The Lives of Stone Tools: Crafting the Status, Skill, and Identity of Flintknappers

Abstract

Kathryn Weedman Arthur has produced a fantastic and delightful book. The Lives of Stone Tools is an ethnographic account of stone tool production and use in late twentieth century Ethiopia. It is a valuable cautionary tale on all of the potential cultural and symbolic meaning prehistoric stone tools may have possessed and manifested, which would be invisible to archaeologists if indeed this meaning were reality for prehistoric people. Of course, we as archaeologists will never definitively know, and there is always a danger of imposing meaning in cases where it did not exist in antiquity. But, at least in this reviewer’s eyes, Arthur’s take home lesson is that we as archaeologists must acknowledge the possibility, perhaps likelihood, of lost meaning. In so doing, we will question, or at least reconsider, the narratives and biases present in the discipline, some of which must be abandoned. Such questioning and reconsideration not only increases human sensitivity and inclusiveness, but also is, in fact, a founding tenet of a scientific approach. In the end, Arthur’s volume reminds us that nothing in science is truly sacred except for the scientific method itself. This method, if faithfully applied, must acknowledge what is, and is not, testable, and if the latter, should not be automatically disregarded, because ideas and theories that are not testable are not necessarily without value. Beyond its relevance to archaeology, Lives is a rich illustration of people, their technology, and their livelihoods. Beautifully and clearly written, Arthur weaves together a tale of deep human-tool relationships. This reviewer was enthralled with just how intense the Gamo’s indigenous ontology was embedded in their stone tools, from a tool’s birth, maturity, and death. Yet this book is as much about the people as it is about their technology, and learning about the status of the Gamo in relation to the larger society in which they live and interact was fascinating. Although all black and white, the images peppered throughout the book are informative and help to paint a vivid picture of the Gamo people. Additionally, several aspects of the book – ranging from discussions of artifact context, form, and use; to raw material procurement; to resharpening; and finally to discard patterns – can serve as models against which the archaeological record can be compared. The Lives of Stone Tools should be required reading for virtually everyone in the archaeological discipline. It is a challenging, rewarding read that has implications for how archaeologists study any kind of material culture. Specifically, it reminds us that we as archaeologists “must consider Indigenous theories of being as equals and as alternatives to Western theories of material culture” (page 234), and that, vitally, these two theory sets are not mutually exclusive.