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Concept
Lithic technology
Summary
In archaeology, lithic technology includes a broad array of techniques used to produce usable tools from various types of stone. The earliest stone tools to date have been found at the site of Lomekwi 3 (LOM3) in Kenya and they have been dated to around 3.3 million years ago. The archaeological record of lithic technology is divided into three major time periods: the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age), Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), and Neolithic (New Stone Age). Not all cultures in all parts of the world exhibit the same pattern of lithic technological development, and stone tool technology continues to be used to this day, but these three time periods represent the span of the archaeological record when lithic technology was paramount. By analysing modern stone tool usage within an ethnoarchaeological context, insight into the breadth of factors influencing lithic technologies in general may be studied. See: Stone tool. For example, for the Gamo of Southern Ethiopia, political, environmental, and social factors influence the patterns of technology variation in different subgroups of the Gamo culture; through understanding the relationship between these different factors in a modern context, archaeologists can better understand the ways that these factors could have shaped the technological variation that is present in the archaeological record.
Useful raw materials all have common characteristics, which make them ideal for stone tool production. To make a stone material ideal for tool production, it must be non-crystalline or glassy, which allows for conchoidal fracturing. These characteristics allow the person forming the stone (the flintknapper) to control the reduction precisely to make a wide variety of tools.
There are numerous factors as to why some raw materials would be chosen over others and can result in the use of low quality materials. A few examples of such factors include the availability of materials, the proximity to materials, and the quality of materials.
Official source
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