Multiple approaches to the study of bifacial technologies

This volume is based on the proceedings of a symposium held in Philadelphia during the 2000 meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The symposium was entitled "From Coups-de-Poing to Clovis: Multiple Approaches to Biface Variability" and included most, but not all, of the authors represented here. Unfortunately, some of the presenters to that symposium were unable to contribute their work to the present volume.

The reason for organizing this symposium is that bifacial technology represents one of the most widespread, though highly varied, lithic technologies known. Bifaces have been used by archaeologists to document the evolution of human technology and cognition during the Pleistocene and as index fossils for a myriad of cultures in both the Old and New Worlds. They also provide some of the most convincing dimensions of stylistic variability observable in stone tool assemblages.

While it could be tempting to treat bifaces as a single technological unity, there is every reason to think that biface technology is every bit as complex and varied as any other chipped-stone technology. From the first African industries to the very recent cultures of the New World, each bifacial technology deals with some of the same technical constraints but at the same time each demonstrates subtle variation in skill and purpose. And, as with every other class of lithic evidence, there are a number of ways to approach that variability analytically. Up to the present, there has not been any attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of bifacial technology, in spite of its importance as a major and widespread phenomenon.

The contributors to this volume represent several different countries and include some of the major figures in modern lithic research. Their contributions cover a broad range of topics, utilizing material from the earliest Acheulian of the Old World to relatively recent industries of the New World.

Some of the chapters presented here deal directly with the origin and evolution of specific bifacial technologies. These studies range from the contribution by J. Desmond Clark and Kathy Schick on early African industries; Vladimir Doronichev and Lubov Golovanova on material from the Caucasus; and Janusz Kozlowski on leaf point industries from Central Europe.

Contents

• Biface Technological Development and Variability in the Acheulean Industrial Complex in the Middle Awash Region of The Afar Rift, Ethiopia
• Acheulean Bifaces and Early Human Behavorial Patterns in East Africa and South India
• Technological and Typological Variability in the Bifaces From Tabun Cave, Israel
• Bifacial Tools in the Lower and Middle Paleolithic of the Caucasus and Their Contexts
• Bifaces and Raw Materials: Flexible Flaking in the British Early Paleolithic
• Manufacture, Transport, and Use of Mousterian Bifaces: A Case Study From The Périgord (France)
• From Bifaces to Leaf Points
• Solutrean Laurel Leaf Point Production and Raw Material Procurement During the Last Glacial Maximum in Southern
• The Pitfalls of Using Bifaces as Cultural Markers
• Deformation Modeling: A Methodology for the Analysis of Handaxe Morphology and Variability
• Rethinking the Role of Bifacial Technology in Paleoidian Adaptations on the Great Plains
• Tethered to Stone or Freedom to Move: Folsom Biface TEchnology in Regional Perspective
• Time as Sequence, Type as Ideal: Whole-Object Measurement of Biface Size and Form in Midwestern North America
• An Overview, with Some Thoughts on the Study of Bifaces
• Contributors
• Index