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Method and Theory
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J Archaeol Method Theory (2008) 15:1-27
DOI 10.1007/s 108 16-007-9043-3
Abstract This paper introduces the volume by considering what skill is and how
archaeologists have looked at issues of skill in stone tool production, along with
anthropological and archaeological approaches to the ways in which individuals
become skilled craftworkers. Archaeological studies of flintknapping skill tend to be
isolated from most larger debates, but both the archaeological and the non-
archaeological literature highlight how intimately skill and craft learning are woven
into the fabric of society, although they also highlight significant methodological and
interpretive issues.
Skill: ... 2: the ability to use one's knowledge effectively and readily in
execution or performance; technical expertness ... 3: a learned power of doing
a thing competently: a developed aptitude or ability (Webster's Seventh New
Collegiate Dictionary).
Skill is at once a form of knowledge and a form of practice, or-if you will-it
is both practical knowledge and knowledgeable practice (Ingold 1993, p. 433).
Skill is goal-directed, well-organized behavior that is acquired through
practice and performed with economy of effort (Proctor and Dutta 1995, p. 18).
Some things are harder to do than others, and some people are better than other
people at doing them. Becoming good at some tasks is much easier and less time-
D. B. Bamforth (El)
Anthropology Department, 233 UCB, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
e-mail: bamforth@colorado.edu
N. Finlay
Department of Archaeology, The University of Glasgow, The Gregory Building, Lilybank Gardens,
Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland
e-mail: n.finlay@archaeology.gla.ac.uk
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2 Bamforth and Finlay
Defining Skill
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Skill and Craft Learning 3
f connaissance f
knowledge (SKI
y cognition \~
In contrast to many other technologies, flaked stone tools and production debris
provide a unique and durable medium for documenting the acquisition and inferring
the social context of knapping skills. Acquiring what we now see as the arcane
knowledge of the knapper would have been a universal process in stone-dependent
communities, and both the process of learning and the outcome of this process must
be recorded in the mountains of debitage that characterise the archaeological record.
Furthermore, a century or more of experimental replication (see Lewis-Johnson
1978) provides a sophisticated and detailed body of knowledge that helps to make
sense out of the data provided by the archaeological record: we know what it takes to
make flaked stone tools.
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4 Bamforth and Finlay
Extracting information o
though, is a complex prob
word "skill." Following A
general uses of this term
skilled person as one w
particular activity. On
whether we are experts o
conceptions refers to "arti
the production of high qu
to the abilities required f
As Andrews discusses, h
part on whether we are f
how skills are learned and
stoneworkers. Recognizin
knapping skill from thr
produce particular artifact
of differing skill, and
represented by a particu
In a general sense, the
attention has focused on
(1990, p. 16) terms "elabo
often focus on expert an
daggers, Solutrean biface
(Apel 2001; Flenniken
research empha has often
of specialized production
Evidence from replicativ
identify variables that sh
skill to produce. Table I l
examples of tools that ill
them.
More often than not, we rely on a number of subjective value judgements about
the relative merits of particular artifacts and what constitutes a skilful piece. Values
such as aesthetics, symmetry, regularity, and precision are often cited in this regard.
Skill is, after all, a relative measure more than an absolute standard. Standardization
is linked to the notion of conforming to a perceived ideal whilst realising a mental
template (Keller and Keller 1996 p. 156). Archaeologically, discussion of
standardization tends to be bound up with the identification of craft specialization
in particular contexts of manufacture (Arnold 1987; Clark 2003; Cross 1993; Gibson
1982; Roux et al 1995; Torrence 1986).
While studies of standardization are applicable to those archaeological situations
where we can clearly document specialization, we must ask how relevant
standardization is for the mainstay of our material and how much variation we
should anticipate among individuals. A key issue in this regard is what levels of
consistency in production we should expect in pre-industrial contexts and whether
skill can be isolated as a determining factor in these. Eerkens and Bettinger (2001)
argue convincingly from psychological and other research that humans cannot
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Skill and Craft Learning 5
Unusually large size Clovis ceremonial points: Frison and Bradley 1999
Bamforth and Hicks, this volume
Scandinavian daggers: Callahan 2006; Nunn, Apel, this
volume
Extreme thinness relative to width Folsom "ultrathin" bifaces: Root 2000
Ferguson, this volume
Extreme length relative to width or thickness Adzes in Irian Jaya; Stout 2002, 2005; Scandinavian
daggers, Callahan 2006
Extremely complex outline form Mayan eccentrics; Fash 1991:100, pp. 103-104, 147-8;
Titmus and Woods 2003
Regularity of form Whittaker 1987; Finlay; Sinclair, this volume
Volume Bamforth and Hicks, this volume
Plan-view symmetry
Smooth/symmetric cross-section Bamforth and Hicks, this
Precise and regular finishing flaking Post-Folsom Paleoindian
Intentional "overshot" flaking Clovis bifaces: Frison and Bradley 1999
Minimal platform preparation Mesoamerican blades: Andrews 2003
Very low metric variation in artifact size
Reliance on complex, patterned multistage Folsom points: Winfrey 1990
reduction strategies Bleed, this volume
Apel 2001; Apel and Knutsson 2006, this volume
Consistency in production Finlay, this volume
recognize variation in the size of objects that is less than about 2.0% of any given
measurement of those objects. They suggest use of the coefficient of variation (CV;
this statistic expresses the standard deviation of a group of measurements as a
percentage of the mean of those measurements) to assess this, and note that a set of
measurements produced without any attempt at standardization should produce an
expected CV of 57.7. They suggest further that CVs for most archaeological datasets
will fall between about 2% and about 60%, and that values above this upper value
likely reflect deliberate attempts to produce variability.
