Archaeological Anthropology

Prehistory (Definition, Aim and Scope):

History is the study of the past having written records. Prehistoric archaeology is the
study of the past before historical records began. It is a field of research that looks at all
the pre-urban societies of the world. It also has distinctive set of procedures for
analyzing material remains so that archaeologists can reconstruct their ecological
settings. The earliest record of the word prehistoric comes from the French archaeologist
and scientist Paul Tournal who used it in 1831 to describe the finds he made in ancient
caves he had investigated in the Bize-Minervois in the south of France. It did not enter
English as an archeological term until 1851 when it was used by the Scots-Canadian
archaeologist Sir Daniel Wilson.

Human beings’ cultural episode is broadly divided into two distinct phases: (i) the
recent phase since invention and use of scripts can be recorded, which is about 5000
years old and includes up to yesterday, labeled as History; (ii) a vast period ranging
between 25 lakh and 3000 BCE, predating written scripture, labeled as Prehistory; and
(iii) in between prehistoric and historic periods there exist some human cultures, where
some form of writing was present but their scripts could not be deciphered. These
cultures with variable timing in different countries have been lumped together with the
label, Proto-history.

Out of these two episodes the prehistoric period is the most intriguing, and is attempted
to understand its development collaterally with biological development from the state
of non-human or near-human type of higher primate, as a ‘cousin’ of Chimpanzee, to
anatomically modern human of today. The most perplexing question in the process of
such development is whether the biological endowments developed as a natural
process and helped to create ‘culture’, or conversely, the cultural mode of extrasomatic
(White, 1949) adaptive process dictated biological development. The answer has to be
sought from the material remains of early hominids recovered with the help of
archaeological methods.

Prehistoric archaeologists speak in terms of cultures which can only be given arbitrary
modern names relating to the locations of known occupation sites or the artifacts used.
It is naturally much easier to discuss societies rather than individuals as these past
people are completely anonymous in the archaeological record.
Because prehistorians are almost entirely dependent on archaeological evidence to
reconstruct the past, they must be able to extract the maximum amount of information
from recovered objects and their geological, geographical, and environmental context.
Increasingly, prehistorians must col-laborate with physicists, chemists, botanists,
zoologists, geologists, and geographers in order to reconstruct the ages of sites, the
functions of objects, the sources of raw materials, the environmental setting of sites, and
other pieces of the past. In addition to a familiarity with these disciplines, prehistorians
must be able to draw on a knowledge of the ethnographic record.

Archaeology and cultural anthropology are part of the same discipline. However,
archaeologists study past societies, ancient and relatively modern, which means that
they cannot speak to their informants. Their excavations and site surveys yield the
material remains of human behavior in the past—stone tools, pot fragments, broken
animal bones, and so on—all manufactured or modified by deliberate actions possibly
centuries, even millennia, ago. The archaeologist links these material remains to actual
human behavior by developing theoretical models to explain such behavior and
cultural change over long periods of time. Archaeology is a unique way of studying
human cultural change from the time of the earliest human beings 2.5 million years ago
up to the present. By studying ancient societies, archaeologists are also studying human
history on a broad and long canvas, but with a difference.

Concept of Periodization:

Periodization is a fundamental operation in any historical discipline, archaeology

included. Periodization often defined as the process or study of categorizing the past
into discrete, quantified named blocks of time. This is usually done in order to facilitate
the study and analysis of history, understanding current and historical processes, and
causality that might have linked those events.

Idea of periodization is very important in archaeology/ Prehistoric archaeology. Some

scholars say that the birth of a scientific, prehistoric archaeology was concurrent with
the birth of a new periodization: the Three Age System. This speaks, not only to the
importance of time in archaeology, but more specifically a certain temporal regime
which periodization underwrites one that is most visible in evolutionary narratives of
history where periods are translated into stages.

The history of archaeology really begins in the European Renaissance, which saw
quickened intellectual curiosity not only about the world beyond the narrow confines of
Europe but also about the Classical civilizations. Until well into the nineteenth century,
archaeology was little more than a glorified treasure hunt, even a sport. Not only that,
but also the archaeological record of prehistoric times was a complete jumble of stone
and metal tools and clay vessels. “All that has come down to us … is wrapped in a thick
fog,” complained one Danish scholar in 1806.

