The paper “For our world without sound. The opportunistic debitage in the Italian context: a methodological evaluation of the lithic assemblages of Pirro Nord, Cà Belvedere di Montepoggiolo, Ciota Ciara cave and Riparo Tagliente” [1] submitted by M. Carpentieri and M. Arzarello is a welcome addition to a growing number of studies focusing on flaking methods showing little to no core preparation, e.g., [2–4]. These flaking methods are often overlooked or seen as ‘simple’, which, in a Middle Palaeolithic context, sometimes leads to a dichotomy of Levallois vs. non-Levallois debitage (e.g., see discussion in [2]).

The authors address this topic by first providing a definition for ‘opportunistic debitage’, derived from the definition of the ‘Alternating Surfaces Debitage System’ (SSDA, [5]). At the core of the definition is the adaptation to the characteristics (e.g., natural convexities and quality) of the raw material. This is one main challenge in studying this type of debitage in a consistent way, as the opportunistic debitage leads to a wide range of core and flake morphologies, which have sometimes been interpreted as resulting from different technical behaviours, but which the authors argue are part of a same ‘methodological substratum’ [1].

This article aims to further characterise the ‘opportunistic debitage’. The study relies on four archaeological assemblages from Italy, ranging from the Lower to the Upper Pleistocene, in which the opportunistic debitage has been recognised. Based on the characteristics associated with the occurrence of the opportunistic debitage in these assemblages, an experimental replication of the opportunistic debitage using the same raw materials found at these sites was conducted, with the aim to gain new insights into the method. Results show that experimental flakes and cores are comparable to the ones identified as resulting from the opportunistic debitage in the archaeological assemblage, and further highlight the high versatility of the opportunistic method.

One outcome of the experimental replication is that a higher flake productivity is noted in the opportunistic centripetal debitage, along with the occurrence of 'predetermined-like' products (such as déjeté points). This brings the authors to formulate the hypothesis that the opportunistic debitage may have had a role in the process that will eventually lead to the development of Levallois and Discoid technologies. How this articulates with for example current discussions on the origins of Levallois technologies (e.g., [6–8]) is an interesting research avenue. This study also touches upon the question of how the implementation of one knapping method may be influenced by the broader technological knowledge of the knapper(s) (e.g., in a context where Levallois methods were common vs a context where they were not). It makes the case for a renewed attention in lithic studies for flaking methods usually considered as less behaviourally significant.

[1] Carpentieri M, Arzarello M. 2020. For our world without sound. The opportunistic debitage in the Italian context: a methodological evaluation of the lithic assemblages of Pirro Nord, Cà Belvedere di Montepoggiolo, Ciota Ciara cave and Riparo Tagliente. OSF Preprints, doi:10.31219/osf.io/2ptjb

[2] Bourguignon L, Delagnes A, Meignen L. 2005. Systèmes de production lithique, gestion des outillages et territoires au Paléolithique moyen : où se trouve la complexité ? Editions APDCA, Antibes, pp. 75–86. Available: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00447352

[3] Arzarello M, De Weyer L, Peretto C. 2016. The first European peopling and the Italian case: Peculiarities and “opportunism.” Quaternary International, 393: 41–50. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2015.11.005

[4] Vaquero M, Romagnoli F. 2018. Searching for Lazy People: the Significance of Expedient Behavior in the Interpretation of Paleolithic Assemblages. J Archaeol Method Theory, 25: 334–367. doi:10.1007/s10816-017-9339-x

[5] Forestier H. 1993. Le Clactonien : mise en application d’une nouvelle méthode de débitage s’inscrivant dans la variabilité des systèmes de production lithique du Paléolithique ancien. Paléo, 5: 53–82. doi:10.3406/pal.1993.1104

[6] Moncel M-H, Ashton N, Arzarello M, Fontana F, Lamotte A, Scott B, et al. 2020. Early Levallois core technology between Marine Isotope Stage 12 and 9 in Western Europe. Journal of Human Evolution, 139: 102735. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2019.102735

[7] White M, Ashton N, Scott B. 2010. The emergence, diversity and significance of the Mode 3 (prepared core) technologies. Elsevier. In: Ashton N, Lewis SG, Stringer CB, editors. The ancient human occupation of Britain. Elsevier. Amsterdam, pp. 53–66.

[8] White M, Ashton N. 2003. Lower Palaeolithic Core Technology and the Origins of the Levallois Method in North‐Western Europe. Current Anthropology, 44: 598–609. doi:10.1086/377653

“On the Physics and Metaphysics of Classification in Archaeology” by M. Okumura and A.G.M. Araujo (1) is a welcome contribution to our upcoming edited volume on type-thinking and the uses and misuses of archaeological typologies. Questions of type-delineation and classification of archaeological materials have recently re-emerged as key arenas of scholarly attention and interrogation (2–4), as many researchers have turned to a matured field of cultural evolutionary studies (5–7) and as fine-grained archaeological data and novel computational-quantitative methods have becomes increasingly available in recent years (8, 9). Re-assessing the utility and significance of traditional archaeological types has also become pertinent as macro-scale approaches to the past have grown progressive to the centre of the discipline (10, 11), promising not only to ‘re-do’ typology ‘from the ground up’, but also to put types and typological systems to novel and powerful use, and in the process illuminate the many understudied large-scale dynamics of human cultural evolution which are so critical to understanding our species’ venture on this planet. As such, the promise is colossal yet it requires a solid analytical base, as many have insisted (e.g., 12). Types are often identified as such foundational analytical units, and much therefore hinges on the robust identification and differentiation of types within the archaeological record. Typo-praxis – the practice of delineating and constructing types and to harness them to learn about the archaeological record – is therefore also increasingly seen as a key ingredient of what Hussain and Soressi (13) have dubbed the ‘basic science’ claim of lithic research within human origins or broader (deep-time) evolutionary studies.

