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Continuity of place: actions and narratives
It is clear that the beach ridges were production sites for large amounts of
axe preforms. The production was extensive and preforms were transported
to other places in the vicinity for further knapping. (It is not unreasonable to
assume that the preforms were also transported further away, although this
hypothesis will not be discussed here.) Repeated production over an exten
sive time period created places which were literally scattered with preforms.
The places were dynamic in the sense of transformations through different
seasons. With autumn storms, preforms were washed out of eroded parts
of the ridges; in winter the ridges were covered with ice and snow; come
spring, the preforms were once again visible through the melting ice and
snow, rain and waves; in summer the preforms became covered with sea
weed and plants.
Why, then, were so many preforms left at the beach ridges? Fully func
tional preforms were produced, but left behind without being processed into
to take as a point of departure the actual process of production. Although
the production may be only one of several possible reasons for the repeated
use of the sites, it is an activity that connects the use of the sites over time.
cance of the production and of its organization, and the way that its various
purposes and aims came to material expression, probably varied over time.
However, the activity that was constant at the beach ridges in the long term
was the production of axe preforms.
Action, production and technology
Because the point of departure in this study is production, and because pro
used by people and is therefore something which joins human thought with
material action (Schlanger 1994:143). Technology, i.e. the physical creation of
things, is a social phenomenon. Intellectual thought is, in its action, a formu
lation. The performing action is a practical thought. Intellectual thought is
manifested in practical action (Schlanger 1994:143). The socially constituted
thoughts which have shaped technology are manifested, in action, through
the technology. This line of argument is only used here to stress the social
implications of technology. The established differences between theoretical
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