First scientific concept of periodization i.e. classifying past according to cultural

materials and dates came in 1816, when Danish archaeologist Christian Jurgensen
Thomsen opened the National Museum of Antiquities in Copenhagen to the public. For
years, scholars had talked of three ages – a Stone Age when people had no metals, a
Bronze Age, and an Iron Age. And by this way first concept of periodization in
archaeology began.

Thomsen’s version of the Three Age System became, and remains, the very basis of
European prehistoric chronology. It made it possible for the first time to bring order
where there had previously been chaos—to place objects into sequence, and to group
them according to the period to which they belonged. Obviously, it did not provide any
precise dates—archaeologists had to await the advent of absolute dating methods for
that but it nevertheless provided a basic chronological dimension. The scheme was
rapidly adopted in museums across Europe, and was soon given internal subdivisions,
and polished and fine-tuned, to account for innumerable local variations.

For example, even within Thomsen’s lifetime, his scheme was outgrown, with new
archaeological problems leading to new refinements. One mystery was the so-called
‘kitchen middens’, great rubbish heaps of shells along the Danish coast. They were
clearly the remains of countless meals from some remote period, but their age was
unknown. The man who found the answer was Jens Jacob Worsaae, who had been a
volunteer helper at Thomsen’s museum in the late 1830s. On excavating one of the shell
mounds in 1851, Worsaae realised that the Stone Age could be subdivided into an Early
and a Late Stone Age in Denmark. It was the early sites, such as the shell middens,
which had roughly shaped, chipped stone tools, while the later Stone Age sites had
better formed stone tools, which were often smoothed and polished, and also pottery,
which was absent in the earlier phase.

What Worsaae had lighted upon was the distinction we now draw between the
‘Mesolithic’ (Middle Stone Age) and the ‘Neolithic’ (New Stone Age), although he did
not use these terms himself. The word ‘Neolithic’ (from the Greek neo, ‘new’, and lithos,
‘stone’) was coined in 1865 by the British archaeologist Sir John Lubbock, and became
the standard term for those early societies which made pottery, raised crops and
livestock, and used polished stone tools. Before this, in Lubbock’s scheme, was the
‘Palaeolithic’ (Old Stone Age), the period of the ice ages, the ‘cave dwellers’ and flaked
flint tools. Worsaae’s Mesolithic was an intervening phase.

As new discoveries were accumulated and archaeological knowledge increased, many

further subdivisions of the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages were proposed—some were
accepted, some fiercely debated, and others quietly dropped. Inevitably, chronological
schemes, based on typology (the classification of artifacts into different types),
produced ever more detailed and complex refinements in the periodization of
Prehistory/ Prehistoric Archaeology.

Concept of Culture in Prehistory:

Term traditionally used in prehistoric archaeology to define a specific collection of

portable material objects, most often stone and bone tools, that exhibit similarity in a
number of variables and that are found within a delimited region and time period (e.g.,
the Magdalenian, the Perigordian, or the Solutrean cultures). This use of the term is
widespread in the literature that deals with the culture history of regions.

Shifts in research focus, especially evident in North American anthropological

archaeology, have brought with them an expansion of this concept, and the term has
acquired a broader meaning, more like that used in sociocultural anthropology.
Numerous definitions of culture exist in anthropology. Perhaps the most inclusive is
L.White’s, which sees culture as referring to all human extrasomatic means of
adaptation, including ideas and beliefs, behavior, and material results of that behavior.

Applying this all-encompassing concept in archaeology raises many problems. The

archaeological record contains direct information about only some materials used in the
past—those, like lithics, that preserve the best. These remains, which constitute a small
fraction of what was originally used, thus carry direct information about only a limited
range of past behavior, and this information may be ambiguous. Behavioral complexes
without direct material expression are not preserved in the archaeological record and
must be inferred indirectly through analogy.

There is an ongoing debate among archaeologists about just what similarities in the
recovered artifacts reflect. Some argue that they mirror past ethnicity; others see the
similarity originating from shared norms; still others see it reflecting the frequency of
interactions. Research by ethnoarchaeologists has also shown that material culture can
signal both individual identity and group identity, and that the imprinting of these
identities is not a constant, but, rather, reflects ongoing social relationships. For
example, in some situations it may be more advantageous to deemphasize one’s
differences by making objects more similar to those of one’s neighbors, while in others
it may be more advantageous to emphasize them.

