Michael J Shott – författare

The original research papers in the volume provide a broad review of current approaches to the study of lithic technology from the Palaeolithic to the present.

The original research papers in the volume provide a broad review of current approaches to the study of lithic technology from the Palaeolithic to the present. The contributions address both with analytical techniques and interpretive issues. Collectively, they increase our understanding of issues such as tool function, means of production, raw material sourcing and exchange systems, and the evolution of human cognition, social organization and symbolic behavior.

Although most ceramic studies describe vessel production and use, the causes and rates of pottery discard are often neglected in archaeological studies. Michael Shott presents analytical methods for determining pottery use life and demonstrates why use life should not be overlooked. Over a five-year period Shott inventoried the household pottery of about twenty-five homes in five towns in Michoacán, Mexico, recording age and types of use. He also looked at a subsample on a monthly basis over two years to estimate the magnitude of early vessel failure that would go unnoticed in an annual census. His analysis of about 900 vessels clearly shows that context does not explain use life, but vessel size does. Bigger pots last longer. Consulting other ethnoarchaeological sources for comparison and cross-cultural perspectives, Shott shows that his results can be applied to other archaeological datasets for determining numbers of original whole vessels as well as site occupation span.

Because of the sheer volume of industrial debris and the limited information it yields, quarries are challenging archaeological subjects. Michael J. Shott tackles this challenge in a study of flakes and preforms from the Modena and Tempiute obsidian quarries of North America's Great Basin. Using new statistical methods combined with experimental controls and mass analysis, Shott extracts detailed information from debris assemblages, and parses them by successive 'stages' of reduction continua. The book also reports the first test of the behavioral ecology field-processing model that treats quarry biface production in continuous terms, and estimates the production efficiency of prehistoric Great Basin knappers. After mapping and interpreting the abundance and distribution of quarry products, Shott concludes by charting future lines of research in the analysis of large toolstone sources. Whatever area of the world and technological traditions they research, lithic analysts will learn much from this book's approach to complex archaeological deposits and their constituent artifacts.