Experimental lithic tool displacement due to long-term animal disturbance
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Experimental lithic tool displacement due to long-term animal disturbance Benjamin J. Schoville 1,2 Received: 22 December 2017 / Accepted: 16 April 2018 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Controlled experiments in lithic technology tend to focus on controlling the human component of lithic tool manufacturing and use; however, animal disturbance can move and alter artifacts in non-random ways, thus altering the behavioral meaning assigned to artifacts and their contexts. The patterning visible in archeological debris on a horizontal plane can provide evidence for activity zones, pathways, and site formation processes. While the effects of trampling actors on the vertical displacement of artifacts have shown that artifacts can be dramatically displaced, the horizontal movement due to trampling is relatively less studied, particularly the effect over extended time periods. Here, an experimental investigation of experimentally produced lithic tools in three contexts with varying degrees of animal trampling intensity is described, and the resulting patterns of artifact displacement are presented. Animal trampling can produce directed, non-random patterning in how artifacts are moved from their original location. The role that bedding slope plays in transport direction given different degrees of activity is also explored. These results show that trampling can produce patterned artifact scatters similar to activity centers and should be taken into consideration for spatial analyses of archeological formation processes. Keywords Taphonomy . Spatial analysis . Trampling . Activity areas
Introduction Behavioral interpretations of prehistoric patterning are complicated by the effects of post-depositional processes. Natural processes influence the burial, modification, and patterning observed on all archeological materials at multiple scales (Flenniken and Haggarty 1979; Villa and Courtin 1983; Gifford-Gonzalez et al. 1985; Behrensmeyer et al. 1986; Olsen and Shipman 1988; Nielsen 1991; Shea and Klenck 1993; McBrearty et al. 1998; Barton et al. 2002; Schoville et al. 2009; Eren et al. 2010; Pargeter 2011). Although stone tools are the most common surviving artifact from most Pleistocene archeological contexts, they are subject to the same trampling, bioturbation, and displacement processes that impact the archeological visibility of other artifact classes * Benjamin J. Schoville [email protected] 1
School of Social Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
2
Human Evolution Research Institute, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
(Lyman 1994; Dibble et al. 2006). The cumulative effect of these processes influences the preservation of stone tools and their spatial distribution and may modify tool edges in ways that mimic retouch (Dibble et al. 2006) and use-wear (Shea and Klenck 1993). Patterns of artifact distribution that relate to the behavioral component of an assemblage’s formational history are of interest for addressing questions about
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