narrow perspective induced by the lithic data is more often than not used to infer the general cognitive, social and cultural features of the Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers. Questioning the standard view on human technology as adaptive, the paper consequently cast into doubt the relative importance of the lithic toolkits during the Palaeolithic and asks for a more socially informed perspective on technological behaviours. As the authors argue, the complexity of the past technological systems cannot and should not be reduced to the variability expressed in a single set of behaviours (i. e. lithic technology). They paper advocates an integrated approach, able to incorporate all the categories of archaeological information.