Crossing the Borders: New Methods and Techniques in the Study of Archaeological Materials from the Caribbean

7
Lithic Technology
A Way to More Complex Diversity
in Caribbean Archaeology
Benoît Bérard
Introduction
Caribbean archaeology has been essentially built on the analysis of only one type
of remains: ceramics. This focus has been a good choice in the pioneering days of
Caribbean archaeology, and this for a number of different reasons. First, pottery
often constitutes the major part of the remains we find during excavation of archaeological
sites in the Caribbean. Second, the making of pottery in Caribbean
prehistory is not only the production of artifacts but also— perhaps more significantly,
due to the important technical and symbolic value of pottery— the production
of meaning. Thus, the “interrogation” of this one, but major, witness has
been a success that has enabled the founders of Caribbean archaeology to build the
chrono- cultural framework we still use today.
Yet for the last twenty years we have had to deal with new, more complex questions,
and it is not possible to find answers with only one witness to interrogate.
We have to develop a multiwitness approach. In this way Caribbean archaeology
will start to become a more complex science, adapted to answering more complex
questions. Lithic technology is one of the steps on the road to methodological
complexity— even if stone tool production is essentially utilitarian with a low social
investment. Still, like all technical production lithic technology is also a cultural
production, and therefore it can give us some essential answers.
The aim of this chapter is to present ways in which lithic technology studies
can be useful for Caribbean archaeology. Thus I will first present the theoretical
framework supporting this type of study. Then I will present, as an idealized research
program, the different questions lithic technology studies can help to answer.
As an example of what is possible to do, I will specifically focus on one of
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