Observations on Systematics in Paleolithic Archaeology

The intellectual traditions that frame Paleolithic research in Europe and the United States are reviewed, and the European Middle Paleolithic archaeological record is examined for patterns that contradict the “textbook generalizations” embodied in Paul Mellars' “human revolution”. The fact that different typologies are used to describe the Middle and Upper Paleolithic respectively emphasizes differences between them (especially if typology “trumps” any other systematic investigation of pattern), effectively precluding the perception of continuity in retouched stone tool form over the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition. The proliferation of “transition industries” over the past 20 years has made the picture much more complicated than it was before ca. 1990, and the identification of ca. 20 Mousterian “facies” since 1985 strongly suggests that the west Eurasian Mousterian is more complex and variable than previously thought. We conclude that there is much under-acknowledged formal convergence in the kinds and frequencies of chipped stone artifacts, that patterns in lithic industries are mostly determined by raw material package size, quality and forager mobility, that changes in lithic technology are only “historical” at the macroscale (i.e., over evolutionary time), and that formal convergence likely overrides any “cultural” component supposedly present in the form of retouched stone tools.