The Social Life of Palimpsests: Skill, Bifacial Stone Knapping, and Differentiation in the Plowed Fields of La Martre

Archaeological palimpsests are depositional units where the remains of various human occupations have been mixed for hundreds to hundreds of thousands of years. They create various sets of analytical scales that archaeologists must deal with routinely. In this paper, I argue that sociocultural processes derived from a communities of practice framework — scaffolding, guided participation, and continuity through shared activities — can be used by archaeologists to describe a palimpsest’s lithic assemblage, to differentiate its patterns, and to interpret their meaning. These processes must first be remapped onto an ecological approach to skill before they can be expanded onto new sets of scales, however. I ground my work at the site of La Martre (Quebec, Canada), a nexus of fifteen marine terraces spread over 500,000 m². Slow depositional processes and plowing have mixed its lithic remains to create a 10,000-year-wide depositional unit with poor chronological and spatial control. Fieldwork conducted between 1995 and 1999 sampled 0.03% of its total surface. Most of its 2111 tools and 207,506 flakes were uncovered in its 40-cm-thick plowzone. I build methodological tools — dispersion surfaces, skill combinatorics, and extended skilled reduction sequences — to describe a small subset (N=93) from one of La Martre’s loci (16-west). I describe ten extended skilled reduction sequences showing various degrees of skill and knapping methods. Concepts of scaffolding, guided participation and continuity through shared activities are then used to interpret these patterns.