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Introduction: Archaeological Approaches to Lithic Production Skill and Craft Learning

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Abstract

This paper introduces the volume by considering what skill is and how archaeologists have looked at issues of skill in stone tool production, along with anthropological and archaeological approaches to the ways in which individuals become skilled craftworkers. Archaeological studies of flintknapping skill tend to be isolated from most larger debates, but both the archaeological and the nonarchaeological literature highlight how intimately skill and craft learning are woven into the fabric of society, although they also highlight significant methodological and interpretive issues.

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Acknowledgements

We conceived this project over coffees and lunches at University College, Cork, Ireland, and we owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Peter Woodman for throwing us together there. All of the authors presented their papers at a workshop at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and also as a symposium at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Denver in 2002 (supported by grants from the CU-Boulder Council on Research and Creative Work, the Department of Archaeology, The University of Glasgow, and a British Academy International Networks Grant award ). This paper benefited from the comments of Cathy Cameron, Linda Cordell, Jim Dixon, Art Joyce, Steve Lekson, and Payson Sheets and two anonymous reviewers. Thanks to Lorraine McEwan for the figures.

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  1. Anthropology Department, 233 UCB, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, 80309, USA

    Douglas B. Bamforth

  2. Department of Archaeology, The University of Glasgow, The Gregory Building, Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, Scotland

    Nyree Finlay

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Bamforth, D.B., Finlay, N. Introduction: Archaeological Approaches to Lithic Production Skill and Craft Learning. J Archaeol Method Theory 15, 1–27 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-007-9043-3

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