Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Dedication
- Part 1 Introduction
- Part 2 Procurement, production, and exchange
- 2 Mount Jasper: a direct-access lithic source area in the White Mountains of New Hampshire
- 3 Procurement without quarry production: examples from southwestern Idaho
- 4 The 63-kilometer fit
- 5 Monopoly or direct access? Industrial organization at the Melos obsidian quarries
- 6 Lithic material demand and quarry production
- 7 Economic aspects of prehistoric quarry use: a case study in the American southwest
- 8 Preliminary report on the obsidian mines at Pico de Orizaba, Veracruz
- 9 State-controlled procurement and the obsidian workshops of Teotihuacán, Mexico
- Part 3 Technology and techniques
- Index
6 - Lithic material demand and quarry production
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Dedication
- Part 1 Introduction
- Part 2 Procurement, production, and exchange
- 2 Mount Jasper: a direct-access lithic source area in the White Mountains of New Hampshire
- 3 Procurement without quarry production: examples from southwestern Idaho
- 4 The 63-kilometer fit
- 5 Monopoly or direct access? Industrial organization at the Melos obsidian quarries
- 6 Lithic material demand and quarry production
- 7 Economic aspects of prehistoric quarry use: a case study in the American southwest
- 8 Preliminary report on the obsidian mines at Pico de Orizaba, Veracruz
- 9 State-controlled procurement and the obsidian workshops of Teotihuacán, Mexico
- Part 3 Technology and techniques
- Index
Summary
The scale of demand for lithic materials in a stone-tool-using culture has implications for that culture's quarrying, transportation, and exchange activities. This chapter presents a formula for quantifying lithic demand and illustrates its use with ethnographic and archaeological data. The formula is then used to predict lithic demand in an archaeological case study of the Late Woodland cultures of the Upper Great Lakes region.
Introduction
For many prehistoric cultures, the production of stone tools was a basic economic activity which provided the necessary means for obtaining food, making clothing, and constructing shelter. In Western economic terms, a demand for lithic raw material existed and was satisfied by recourse to quarries and other sources of stone. The scale of this demand would have determined the intensity and extent of quarry activity at any given quarry, and would also have determined the amount of time and energy expended in this way as opposed to other economic and noneconomic activities. Differences between demand and locally available supply would also have affected the need to obtain stone through trade or long journeys.
Despite the significance of the demand factor as a bridge between quarrying and other activities in the cultural system, there has been little attempt in either the archaeological or ethnographic literature to quantify demand.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Prehistoric Quarries and Lithic Production , pp. 65 - 76Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1984
- 5
- Cited by