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Biographies of the lithic artefacts from Upper Palaeolithic Kastritsa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Nena Galanidou
Nena Galanidou
Affiliation:
University of Crete
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Abstract

Technological and typological studies of the chipped-stone industries of Palaeolithic Greece have hitherto been founded upon thorough descriptions of the morphological attributes of artefacts. This article departs from this tradition to examine, by means of refitting, the technology that created a group of 1691 lithic artefacts at Upper Palaeolithic Kastritsa. Refitting seeks to reconstruct individual reduction sequences by making connections between artefacts that are the results of successive steps in lithic production, thereby revealing more about the biographies of those artefacts. This approach, although extremely valuable, is not universally applicable because it is time-consuming and works only if the artefacts it examines have been retrieved from undisturbed contexts. Kastritsa's industry, however, lends itself to this sort of analysis thanks to the site's generally good spatial and temporal integrity. Attention is focused on layer 12 (in the western part of the rockshelter), a layer that has, amongst other features, yielded two sets of postholes. This evidence of habitation structures of this sort is unique in the Upper Palaeolithic record of south-east Europe. The analysis shows that this layer contains the greatest percentage of refitting specimens so far recorded at Kastritsa and makes a number of observations concerning the technological decisions taken by the knappers who worked there. It also suggests that specialised knapping and transformation activities probably took place in this part of the camp.

Type
Articles
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 95 , November 2000 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 2000

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References

1 I should like to express my gratitude to the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (New York) and the British Federation of Women Graduates (London) for funding the refitting of lithic material from Kastritsa. Many thanks are also due to an anonymous referee for his or her constructive comments and to the archaeologists and security guards at the Ioannina archaeological museum, in which I studied the Kastritsa collections during 1996, 1997, and 1998.

2 See Galanidou, N., ‘A few minutes and a few millennia: problems of time scale in Upper Palaeolithic palimpsests’, paper presented to the 28th Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) annual meeting, University of Liverpool, 1996 abstract booksGoogle Scholar.

3 See Cziesla, E., ‘On the refitting of stone artifacts’, in Cziesla, E., Eickoff, S., Arts, N. and Winter, D. (eds.), The Big Puzzle (Studies in Modern Archaeology, 1; Bonn, 1987), 9–44Google Scholar and H. Löhr, ‘Serial production of chipped stone tools since Upper Palaeolithic times’, ibid. 129–43.

4 Pelegrin, J. C., Karlin, C., and Bodu, P., ‘Chaînes opératoires: un outil pour le préhistorien’ in Tixier, J. (ed.), Technologic lithique (Notes et Monographs Techniques, 25; Paris, 1988), 55–62Google Scholar.

5 For discussion of individual knappers' skills see Ploux, S., ‘Technologie, technicité, techniciens: méthode de détermination d'auteurs et comportements techniques individuels’, in 25 ans d'études technologiques en préhistoire. Rencontres Internationales d'archéologie et d'histoires d'Antibes, ii (Juan-les-Pins, 1991), 201–14Google Scholar. For discussion of raw material availability see Bamforth, D., ‘Technological efficiency and tool curation’, American Antiquity, 51 (1986), 3–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar and of time stress see Torrence, R. ‘Time-budgetting and hunter-gatherer technology’, in Bailey, G. N. (ed.), Hunter-Gatherer Economy in Prehistory (Cambridge, 1983), 11–22Google Scholar and ead. ‘Re-tooling: towards a behavioural theory of stone tools’, in Torrence, R. (ed.), Time, Energy and Stone Tools (Cambridge, 1989), 57–66Google Scholar.

6 For further discussion and a comprehensive bibliography see Galanidou, N., ‘Lithic refitting and site structure at Kastritsa’, in Bailey, G. N. (ed.), Klithi: Palaeolithic Settlement and Quaternary Landscapes in Northwest Greece, ii (Cambridge, 1997), 497–520Google Scholar.

7 Bailey, G. N., Carter, P. L., Gamble, C. S., and Higgs, H. P., ‘Asprochaliko and Kastritsa: further investigations of Palaeolithic settlement and economy in Epirus (North-West Greece)’, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 49 (1983), 15–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Ibid. 26.

