ROB: LINK TO YOUR PREVIOUS POSTS WHERE APPROPRIATE.
I'm feeling my oats, today. I've been thinking about my efforts to overturn ideas about the
Levallois technique of chipping stone. For a great many archaeologists it represents a technically complex process that is governed by the desired end product. This view is so deeply entrenched in palaeolithic archaeological theory that it is tantamount to orthodoxy. I've tried to dispel this idea using sarcasm, innuendo, irony, satire, and . . . oh, yeah . . . empirical observation, to no avail. A few days ago, sitting on the porcelain throne, it came to me that there's an almost one-to-one correspondence between the way the Levallois is viewed and . . . *waits while the room becomes suddenly, deadly quiet* Intelligent Design [ID]. If you're not familiar with this so-called scientific theory, all you need to know is that ID is the movement formerly known as Creationism [or the theory of Special Creation]. Yup. ID is the same old poppycock about the ultimate goal of a Christianized supernatural being that has been a pain in the ass for science since the nineteenth century [where it should have remained], and is now very much favoured by Christian Supremacists in North America. Same bull; different moniker. So I'd like to bring my novel argument to the intertubes—run in up the flag-pole, as it were—to see if anyone salutes.
Speaking of saluting. Let's hope that if someone metaphorically 'salutes' my newest brain-child, it won't be in the same manner as these youthful citizens were doing in May 1942 while the group was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America, in Southington, Connecticut ;-)]. This tiny slice of US history was brought to you by the
Subversive Archaeologist's irony allele.
I found it on
this web site
Now, back to our story.
[If you're in need of a Levallois technique refresher, I've created a special Subversive Archaeologist Primer that recaps my past arguments, and provides links to SA articles that bear on this matter.]
You may know that I've repeatedly called for the revision of palaeoanthropological thought on the
Levallois technique. You remember? The Levallois method of knapping stone is claimed to be a way to reduce a block of stone in a complicated sequence that achieves a desired end-product [that even modern humans have a lot of trouble replicating]. Of course, being able to replicate a stone artifact cannot, logically, stand as evidence that the object being replicated was manufactured with the same end point in mind. It's the fundamental fallacy of stone artifact-replication experiments.
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| François Bordes |
Nevertheless, on the basis of
François Bordes's ingenious 'reverse-engineering' of Middle Palaeolithic artifacts, French archaeologists have, for over half a century, described the presumed Levallois technique as
très pensée [~ingenious]. I've prattled on about the [very real] possibility that, rather than its being a really ingenious method, it's ingenuity is entirely in the minds of the archaeologists that construct its use in this way. There's another logical fallacy at work here, too. It's this: the orthodox view of the technique was constructed from a experience-near, source-side analogy* to the way modern humans have prepared stone tools over the past 40 ka or so. It's completely bass-ackwards. We should be trying to understand the Levallois technique from the point of view of what came before. That's crucial if we're ever to achieve a more objective understanding of the cognition behind this behaviour. [Notice I didn't say, merely, "objective." At best we can hope for an objectivity mitigated by our understanding of the intellectual and cultural 'baggage' that we carry with us in our quest for knowledge of our past.]
This proposition, while independently theorized by your favourite subversive archaeologist [but not in print], isn't original. In the early 90s Iain Davidson and Bill Noble recognized the same theoretical bias, calling the phenomenon the 'Finished Artifact Fallacy.' Indeed, most palaeolithic archaeologists labour under the anachronistic and erroneous mind-set that imagines a stone-worker's intent can be directly inferred from an artifact's morphology. It's not just bad inference-making; it's bad science!
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Schematic representation of the Levallois technique, involving removal of a
great number of preparation flakes intended to set up for removal of a
final flake with a morphology that was envisioned before the process began.