In a related analysis of errors making paper cutouts, Eerkens (2000) speculates
that samples of standardized flaked stone artifacts should have CVs of 10-15%.
However, Eerkens and Bettinger (2001, p. 494) also note that the kinds of artifacts to
which their discussion pertains are those made by a "skilled stone knapper." This
implies both that these values require experimental verification by stoneworkers
rather than paper cutters and that less skilled knappers, which is to say, all knappers
before they became fully skilled, have the potential to produce assemblages with
higher CVs than more skilled knappers. However, as Ferguson (this volume) notes,
this is not always the case: metric standardization may have different meanings for
different measurements and is dependent on artifact type and the character of a given
teaching and learning regime.
There has been less attention devoted to identifying the work of novice
stoneworkers and, by implication, contexts of learning. Approaches to the
identification of novice knappers have relied heavily on core and debitage analysis.
Here the impact of modern replication has had a profound impact on the clarification
of skill signatures, focusing analysis less on metric variation and more on the
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6 Bamforth and Finlay
Stacked steps & hinge Nichols and Allstadt 1978; Ahler 1989; Shelley 1990; Andrews 2003;
terminations Clark 2003; Milne 2005
Mis-hits and hammermarks Shelley 1990; Pigeot 1990; Clark 2003; Finlay, t
Inconsistency in production Finlay, this volume.
Wasteful and ineffectual use of Shelley 1990; Ferguson, this volume; Hogberg t
raw material
Failure to rejuvenate Pigeot 1990.
Low length/breath flake ratio Fischer 1989, 1990; Stout 2002, 2005
Deviation from expected chaine Grimm 2000; Fischer 1990; Hogberg 1999, this volume
operatoire
Peripheral spatial knapping Bodu et al. 1990, 1996; Pigeot 1990; Grimm 2000; Hogberg 1999, this
location volume
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Skill and Craft Learning 7
The detailed study of craft-learning contexts must rank as one of the most
neglected areas of study in the realm of ethnography. Where the topic is dealt
with at all, observations are usually restricted to one- to two-sentence
generalizations meant to apply to entire communities. Data are usually lacking
on: sex, class, wealth, status, types of activities, secondary modes of learning,
and reasons for learning. (Hayden and Cannon 1984, p. 329).
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8 Bamforth and Finlay
Experience, conversat
archaeological literature i
flintknapping-integratin
takes years of practice (
Roux 1990; Roux et al
2004); it can take as long
worn edge (Weedman 200
progress from being nov
4y Springer
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Skill and Craft Learning 9
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10 Bamforth and Finlay
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Skill and Craft Learning 1 1
Archaeological Approaches t
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12 Bamforth and Finlay
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Skill and Craft Learning 13
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14 Bamforth and Finlay
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Skill and Craft Learning 15
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16 Bamforth and Finlay
should be characteristic of
these data indicate that th
variable, than Boyd and R
theoretical models ideally
precise, but that most mo
others. Patterns like the Mimbres/Hohokam distinction and the difference between
both of these and the patterns in the production of Cibola Whiteware suggest that
Boyd and Richerson's models sacrifice realism in order to achieve generalizability
and (possibly) precision. This makes them problematic tools for investigating the
archaeological record, which monitors real, not ideal, patterns of behavior (contrast
this with optimal foraging theory's emphasis on realism and generality [Winterhalder
1980, p. 18], an emphasis that helps to explain the powerful insights this theory has
provided to archaeology).
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Skill and Craft Learning 17
SKILL SPE
archaeological correlates
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1 8 Bamforth and Finlay
The papers we present here surely do not exhaust the ranges of either the possible
approaches to studying the lithic signatures of skill or the kinds of questions that
attending to skill can help us to answer. However, they highlight the breadth of both
of these issues.
The first group of papers here focuses on modern flintknapping. These include
analyses by Finlay and Ferguson that provide new experimental data on skill
differences and Olausson's study of self-perceptions of modern knappers. Olausson
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Skill and Craft Learning 19
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20 Bamforth and Finlay
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Skill and Craft Learning 21
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22 Bamforth and Finlay
idiosyncracies of their ma
stone tools and their prod
both of these in the archa
to see skillful behavior and
It seems apparent that, w
factor that clearly helps
intrinsically identified wi
contexts of technology an
bias towards the expert an
assemblage variation, but
holds more promise than i
While it is unlikely that
what skill actually is and g
exploit some of these co
manifestations. Acknowle
possibilities enables us to
cannot simply be reduced
it is for this very reason t
Acknowledgements We conceive
Ireland, and
of gra we owe a debt
the authors presented their pape
symposium at the Annual Meetin
by grants from the CU-Boulder C
The University of Glasgow, and
benefited from the comments of
Payson Sheets and two anonymou
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