Finally, culture also refers to a shared system of learned behaviors, passed on through
several generations and thus characteristic of particular groups or communities. In this
sense, there is considerable debate over whether humans are the only living primate
species with culture, and, if so, when culture first appeared. At one extreme, only
anatomically modern humans are considered to have possessed culture; at the other,
chimpanzees and even certain species of cercepithecoid monkeys (macaques, baboons)
are described as exhibiting culture in the form of long-term learned behavioral
differences between populations.

Some Terminological Understandings:

Tool: Any Piece of Environment, which has been deliberately detached and specifically
shaped with a specific need in mind.

Artifact: Anything which results from man’s interaction with environment is an artifact.
Of course the meaning of the word itself refers to those which are artificially produced.
Thus when a natural pebble is used by man he is interacting with the environment but
he has not artificially fabricated any part of the environment, so the pebble is not an
artifact. An artifact need not have directed retouching to produce any specific working
edge/end. Mostly this word is used to describe cores, debitages and unspecific flakes
etc. It should however, be noted that every tool is basically an artifact but all artifacts
need not to be a tool.

Ecofact: Are Materials such as fossil pollen from plants that were used as food or other
purposes, fossil human feces (coprolites), animal bones, and other humanly produced
residues that may shed light on dietary pattern, food gathering and food processing
strategies, and other aspects of the articulation of cultural systems with natural
environment.

Site: the term site refers to the clustered archaeological remains, although some authors
have suggested that a site can be as small as the spot where an arrowhead lies (Hole
and Heizer, 1973:11), but the concept most often lies to dense concentrations. In fact
reported sites in most cases consist of locations that contain a substantial number of
artifacts or features, usually with high-density characteristics. Sites vary on the of the
lad forms they occupy. Deposits at the mouth of cave or rock shelter are considered
closed site. Sites that are found on the open air land forms like valleys, floodplains, hills
and river terraces are considered as open air sites. If the majority or all of the individual
items that make up a site are scattered on the surface and digging into ground produces
few or no artifacts, the deposit is a surface site. Sites that consist largely or completely
of buried deposits are called subsurface sites. Sites that consists of the items, features,
and residues in the exact locations of activities that producing them, or only slightly
altered from their original location, are referred as primary sites. Sites composed of
materials that have been totally dislocated from their original location, are referred as
secondary sites.
Beside the physical characteristics sites can be classified on the basis of the activities
they present, on the basis of which we classify a kill site or butchering site, factory site
etc.

Assemblage: Refers to the entire collection of prehistoric remains made from one
occupational zone, i.e., one distinct archaeological level often referred to as cultural
level.

Industry: This word essentially means the manner of transforming a given raw
material. Thus, such expressions as stone industry, bone industry or even the usage of
microlithic industry are correct usage. However like every term in descriptive subjects
the word industry has also developed a kind of extended meaning like Sohanian
Industry, Narmada Industry etc. It will therefore best to visualize the scope of the term
as including the manner of transforming a raw material in a given site or area for a
reasonably broad time period.

Brief Introduction to Different Cultural Stages of Prehistory and Proto-history:

Different cultural stages of Prehistory are often known as Stone Age or stages of Lithic
Age. The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely
used to make tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for
roughly 3.4 million years,[1] and ended between 4,000 BCE and 2,000 BCE. with the
advent of metalworking. According to chronology typo-technology of cultural materials
Stone Age can be divided in to following broad divisions-

Paleolithic:

Earliest phase of Stone Age is known as early Stone Age or Paleolithic. The Paleolithic,
or Old Stone Age, comprises over 99% of human technological history and spans a time
range from 2.6 Ma (the earliest recognizable stone tools and archeological record) to
10,000 years ago (the end of the last ice age). There are three major stages of the
Paleolithic:
(1) The Early Paleolithic or Lower Paleolithic which includes:
(a) The Oldowan, from 2.6 to about 1.0 Ma, characterized by simple core forms on
cobbles and chunks (choppers, discoids, polyhedrons), battered percussors
(hammerstones and spheroids), flakes and fragments, and retouched forms such as
flake scrapers. Cut marks and fracture patterns on animal bones indicate meat and
marrow processing, with the use of simple stone knives and hammers. This stage is
associated with the later australopithecines and the earliest forms of the larger‐brained
genus Homo and documents the first hominid dispersal out of Africa and into Eurasia.
(b) The Acheulean, which lasted from approximately 1.7 Ma to 250,000 years ago, and
was characterized by large bifaces such as hand axes, cleavers, and picks. The early
Acheulean is associated with Homo erectus/ ergaster, while the later Acheulean (by ca.
500,000 years ago) is associated with the even larger‐brained Homo heidelbergensis.

