Searching for Lazy People: the Significance of Expedient Behavior in the Interpretation of Paleolithic Assemblages

Abstract

A quick glance at the evolution of lithic assemblages throughout prehistory highlights a great variability in the time and effort invested in technological activities. This variability has been related to differences in the technological organization of human groups, giving rise to the distinction proposed by Binford between curated and expedient technologies. Curation has been the subject of much discussion with regard to its definition and archaeological implications, but expediency has received comparatively less interest from researchers. Nevertheless, expedient technologies are ubiquitous in the archaeological record and represent a large proportion of prehistoric lithic assemblages, even becoming clearly dominant in certain chronological and/or regional contexts. The aim of this paper is to characterize expedient technologies as low-cost strategies that can be identified in all the stages of the lithic production sequence, from raw material provisioning to tool manufacture. However, we will focus our attention on core reduction technologies, emphasizing the consequences of distinguishing between expedient and formal reduction strategies. Finally, some implications of expediency in archaeological interpretation will be discussed, focusing on the significance of expedient technologies in the cultural ascription of lithic assemblages.