9 Layer 12 extends throughout most of the site. As the deposits overlying and underlying it (Y7–11 and Y13) contained a substantial amount of debris from rockfalls, it was difficult to separate it from them and in certain parts of the site this layer was excavated together with Y11.

10 Galanidou (n. 6); ead., ‘Home is Where the Hearth is’: The Spatial Organisation of the Upper Palaeolithic Rockshelter Occupations at Klithi and Kastritsa in Northwest Greece (BAR S687; Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar; E. S. Higgs, ‘Asprochaliko and Kastritsa’, Antiquity, (1968), 235.

11 Galanidou (n. 10), 105.

12 Similar habitation structures in caves have been reported from Combe Grenal, Grotte du Renne, Fourneau du Diable, and Salpêtrière. See respectively: Bordes, F., A Tale of Two Caves (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; Leroi-Gourhan, A., ‘Les structures d'habitat au paléolithique supérieur’, in Guilaine, J. and de Lumley, H. (eds.), La préhistoire française (CNRS; Paris, 1976), i. 656–63Google Scholar; Peyrony, D. and Peyrony, E., ‘Les gisements prehistoriques de Bourdeilles’, Mémoires de l'Institut de Paléontologie humaine, 10 (1932)Google Scholar; de Fonton, M. Escalon, and Onoratini, G.. ‘Éléments de structures d'habitat des gisements de Provence et du Languedoc’, in Les habitats de paléolithique supérieur. Actes du Colloque International en Hommage au professeur A. Leroi-Gourhan (CNRS; Roanne-Villerest, 1982) 72–6Google Scholar.

13 Of the former set, which was dated by Isotopes Inc., three dates were published by Higgs, E. S., Vita-Finzi, C., Harris, D. R., and Fagg, A. E., ‘The climate, environment and industries of Stone Age Greece: part III’, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 33 (1967), 1–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the fourth and fifth dates were included in the 1983 publication by Bailey et al. (n. 7). The new set of dates is based on samples collected in 1967.

14 Galanidou, N., Tzedakis, P. C., Lawson, I. T., and Frogley, M. R., ‘A revised chronological and palaeoenvironmental framework for the Katsritsa rockshelter, northwest Greece’, Antiquity, 74 (2000, 349–55)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Galanidou (n. 6), 503.

16 Ibid. 502, fig. 2 6.4.

17 Four of the original dates were obtained by Higgs on bulk soil samples containing specks of charcoal. See also Galanidou et al. (n. 14).

18 It should be noted, however, that no stratigraphic hiatus was visible in the deposits.

19 This appears all the more important if one considers that the most recent date was obtained using a bone specimen.

20 An attempt to date the postholes in rectangle 42 Y 2 was unsuccessful because the charcoal sample collected from this context did not provide sufficient carbon for reliable measurements to be taken.

21 Galanidou et al. (n. 14).

22 Galanidou (nn. 6, 10).

23 Wenban-Smith, F. F., ‘Refitting of lithic artefacts’, in Bailey (n. 7), i. 95–104Google Scholar.

24 The remaining 8.3% could not be classified as belonging to any category because their surfaces had been altered by patination or burning.

25 Bailey et al. (n. 7), 32; Adam, E., ‘The Upper Palaeolithic stone industries of Epirus in their regional setting’, in Bailey, G. N., Adam, E., Panagopoulou, E., Perlès, C., and Zachos, K. (eds.), The Palaeolithic of Greece and Adjacent Areas, Proceedings of the ICOPAG Conference (BSA Studies 3; London, 1999), 136–47 at p. 140Google Scholar.

26 Expedient and curated technology is discussed by Binford, L. R., ‘Organisation and formation processes: looking at curated technologies’, Journal of Anthropological Research, 35 (1979), 255–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, by G. H. Odell, ‘Economising behaviour and the concept of ‘curation’’, in id., (ed.), Stone Tools: Theoretical Insights into Human Prehistory (New York, 1996), 51–80, and by Shott, M. J., ‘An exegesis of the curation concept’, Journal of Anthropological Research, 52 (1996), 259–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Following Shott's definition, I consider curation in this connection to be ‘a property of lithic artefacts that describes the relationship between realised and maximum utility’ (p. 267).