World Archaeological Congress 6

Session Title: From tools to tombs: the creation of identities in stone

Organisers:
Peter Topping, English Heritage (pete.topping@english-heritage.org.uk)
François Giligny, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbone (Francois.Giligny@univ-paris1.fr)

Additional Organiser: Professor Gabriel Cooney, UCD

Session Abstract:
Stone objects, ranging from small tools to large monuments such as tombs, are some of the most enduring evidence we have from the past. Analytic techniques to provenance raw materials and study the morphology of stone tools have had a central place in the development of archaeological techniques. Recent interpretative approaches have highlighted the complexity of the human use of stone in the past and its active role, alongside other media, in the construction of human and social identities.

Artefact biographies, as tracked from extraction, reduction and use to deposition, and the application of chaine opératoire approaches and lifecycle analogy to both tools and monuments have proved useful in framing many new questions to explore. What was the role of stone in the maintenance and transformation of social identities over time? Can we understand the drivers behind the very different scales at which particular tools were used and widely distributed? What is the significance and relationship between the use of stone, sometimes from the same source, at very different levels? What is the relationship between the contexts in which stone tools occur and the various ways in which stone is used at extraction sites, settlements, burials and places of communal assembly? Can we relate the movement of objects to the movement of people? What is the linkage between special objects, their use-life and deposition patterns, and monuments associated with social identities?

We invite papers that consider these and related issues.

SessionFormat:15-20 minute papers each followed by discussion

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