In The Lives of Stone Tools, Kathryn Weedman Arthur examines Gamo flintknappers and hide scrapers in Ethiopia. Her longitudinal study, spanning 20 years, presented here in an introductory essay and six chapters, illustrates the importance of ethnoarchaeology for understanding indigenous perceptions of stone tool production.
The introduction critically evaluates previous ethnoarchaeological approaches to stone tools and the ways in which Western viewpoints about lithic technology are utilized; Arthur articulates her interests in decolonializing non-European technology to more accurately reconstruct the life histories of stone tools. Chapter 1 examines Weedman Arthur's research in Ethiopia and the history of the Gamo, including modern political dynamics that affect the ways they make and use stone tools. Chapter 2 presents the Gamo ontology of stone tools, while Chapters 3, 4, and 5 examine the quarrying, production, and discard of stone tools. Chapter 6 provides a conclusion, which draws on the discussion of Gamo flintknappers to present an overview of indigenous ontologies about stone tools and how these beliefs differ from Western approaches to the same technologies.
Four issues raised will be of most interest to archaeologists studying the more distant past: learning; production, storage, and discard locations; technological skill and style; and status and gender roles in stone tool production. First, Arthur's discussion of learning, which among the Gamo is scaffolded and involves the participation of many individuals, has implications for experimental studies where knappers learn in very different environments (p. 173). Furthermore, the length of the learning process illustrates the skill involved. Arthur points out that archaeologists do not always recognize the skill necessary to make tools such as scrapers and thus have underappreciated the skills of flintknappers in modern indigenous societies and in past societies.
Second, the discussion of stone tool production locations, storage, and discard has important implications for archaeologists interested in where activities may have taken place in the past and how spaces for tool production were organized and maintained. These segmented activities may be difficult to find archaeologically, particularly given the effects of taphonomic activities (p. 185).
Third, the discussion of the style of production is particularly important to scholars who attempt to use lithics as markers of identity. Arthur convincingly demonstrates that intragroup similarities and intergroup differences result from the ways in which stone tool production is taught and its associated community of production.
Fourth, and the principal focus of the text, is the status and gender of stone toolmakers. Among the Gamo, male flintknappers perform a traditionally female activity, as the Gamo associate tool production with childbirth, and thus are seen as lower-status individuals. This has important implications for the ways in which we conceive of the status and gender of flintknappers archaeologically. Gamo flintknappers are household specialists who are of low status because they make stone tools, a finding that casts some doubt on theories suggesting the high status of flintknappers in other contexts.
While this ethnoarchaeological evidence has important implications for the ways in which archaeologists conceptualize how non-Western groups regard stone tools, and ethnoarchaeological research on these issues is an important and worthy endeavor, not all of the discussions in this book are directly applicable toward studying the archaeological record, although the text provides helpful frameworks for archaeological interpretation. It can be difficult to identify the gender of lithic producers in archaeological research, other than to rely on ethnoarchaeological findings and historical documents. Likewise, the social status of knappers may be teased out through other means (wealth of archaeological assemblages etc.), but this is not always feasible depending on the nature of the archaeological record.
A strength of the volume, particularly for its application to archaeological contexts, is the tables that summarize data about variability within Gamo hide scraper production and use and cross-cultural patterns in ethnoarchaeological studies of flintknappers. These tables provide excellent references and supporting evidence to the materials discussed in the text. In particular, archaeologists may find Table 19, concerning types of production and storage locations, and Table 8, concerning types of learning noted ethnoarchaeologically, to be particularly helpful.
This volume will become an important resource for scholars of stone tool technology, particularly for researchers interested in exploring indigenous ontologies and the ways in which stone tools were and are perceived in past societies and modern communities.
