Changing Reduction Intensity, Settlement, and Subsistence in Wardaman Country, Northern Australia

Bibliographic Data

ID20067309
AuthorsChris Clarkson (0000-0001-7363-0722)
Year2008
Pages286-316
Publication date2008-09-01
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueLithic Technology (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/cbo9780511499661.014
OpenAlexW142545920
ISBN9780511499661
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited36

The reduction of stone materials to produce functional tools has formed a vital part of hunter-gatherer technology and land use in Australia for at least the past 45,000 years. Measuring reduction is therefore a vital component of understanding past technology and behavior in Australia, and requires that we develop effective procedures for quantifying reduction for all classes of materials. In this paper, a range of reduction measures are presented for cores, flakes, and different kinds of retouched flakes. These are used to determine the extent to which varying levels of reduction intensity have shaped assemblage composition through time. Changing artefact reduction is tied to systems of land use and provisioning over the past 15,000 years by examining fluctuating occupational intensities, raw material movement, scavenging and recycling of artefacts, and technological diversity. Changes in all of these dimensions of past behavior are linked to Holocene climatic fluctuations and the onset of intensified El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events in the past 3,500 years. Introduction It is now widely held that differences in extent of reduction condition can explain a great deal of the variation observed within and between lithic assemblages. We need no longer debate this proposition given the numerous published quantitative, substantive and rigorous demonstrations that this is unequivocally the case in many times and places (Andrefsky 2007; Blades 1999; Clarkson 2002, 2005; Dibble 1987, 1988, 1995; Gordon 1993; Hiscock and Attenbrow 2002, 2003, 2005; Hiscock and Clarkson 2005a, 2005b, this volume; Holdaway 1991; Wilson and Andrefsky, this volume)

Agriculture · Archaeology · Assemblage (archaeology) · Business · Diversity (politics) · Earth science · Geography · Lithic technology · Physical geography · Range (aeronautics) · Reduction (mathematics) · Settlement (finance) · Subsistence agriculture · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Engineering · Environmental Science · Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies · Geology · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology

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