Abstract
Research of the ethnohistoric Bedouin rockshelter of Tur Imdai, Jordan, indicates that chipped stone industries in combination with ceramic and metal technologies played an important role in the daily life of nomadic peoples from the 17th-19th centuries AD. To gain insight into how the past occupants of Tur Imdai produced striker stones and flintlocks, we compare the debitage patterning of several bipolar experiments with that of the materials from Tur Imdai. Employing Sullivan and Rozen's ( American Antiquity 50, 755-799, 1985) method of debitage analysis, we compare experimental and archaeological assemblages. Examination of these lithic assemblages indicates that the majority of debitage resulted from the bipolar reduction of small cobbles that were then shaped by direct percussion. The result of this study indicates that stone tools in the form of flints for flint lock guns, and fire strikers, continued to be used in the Levant from the 16th century through to the introduction of rifle cartridges.
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