Techno-logic & Technology is an ambitious effort to develop a new framework for studying the development of stone tool technology, with the goal of integrating humanity’s earliest and longest-lasting technology into a comprehensive questioning of the interaction between humanity and the material world.
Michael Chazan provides a translation of Éric Boëda's authoritative work Techno-logique and Technologie, which draws on the latter's career of research on stone tool assemblages from archaeological sites in Europe, the Middle East, China, and South America, together with a theoretical apparatus influenced by the work of Gilbert Simondon. This book presents a major challenge to all archaeologists studying ancient technology to reconsider how they think about artifacts and how to approach the question of progress through time in human technology. Lithic analysis is a highly empirical field of study that rarely has an impact on issues of broad theoretical interest, and Boëda’s book is a welcome exception. As well as providing contextualising information within the text, the translator Michael Chazan, himself a Paleolithic archaeologist specializing in stone tool technology, includes an interview with the author to help equip the reader to engage with this challenging text.
Chiming with the growth of interest in the work of Gilbert Simondon in the English-speaking world, this book is an important resource for Palaeolithic archaeologists and lithic specialists. It will also be of interest to researchers in material culture studies, technology studies, and human evolution.
Author(s): Éric Boëda
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 232
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of figures
Preface
Introduction
1 An epistemological perspective
From typology to technique, from technique to technology
Typology: a necessity with limited utility
Techné without logos
On the necessity of a technology of change
The notion of tendance
From form to structure, from tendance to individuation
From structure to lineage
The direction of evolution: from abstract to concrete
The place of the human
2 The techno-logic of evolution: a key to understanding human technicity
Tools
The contribution of a techno-functional approach
The necessity of theorizing the tool
What is a tool?
The process of instrumentalization: a techno-centric approach
The process of instrumentation: an anthropo-centric approach
The techno-functional approach
The internal structural relationship of incising artifacts
The processes of individuation of the lineage of incising artifacts
The absolute beginning: a naturally incising object
Abstract or additional anthropic structure
Concrete or integrated anthropic structure
Modalities of structural evolution: confection, debitage, shaping
The tempo of production
The passage from debitage to shaping
Change of perspective: from morphology to structure, from the object to the ensemble
The tempo of the post-bifacial phenomenon: from partial tofull debitage
The “circum-Mediterranean” Levallois option
The option of debitage and confection
The case of the Umm el Tlelian
The case of the Yabrudian
The case of the Hummalian
Conclusions
The structures of production
What is a core: an additional or integrated structure?
An additional structure (abstract)
The non-homothetic or falsely homothetic character ofadditional structures
True non-homothety
A misleading homothety
An integrated structure (concrete)
The homothetic or non-homothetic character of integrated structures
An integrated structure of homothetic character with a phase of reinitialization
An integrated structure of homothetic character with continuous debitage
An integrated structure of non-homothetic character with continuous debitage
The process of concretization
Structural stages of evolution
Characteristics of predetermination of the technical criteria of removals
The assemblages with an abstract structure and the corresponding classes of removals
Useful volume of Type A/undifferentiated flakes
Useful volume Type B/removals with a distinctive transformative part
Useful volume of Type C/removals with differentiated transformative and prehensile parts
Useful volume of Type D/removals with differentiated transformative and prehensile parts
Archaeological production structures
Abstract volumetric structures
Useful volume of Type A
Useful volume of Type B
Useful volume of Type C
Variability of the modes of initialization, selection, and production
Method of initialization, method of production
The resilience of the morphology of the blocks of raw material
The removals
Useful volume of Type D
Variability of the modes of initialization and production
Type D1
Initialization of Kombewa type
Initialization that can resemble Levallois without being Levallois
Initialization: Victoria West Cores
Type D2
In the archaeological context, the exploitation of Type D2 is very common
Debitage of blades of Type D2
Debitage of bladelets of Type D2
Type D3
Debitage of Levallois typo-points
Debitage of pseudo-Levallois typo-points
Conclusion
Concrete volumetric structures
Type E
Type F
Useful volume of Type E
Type E1
Type E2
Conceptual specificity
Useful volume of Type F
The phase initialization
Objectives of configured cores of Type F
The specific characteristics of Types F1 and F2
First factor: normalization of the prehensile part
Second factor: production in series, diversity/unity
F1 production or the necessary diversity of artifacts: a structural advantage
Debitage of Type F2 or the option of normalization of a single type of artifact
Third factor: a linkage between the volume of the core and the volume of the artifact
An addition to the definition of debitage of Type F1: autocorrelation
The “autocorrelation” of Types F2
Specificities of production of Type F3
3 The anthropological sense: a paleo-history of the lineages of blade production and blade products in the Middle East during the Pleistocene
The blade phenomena
Evolutionary preamble
Historical preamble
Techno-logical temporality
The modes of production
The products
The modes of production and the products
Chronological temporality
The production of blades
First phase
Second phase
The industry of Hummal 6b
The site of Kaféine
The Southern Caucasus: The Djruchula-Koudaro complex
Technical characteristics of Phases 1 and 2
Third phase
Fourth phase
Fifth phase
The blade products
The debut of the blade phenomenon
The Amudian and Hummalian blades
The post-Hummalian
Blade and bladelet products: from the Transition to the Neolithic
The anthropological sense: at the crossroads of the chronological and evolutionary data
A technical paleo-history of the modes of production and the tools produced
First phase: the Amudian from 300,000 to 200,000 years ago
The structures of blade production and the tools produced
The abstract stage of the tool
The stage of the concretization of the support
Second phase: the Hummalian and the Blade Levallois, 200,000–150,000 BP
Blade production and associated tools
Debitage of Type F1 and tools of Hummalian type.
Third phase: sporadic blade production—Levallois and non-Levallois, after 150,000 years ago
Blade production and the associated tools
Fourth phase: the transition, 45,000/47,000–36,000
The tools
The exploitation of an energetic potential: an exteriorized transformative part
Blade production
The means of blade production
The bladelet phenomenon: its tools and production
Summary of the fourth phase
The fifth phase
The modes of production
The exploitation of an energetic potential: a transmitting part of the artifact that is individualized
The phenomenon of exteriorization
4 Conclusion
The space-time of daily life
The space-time of a past daily life
The memory of the other
The production of new facts
The ontology of lineages
The variety in situations
Situation 1
Situation 2
Situation 3
Situation 4
Bibliography
Index
