Abstract
The recent elaboration and rapid expansion of aDNA, paleoproteomics, and related fields have propelled a profound “biomolecular turn” in archaeology and fundamentally changed the topology of archaeological knowledge production. Such a transformation of the archaeological research landscape is not without consequence for long-standing research practices in the field, such as lithic analysis. This special issue derives from the session Old Stones, New Eyes? organized by the authors at the UISPP World Congress in Paris in 2018, which aimed to explore the future of lithic studies. An underlying theme of our session was the felt need to respond to the increasing marginalization of lithic research in terms of its capacity to (1) contribute to the grand narratives of early human evolution and (2) better articulate the role and significance of lithic studies in interdisciplinary human origins research. In this editorial, we briefly outline some of the questions and challenges raised by the biomolecular turn and advocate for a more self-conscious and reflexive stance among lithic experts. We argue that lithic studies fulfill all necessary requirements to act as a basic science for human origins research and that its role and status depends less on technological advances, such as, e.g., improved computing facilities, novel analytical software, or automated shape capture technologies, than on continuous work on the conceptual and methodological foundations of inquiry. We finally draw attention to the unique capability of lithic studies to shed light on the human technological condition and illustrate this potential by introducing and briefly discussing the papers included in this issue.
Highlights
This manuscript is part of the topical collection Old Stones, New Eyes? Charting future directions in lithic analysis Guest Editors Marie Soressi and Shumon T
Some of these fields have seen a radical re-organization of knowledge-building resources and institutional infrastructures and a latent transformation of their guiding logic of research, catalyzed by the biomolecular boom and the growing significance and authority of the archaeological sciences both in the academic world and in wider society
While the promise of the ongoing biomolecular turn for refining and broadening our apprehension of human evolution is undeniably colossal, it simultaneously forces us to re-consider what role remains for other long-established research practices in the field which often provide at first glance less spectacular results, such as stone artifact analysis
Summary
Archaeology has changed dramatically over the last decades and has witnessed the development and diversification of independent branches of knowledge production within the archaeological sciences and “biomolecular” research (Bösl, 2017; Brown & Brown, 1992, 2011; Brown & Brown, 2013; Cappellini et al, 2018; Jones, 2002; Krause, 2019; Reich, 2019). The crystallization and spectacular success of biomolecular archaeologies has been a true game changer for broader human origins studies (cf Goodrum, 2009; Schroeder, 2020) Some of these fields have seen a radical re-organization of knowledge-building resources and institutional infrastructures and a latent transformation of their guiding logic of research, catalyzed by the biomolecular boom and the growing significance and authority of the archaeological sciences both in the academic world and in wider society. We pose this question not because we concede to those who proclaim that lithic studies have little new or exciting to say—to the contrary We believe it is perhaps as important as never to reflect on the “added value” of the lithic research endeavor in the increasingly interdisciplinary dance of fields and specializations interrogating the human deep past and the increasingly relevant question. The issue here is not merely to render lithic research a more visible field of scholarly practice but to make room for new arguments and incentives—including the rejuvenation of old ideas—for building interdisciplinary bridges and collaborations that exploit the full potential of accumulating lithic knowledge and expertise, and articulate it better with the emerging knowledge ecologies of twenty-first century human origins research
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