(2) The Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age, from about 250,000 to 30,000 years ago,
characterized by a focus on retouched flake tools, such as scrapers, points, and backed
knives, and prepared core technologies such as the Levallois method. The controlled
production and use of fire appears to be widespread for the first time. This stage is
especially associated with archaic forms of Homo sapiens (having modern‐size brains
but more robust faces and postcranial skeletons), including the Neandertals and the
earliest anatomically modern humans.

(3) The Late Paleolithic or Upper Paleolithic, from 40,000 until 10,000 years ago,
characterized by blade tool industries, a proliferation of artifacts in bone, antler, and
ivory, and the emergence of rich symbolic art in the form of paintings, engravings,
sculpture, and personal body adornment. Early examples of clear architectural
structures, musical instruments, and mechanical devices (spear‐throwers and bows and
arrows) emerge during this time. This stage is especially associated with anatomically
modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens.

Mesolithic or Epi-Paleolithic:
Middle part of Stone Age is often known as Mesolithic or Epialeolithic. It is the Old
World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The
term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymously, especially for outside northern Europe,
and for the corresponding period in the Levant and Caucasus. The Mesolithic has
different time spans in different parts of Eurasia. It refers to the final period of hunter-
gatherer cultures in Europe and Western Asia, between the end of the Last Glacial
Maximum and the Neolithic Revolution. In Europe it spans roughly 15,000 to 5,000 BP;
in Southwest Asia (the Epipalaeolithic Near East) roughly 20,000 to 8,000 BP. The term
is less used of areas further east, and not at all beyond Eurasia and North Africa.
The type of culture associated with the Mesolithic varies between areas, but it is
associated with a decline in the group hunting of large animals in favour of a
broader hunter-gatherer way of life, and the development of more sophisticated and
typically smaller lithic tools and weapons than the heavy-chipped equivalents typical of
the Paleolithic. Depending on the region, some use of pottery and textiles may be found
in sites allocated to the Mesolithic, but generally indications of agriculture are taken as
marking transition into the Neolithic. The more permanent settlements tend to be close
to the sea or inland waters offering a good supply of food. Mesolithic societies are not
seen as very complex, and burials are fairly simple; in contrast, grandiose burial
mounds are a mark of the Neolithic.
Neolithic and the Origin of Food Production:
The worldwide thawing at the end of the Ice Age some 15,000 years ago led to dramatic
changes in global climate and geography. Human populations in the Old World and the
Americas had to adapt to radically new circumstances, to highly diverse postglacial
environments. It was in about 10,000 B.C. that some largely sedentary hunter-gatherer
communities in Southwest Asia started cultivating wild cereal grasses such as wheat
and barley, partly in response to a severe drought triggered by a sudden cold snap that
signaled a partial return to glacial conditions in the north. The new adaptation was
highly successful, even if it was first adopted as a means of perpetuating traditional
lifeways. Within a few centuries, village farmers were flourishing in many parts of the
region and soon further afield. The herding of goats, and then of cattle and pigs, soon
replaced hunting as a primary means of subsistence.
The new economies spread like wildfire, south through the Nile Valley and north deep
into Europe. Independent centers of plant and animal domestication may have
developed in India, Southeast Asia, and China within a few millennia. The cultivation
of indigenous plants and cereals began in the Americas by at least 4000 B.C., probably
considerably earlier. Due to the appearance of new economy a newer cultural stage
gradually emerged, which is known as Neolithic or New Stone Age.
The Neolithic period is the final division of the Stone Age, with a wide-ranging set of
developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts of the world. It
is first seen about 12,000 years ago when the first developments of farming appeared in
the Epipalaeolithic Near East, and later in other parts of the world. The Neolithic lasted
(in that part of the world) until the transitional period of the Chalcolithic from about
6,500 years ago (4500 BCE), marked by the development of metallurgy, leading up to
the Bronze Age and Iron Age. The identifying characteristic of Neolithic technology is
the use of polished or ground stone tools, in contrast to the flaked stone tools used
during the Paleolithic era.
Neolithic people were skilled farmers, manufacturing a range of tools necessary for the
tending, harvesting and processing of crops (such as sickle blades and grinding stones)
and food production (e.g. pottery, bone implements). They were also skilled
manufacturers of a range of other types of stone tools and ornaments,
including projectile points, beads, and statuettes. But what allowed forest clearance on a
large scale was the polished stone axe above all other tools. Together with the adze,
fashioning wood for shelter, structures and canoes for example, this enabled them to
exploit their newly won farmland.
Neolithic peoples in the Levant, Anatolia, Syria, northern Mesopotamia and Central
Asia were also accomplished builders, utilizing mud-brick to construct houses and
villages. At Çatalhöyük, houses were plastered and painted with elaborate scenes of
humans and animals. In Europe, long houses built from wattle and daub were
constructed. Elaborate tombs were built for the dead. These tombs are particularly
numerous in Ireland, where there are many thousand still in existence. Neolithic people
in the British Isles built long barrows and chamber tombs for their dead
and causewayed camps, henges, flint mines and cursus monuments. It was also
important to figure out ways of preserving food for future months, such as fashioning
relatively airtight containers, and using substances like salt as preservatives.
Reason behind the origin of food production is still controversial in the field of
Archaeology. Some of the major questions behind this are- Why did humans turn from
hunting and gathering to agriculture and animal herding, a development that led to
immediate, long-term changes in global environments because of overgrazing, forest
clearance, and plowing? The first scholars to speculate about early agriculture searched
for the village occupied by the genius who had first planted wheat grains and watched
them germinate into a new and predictable food supply. No one has ever found this
mythical genius. We now realize that farming and the domestication of animals were
complex changes in human culture that took place over thousands of years, not only in
Southwest Asia but in other areas of the world as well. Was climate change responsible
for food production, or was a multiplicity of environmental, cultural, and social factors
involved? The debate continues. Throughout prehistory, human societies experimented
with new ideas and technologies. Only a few caught on, and only a handful – among
them agriculture, metalworking, writing, and wheeled transport – have profoundly
affected the development of human societies on a global scale.

