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Identifying low-level food producers: detecting mobility from lithics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Simon Holdaway ,
Willeke Wendrich  and
Rebecca Phillipps
Simon Holdaway
Affiliation:
1Anthropology Department, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand (sj.holdaway@auckland.ac.nz; rphi@auckland.ac.nz)
Willeke Wendrich
Affiliation:
2Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA, 397 Humanities Building, 415 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA (wendrich@humnet.ucla.edu)
Rebecca Phillipps
Affiliation:
1Anthropology Department, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand (sj.holdaway@auckland.ac.nz; rphi@auckland.ac.nz)
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Abstract

The existence of low-level food producers, neither wholly hunter-gatherers nor wholly agriculturalists, is predicted but hard to prove. Here the authors use lithics, the one ubiquitous common indicator, to show how the detection of missing flakes can indicate degrees of mobility, while mobility in turn shows how people coped with the unpredictable appearance of food resources. In Australia, they were opportunists, armed with a ready cutting edge. In the Fayum, they had less far to go, but still roamed.

Keywords

hunter-gathererslow-level producersagriculturelithicsflakescortexcores

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Antiquity , Volume 84 , Issue 323 , March 2010 , pp. 185 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2010

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