Title: Core concept: defining cores in the archaeology of Indigenous Australia
Journal: Author: Simon Wyatt-Spratt
Code Author: Simon Wyatt-Spratt
DOI:
Abstract: One of the biggest impediments to the analysis of cores in the archaeology of Indigenous Australia is the slippery use of terminology. This impairs comparative analyses and limits our ability to extrapolate meaningful information from our lithic analyses. This situation has resulted from a history of poorly articulated theoretical frameworks. These frameworks impact the way that archaeologists have interpreted the results of lithic analysis, but more fundamentally how they practise lithic analysis. While there has been some discussion and debate about the interpretative frameworks used to interpret the results of lithic analysis, the theoretical underpinnings of lithic analysis in Australia have only occasionally been interrogated. This has led to a situation where the same terminology for basic concepts in lithic analysis is used across Australia, but with different meanings depending on the archaeologist who is using it. The aim of this paper is to explore how the use of different theoretical frameworks has resulted in 1) fundamentally different interpretations of the lithic record, and 2) the same terminology for cores being used in subtly but significantly different ways.
Keywords: archaeology of Indigenous Australia; lithic technology; cores; history of archaeology; lithic taxonomy
Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Amy Mosig Way for extensive and insightful commentary on early drafts of this paper. Thanks also to Anuja Limaye as well as two anonymous reviewers for suggestions which sharpened the paper. All errors and omissions remain my own.
Repository Author: Simon Wyatt-Spratt
Contained within this repository are the R code, data (one *.csv file), the resulting figures and tables produced for the article, and a pre-print of the final paper.
For anymore information on the paper, code, or resources please contact Simon Wyatt-Spratt at: simon.wyatt-spratt@sydney.edu.au
Text and figures : CC-BY-4.0
Data : CC-0 attribution requested in reuse