Protohistory- The Origin of States and the Era of early Civilization:

Before 3000 B.C., new, highly centralized urban societies appeared in Egypt and
Mesopotamia (now southern Iraq). These were state-organized societies, preindustrial
civilizations headed by supreme rulers and governed by a bureaucracy of officials and
priests. (Preindustrial civilizations depend on animal and human power; industrial
civilizations depend on fossil fuels as well.) People lived in much larger communities
than in the past, in cities of more than 5,000 people, in societies with ranked social
classes, under a social order where conformity was assured by the threat of force, and
under an official religion that sanctified the deeds of the tiny minority who ruled the
state. The Sumerians of Mesopotamia, the ancient Egyptians, the Indus civilization in
Indian Sub-Continent, the Shang of northern China, and other early peoples were
followed by much larger empires and imperial civilizations – for example, those of the
Persians, Greeks, and Romans. The process of early state formation – still only partially
understood – also took hold in the Americas, where European explorers like Hernán
Cortes came into contact with amazingly sophisticated native American civilizations,
such as the Aztecs of Mexico and the Inka of Peru, in the fifteenth century A.D. A
continuous historical record takes us from the Sumerians of Mesopotamia through
biblical times right up to the conflicts and economic and technical achievements of
Western civilization.

Introduction to Tools, Tool Typology and Technology:

Anthropology studies man in time and space. That is to say, parameters of man
existing anywhere in the world today as also men of yester years are as much a concern
of anthropology. Man is the only animal in the animal kingdom who does not have a
species specific behaviour. This means that a dog or any other animal behaves the same
way everywhere but a man does not. Consequently man needs to be studied separately
for his biological parameters and behavioural traits. In living population the former is
the concern of Physical Anthropologists and the latter the concern of Cultural
Anthropologists. The definition of anthropology is not completely taken care of unless
these two branches are also extended to past men. Since past is reconstructive one needs
to develop separate methodologies to study them. While the study of Physical
anthropology of the past is called Human Palaeontology, the cultural anthropology of
past is called Prehistoric Archaeology.

