The Heated and the Broken: Thermally Altered Stone, Human Behavior, and Archaeological Site Formation

Abstract

Thermally altered stone is commonly found in archaeological contexts, but it remains an under-appreciated artifact class for deciphering many aspects of site formation. Thermally altered stone can be used to provide information about site-use intensity and the sorting effects of natural processes and modern plowing. Different types of thermally altered stone arrangements may be conceptualized, including single- and multi-state evident features and latent patterns. Thermally altered stone features and patterns from a set of hunter-gatherer sites in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern United States are analyzed relative to the hypothetical conceptualizations. The construction and formation of thermally altered stone features provide a comparative basis for the examination of evolutionary behaviors.