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

92 / Benoît Bérard
to prehistoric cultures. It has just been two decades that technological studies have
started to be used in comparative diachronic approaches. Comparisons are based
on the characterization of a set of chaînes opératoires that, in an associative system,
constitute a technical system specific for each culture.
The chaîne opératoire concept gives to these studies a dynamic vision, putting
each technical act into an associative sequence. 2 It is this sequence that gives a
technical and social meaning to these acts. In order to study the lithic technology
researchers have to analyze all the steps from the procurement of raw materials to
the abandoning of the used tools (Balfet 1991; Inizan et al. 1995). The débitage remains
are especially well adapted to this type of study. The knapping of siliceous
stones follows the physical laws of the conchoidal fracture. This specific breaking
mode leaves different stigmata on the stone. The stigmata on the upper face of a
flake, if correctly analyzed, indicate the direction and the sequence of preceding
removals, and on the lower face they show the nature of the type of percussion that
has produced its own removal. In this way it is possible to read on each piece of
a collection a more or less lengthy sequence of gestures by the flint knapper. The
association of these different sequences in a coherent framework allows the reconstruction
of the chaîne opératoire.
Studies of lithic technology are generally constructed in parallel with an experimentation
program. The experimentation is essential in developing an intimate
understanding of the techniques and the methods associated with lithic
technology. It is indispensable for the analysis of the percussion techniques, which
cannot be correctly identified without a comparative approach with experimental
collections.
Indeed, by means of studies of lithic technology European archaeologists are
building a fine characterization of Paleolithic cultures, allowing them to identify
technical traditions as well as regional groups, and enabling a discussion of
the level of social relations that have existed between different groups, for example,
between Chatelperronian (Neanderthal) and Aurignacian (sapiens) groups
(Pelegrin 1995). As I have to deal with this type of questions in Caribbean archaeology,
lithic technology can help.
Lithic Technology in the Caribbean: A Research Plan
Although some researchers in the Caribbean started early to study stone tools, the
first real technological studies have only been conducted during the 1980s. The
best example of this first effort in the 1980s may be the work of J. Walker on
the débitage remains from the Sugar Factory Pier site on St. Kitts (Walker 1980a,
1980b, 1983). It constitutes a very complete research program in lithic technology,
including experimentation and wear-trace analysis. More or less contemporaneous
studies are the works of A. Gus Pantel on Lithic Age cultures (Pantel 1988).
These first studies were followed in the last seventeen years by a new generation
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