Prehistoric Archaeology studies the culture of man from the time he evolved into our
genus i.e., Homo. All evidences available till date suggest that this must have happened
around 2.2 million years ago. This study extends upto the time history begins i.e., about
1000 B.C., because it is generally accepted that after 1000 B.C. history begins. Since
archaeology refers to the study of antiquities which are products of past cultures, one
can also have antiquities belonging to historical period. Such antiquities come under the
purview of historical archaeology. Consequently antiquities like Qutub Minar or Taj
Mahal are studied by Historians or Historical Archaeologists.

Prehistoric archaeology has the difficult task of identifying antiquities, classify them
and then interpret the possible cultural behaviours of which the antiquities can be
argued as the product. The road map of reconstructing past cultures being only through
the study of antiquities an archaeologist needs to understand what is cultural
behaviour. For instance all human kind eats, sings, cries and do millions of other things
which are common activities. As supposed to these a group may have a specific set of
activities which are common only within the group and are also repeated identically in
every generation. Such behaviours are identified as cultural or ethnic behaviour. Thus it
is the archaeologist who filters out ethnicity from activities. Obviously for fine tuning of
this process a rigorous methodology needs to be constructed. The most important
among these is identifying and defining cultural markers. Such markers in prehistoric
archaeology are called tool types. Initially these types were given names borrowed
from modern tool kit like hammer, pick, chisel etc. Once archaeology enters as formal
discipline of university education it was realized that such names used in the romantic
period has a great flaw. In living cultures object names always refer to both structure
and function. For instance, a hammer has to have a structure and function which is
quite different from say what is meant by the term chisel. These types of terms are
called cognitive types because these are learnt by us during enculturation.
Consequently no matter even if a child is entirely unlettered it does not bring a hammer
when it is asked to bring a chisel. If one adopts the practice of using cognitive types to
name prehistoric antiquities one falls in the trap of assuming the presence of modern
functions in the past as well. It may soon lead us to identify prehistoric boots,
prehistoric tables and chairs or even prehistoric computers. Thus, for archaeology we
construct tool types which are entirely defined by morphology and technique of
manufacture.
These types are defined by us for our convenience of description, classification, analysis
and hence are called Analytical types. One might argue at this point that if culture
refers to behaviour as expressed through activities how can one afford to have a
methodology which deliberately divorces function. The answer to this may be that for
the sake of objectivity one needs to develop a structural description at empirical level.
But this needs to be followed by possibilistic functions of a tool or a range of tools at an
interpretative level. Thus structural methodology can be used universally but functional
method can change with every ethnic group.

Analytical types require ones understanding the technique of fabrication by

experimenting first in the laboratory and then comparing the results with prehistoric
antiquities. This rigorous exercise has enabled us to develop terms for all those features
which helps us understand a technique. When a pebble hammer is brought in an arc to
impart force on a core a flake is detached. The flake will have an elevated bulb like
feature on the flat scar of detachment. The bulb is created right below the point where
the hammer hit it. Corresponding to this a depression is seen in the core flake scar
exactly opposite to the positive bulb of percussion on the flake. Though this is a
depression it has been called negative bulb of percussion, perhaps to mean that this is
the negative depression left because of the positive bulb having been removed from
here. Primary fabrication or the basic method of detaching a flake from a core can be the
following types.

I. Primary Fabrication Techniques-

a) Free flaking: In this method the flake removed is always triangular in shape. The
positive bulb of percussion is moderate in size and is situated near the apex of the
Triangle.

b) Block-on-Block technique: If one needs to flake a heavy or massive core it is always

convenient to hit it on a fixed anvil on the ground. This gives the advantage of the
weight of the stone also adding to the force implanted by the tool maker. Such flake or
flake scars are slightly elongated and have a pronounced bulb of percussion if it is a
flake and negative bulb of percussion if it is a core.

c) Bipolar technique: It is usually used to split a medium to small pebble, but is not a
very common technique. This involves placing the pebble to be split on an anvil and
then hitting the top of it with another stone hammer. The direct force of the hammer
takes out a flake and another flake is detached from exactly opposite end which is
resting on the anvil, because of rebound of the top force. If one finds two negative bulbs
exactly opposite to each other on a single scar such a scar is taken to have been flaked
by Bipolar technique. The three techniques described above are grouped as
uncontrolled flaking techniques. Given below are three other techniques which are
grouped as controlled flaking techniques.

