The Role of Chipped Stone in the Political Economy of Social Ranking

Abstract

Chipped stone tools can figure prominently in the political economy of social ranking and the transformation of social relationships. For instance, incipient elites may try to aggrandize themselves by controlling access to lithic resources or the organization of tool production. In this paper I examine three aspects of stone tool technology—raw material acquisition, labor allocation, and productive intensification—to explore how lithic artifacts were implicated in the integration and disintegration of Plum Bayou culture in central Arkansas (ca. A.D. 700–950). The analyses expose longitudinal changes in the organization of technology which suggest rudimentary attempts at control and/or intensification. Despite these efforts, socially ranked individuals apparently failed to monopolize raw materials or the production process.KeywordsQuartz CrystalSocial RankingStone ToolLabor AllocationSpatial DivisionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.