Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas

THE IMPORTANCE OF LITHICS
Lost and broken stone tools give us a very intimate glimpse into
the lives of ancient peoples. From the type of tools and the wear
upon them, we can discern what activities they were engaged in
and the strategic choices they made in how to survive
environmental challenges. The materials used to make the tools
tell us what was available to them, and how far they ranged or
traded to obtain them. We can learn about the skill level of the
individual toolmaker by the way the tool was manufactured. We
can learn about how an individual site was used by the
distribution of stone tools and the debris created from their
manufacture. We may infer the seasonality of site use from the
distribution of stone tools across sites, and (with caution)
information about the existence of different social groups and
their territorial boundaries.
Archaeologists are sometimes criticized for their fixation on
stone tools as cultural markers at the expense of a more
thorough examination of other aspects of material culture—and
the people who produced them (4). But there’s also the reality
that lithics (stone artifacts) are the most likely things to be
preserved in the archaeological record because of their
durability. This differential preservation biases the
archaeological record, and therefore any inferences about
culture, identity, and lifeways from lithics alone should be
treated cautiously.
Late Pleistocene Archaeology of Alaska
Recall that in the early decades of the 20th century, figuring out the
chronologies of sites was a major challenge for archaeologists; they had to
rely upon relative dating methods in reconstructing ancient history. In much
the same way as physical anthropologists constructed racial categories,