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Kayso, in the Levallois Technique the two major claims are 1) that it first demands careful preparation to produce what's called a tortoise shell-shaped core, and 2) that the tortoise-shell core is the platform from which will be struck one and sometimes two flakes that have a morphology akin [only akin] to an artifact shape for which modern archaeologists claim a certain function based on its topological resemblance to stone artifacts known from the ethnographic record [and a lot that aren't]. It's . . .
pardon my French . . .
absurde, in the first place, to think such thoughts, and in the second place,
abracadabrantesque, simply to assume it was so. As the basis for one's inferences of Middle Palaeolithic bipedal ape behaviour and cognitive complexity, we need a bit more than weak argument and a leap of faith!
The Levallois Point is a perfect example. I took the photograph below while excavating at Kebara Cave, Israel, in 1989.** Well, actually,*** the original depicted only the Levallois Point in the middle. I've superimposed a
Dalton Point and a generic
fluted point, from North America's Archaic and Paleo-Indian Periods, respectively. I've brought them in to illustrate how patronizing it seems to me to look at the one in the middle and say that it bears enough of a resemblance to the generic type category, 'projectile point,' to be considered
one and the same thing. In fact, it's downright condescending to point *cough* to the item in the middle and say that it must be such a tool—sub-text: "We all know those big, lovable
blockheads, the Neanderthals, couldn't quite get the symmetry in the way that modern humans can, nor, for that matter the idea that a simple flake can be turned into such a shape through judicious application of retouch." Patronizing? I'll say! And so 1990! [Aside: at the end of the day, 'retouch' may be seen as the only, real, Middle Palaeolithic innovation in stone-tool making. Just sayin.]
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| Left, Dalton Point; middle, Levallois Point; right, fluted point. |
That brings us to today's matter. A lesson in how to talk to
dyed-in-the-wool advocates for a genius behind the so-called Levallois technique. Forget
highfalutin talk about
equifinality, and misplaced formal analogy.**** Forget trying to show them that Bordes's Levallois core and flake types are a load o'
hooey. Instead, get straight to the point *coughs [again!]* and embarrass
the Hell outa them. How? Let me count the ways! Well, actually,
the way. One. Just one.
It's rather easy. You need only point out to them that their view of the so-called Levallois technique uses the same ill logic as the theory of
Intelligent Design promoted by Christian Supremacists as the holy alternative to evolution by natural selection.
That's it, Rob? That's the best you can do? You said as much in the first paragraph! What gives?
Need I say more?
Oh, all right! I'm really sorry for dragging you this far, and having said so very little about my novel idea. What I've said is all there really is to say about it. Seriously. So, I ask you again, "Need I say more?"
All right! No need to yell! My last word? OK. Today's final word will be a riddle. What do you get when you prepare a Levallois tortoise-shell core but don't remove the final flake? Answer: a hand axe, of course!
* Gotcha! Experience-near, source-side analogy means those that are based on knowledge constructed in the present, and which are then used to infer that a process or phenomenon from the past is the result of the same process or phenomenon in the present. Or, words to that effect. Sort of.
**Thanks again, Ofer and Paul, and the rest of the équipe for letting me play in the dirt with you at Kebara! Sorry about the whole burial thing. Nothing personal!
*** There's a strange harmony between what the English say to contradict or to affirm the reality—actually—and what the French say in a similar social context—en verité, [literally 'in truth']. In fact, the French word actuellement [literally 'actually'] is actually used to signal something that is happening 'as we speak,' as it were. My mischievous, satyrical historical--satirical side thinks this may reflect the long-standing [but for the past couple of centuries, simmering] antipathy between the French and the English over who owns what, where.
**** A formal analogy is made when two things—whether processes or phenomena—that share some similarities—usually readily observable—are claimed to be more or less the same, by presuming other—usually unobservable—similarities. It was Alison Wylie who first brought to my attention the distinction between formal analogies and relational analogies, those analogies in which causal relationships between different processes or phenomena that can be observed or inferred. For me, formal analogy is like inferring that a doggy bone in the shape of a real bone is, in fact, a real bone; while relational analogy describes the reasoning behind identifying once-living organisms from their fossils.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/analogy#ixzz2z4aD4CmE