d) Resolved flaking or step flaking technique: This technique sharpens a border of a

core in such a manner that the force becomes zero after travelling a distance. A crack
develops on the surface at the points where force radials had become zero.
Consequently a flake is detached like a cap from the surface. This creates two scars with
one blow-one scar is what the force has created, the other lies exactly opposite in a
vertical manner across this scar. The second scar is the result of a fracture and hence
will have no bulb of percussion. Since the total result of this technique – looks like a
step it is also called step flaking technique.

e) Cylinder hammer or soft hammer technique: This is one of the final working
techniques because this cannot be used to remove large chunks of mass. It is argued
that one can create chiseling effect in the scar removal in the manner of a spoon rubbed
over a slab of butter. Antler heads or seasoned long bones of large mammals are used as
hammers and this takes out slices of flakes which have parallel borders and diffused
bulb of percussion. Thick blades can be removed using antler as a puncher and hitting a
stone hammer on top of this. This is called punching technique and this seems to be the
principal method of upper Paleolithic blade detachment. Advanced tool types are often
given a series of nibbling along a border to specifically sharpen them. These are called
retouching and these are best affected by cylinder hammer technique. The process of
making advanced tool is to first deliver a series of primary scars (usually with stone
hammer) to give it a shape. Secondary scars are removed by cylinder hammer
technique to smoothen the scooping effect left by the primary scars. Finally retouchings
work specifically at the borders.

f) Pressure flaking technique: Normally it is difficult to believe that stones can be

fractured by the continuous application of pressure. Some authors argue that this is
similar to the way we cut a wood pencil tip. For this, fine grained rocks like chalcedony
were first heated and then subjected to the pressure. American Indians prepare arrow
heads on flints to sell to the tourists exactly in the manner shown. That is the core is
held on the ground by the toes and a rod with a cross-bar across the chest is used to put
pressure with the whole body. Generally a small bulb of percussion may appear at the
point of contact but since the hammer, in this case, is in contact with the stone until a
blade is detached there are multiple ripple- like features which develop on the flake
scar. This method can detach very thin and tiny blades which are usually referred to as
microliths.
II. Combination techniques-

a) Clactonian technique: A core can yield a very limited number of flakes because as
soon as the direction of force becomes vertical the core shatters into several chips
because of reaction of rigidity.Clactonian technique attempts to overcome this
limitation by changing the point on which the hammer strikes every time a new flake is
removed. That is first a massive flake is removed from one surface by using block-on-
block technique. For the removal of the second flake the flake scar of the first flake is
used as the platform. For the removal of the third flake the flake scar of the second flake
is used as the platform. The process is repeated until the entire core is exhausted.
Usually these flakes are massive in size, have high flake angle and do not have a
specially prepared platform. If the platform on which the hammer lands has more than
one scar such a platform is called specially prepared or facetted platform. Clactonian
flakes have no such platforms.

b) Levalloisian technique: This is a technique which shows that flakes used are not
merely byproducts of core tool preparation. It shows that the flakes were first conceived
and then given birth to. Generally cylinder hammer technique is used for the final blow.
A suitable core is taken and few flakes are taken off its surface in a centrally directed
manner. Subsequently a facetted platform is created by giving horizontal blows. Once
the platform is prepared a blow is given on it so that a flake is produced which will
have the truncated end of the previously prepared flake scars. A Levalloise flake is
usually of moderate size and has the following characters. i) The flake angle is usually
90°. ii) The striking platform has at least two scars to be considered as facetted and
finally iii) at least two flake scars on the dorsal surface of the flake do not have their
points of impact (because these points of impacts are left on the core). That is, these are
truncated. The core from which these flakes are taken out are called Levalloisian core or
Tortoise core. Lavalloies technique is also called prepared core technique by some.

c) Fluting technique: It is a technique by which series of blades are prepared by

pressure flaking technique. The other method of flake detachment has already been
described as punching technique. The cores from which these blades are removed look
exactly like the fluted pillars of Greek architecture in miniature form, hence the name
fluting technique. A suitable core is taken and along its length small nibbling is done
from both the sides. This results into a crest like feature on which pressure flaking is
easier to execute than on smooth pebble surface. The first blade so prepared is called a
Crest Guiding blade. This has no specific function except for demonstrating how this
technique was successfully used.
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