The stakes are accordingly incredibly high, yet as Okumura and Araujo point out there is still no need to ‘re-invent the wheel’ as there is a rich literature on classification and systematics in the biological sciences, from which archaeologists can draw and benefit. Some of this literature was indeed already referenced by some archaeologists between the 1960s and early 2000s when first attempts were undertaken to integrate Darwinian evolutionary theory into processual archaeological practice (14, 15). It may be argued that much of this literature and its insights – including its many conceptual and terminological clarifications – have been forgotten or sidelined in archaeology primarily because the field has witnessed a pronounced ‘cultural turn’ beginning in the early 2000s, with even processualists expanding their research portfolio to include what was previously considered post-processual terrain (16, 17). Michelle Hegmon’s (16) ‘processualism plus’ was perhaps the most emphatic expression of this trajectory within the influential Anglo-American segments of the profession. Okumura and Araujo are therefore to be applauded for their attempt to draw attention again to this literature in an effort to re-activate it for contemporary research efforts at the intersection of cultural evolutionary and computational archaeology. Decisions need to be made on the way, of course, and the authors defend a theory-guided (and largely theory-driven) approach, for example insisting on the importance of understanding the metaphysical status of types as arbitrary kinds. Their chapter is hence also a contribution (some may say intervention) to the long-standing tension between the tyranny of data vs. the tyranny of theory in type-construction. They clearly take side with those who argue that typo-praxis cannot evade its metaphysical nature – i.e., it will always be concerned (to some extent at least) with uncovering basic metaphysical principles of the world, even if the link between types and world is not understood as a simple mapping function. Carving the investigated archaeological realities ‘at their joints’ remains an overarching ambition from this perspective. Following Okumura and Araujo, archaeologists interested in these matters therefore cannot avoid to become part-time metaphysicians.

Okumura and Araujo’s contribution is timely and it brings key issues of debate to archaeological attention, and many of these issues tellingly overlap substantially with foundational debates in the philosophy of science (e.g. monism vs. pluralism, essentialism vs. functionalism, and so forth). Their chapter also showcases how critical (both in an enabling and limiting way) biological metaphors such as ‘species’ are (see esp. the discussion of ‘species as sets’ vs. ‘species as individuals’) for their and cognate projects. Whether such metaphors are justified in the context of human action is a longstanding point of contention, and other archaeologies – for example those with decidedly relational, ontological, and post-humanist aspirations – have developed very different optics (see e.g. 18, esp. Chapter 6). This being said, Okumura and Araujo’s contribution will be essential for those interested in (re-)learning about the ‘physics and metaphysics’ of archaeological classification and their chapter will be an excellent place to start with such engagement.

References

1. M. Okumura and A. G. M. Araujo (2024) The Physics and Metaphysics of Classification in Archaeology. Zenodo, ver.3 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Archaeology https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7515797

2. F. Riede (2017) “The ‘Bromme problem’ – notes on understanding the Federmessergruppen and Bromme culture occupation in southern Scandinavia during the Allerød and early Younger Dryas chronozones” in Problems in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Research, pp. 61–85.

3. N. Reynolds and F. Riede (2019) House of cards: cultural taxonomy and the study of the European Upper Palaeolithic. Antiquity 93, 1350–1358. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.49 

4. R. L. Lyman  (2021) On the Importance of Systematics to Archaeological Research: the Covariation of Typological Diversity and Morphological Disparity. J Paleo Arch 4, 3. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-021-00077-6

5.  A. Mesoudi (2011) Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences, University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226520452

6. N. Creanza, O. Kolodny and M. W. Feldman (2017) Cultural evolutionary theory: How culture evolves and why it matters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, 7782–7789. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1620732114

7. R. Boyd and P. J. Richerson (2024) Cultural evolution: Where we have been and where we are going (maybe). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, e2322879121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2322879121

8. F. Riede, D. N. Matzig, M. Biard, P. Crombé, J. F.-L. de Pablo, F. Fontana, D. Groß, T. Hess, M. Langlais, L. Mevel, W. Mills, M. Moník, N. Naudinot, C. Posch, T. Rimkus, D. Stefański, H. Vandendriessche and S. T. Hussain (2024) A quantitative analysis of Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic cultural taxonomy and evolution in Europe. PLOS ONE 19, e0299512, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299512

9. L. Fogarty, A. Kandler, N. Creanza and M. W. Feldman (2024) Half a century of quantitative cultural evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, e2418106121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2418106121

10. A. M. Prentiss, M. J. Walsh, E. Gjesfjeld, M. Denis and T. A. Foor (2022) Cultural macroevolution in the middle to late Holocene Arctic of east Siberia and north America. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 65, 101388. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2021.101388

11. C. Perreault (2023) Guest Editorial. Antiquity 97, 1369–1380.

12. F. Riede, C. Hoggard and S. Shennan (2019) Reconciling material cultures in archaeology with genetic data requires robust cultural evolutionary taxonomies. Palgrave Commun 5, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0260-7

13. S. T. Hussain and M. Soressi (2021) The Technological Condition of Human Evolution: Lithic Studies as Basic Science. J Paleo Arch 4, 25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-021-00098-1

14. R. C. Dunnell (1978) Style and Function: A Fundamental Dichotomy. American Antiquity 43, 192–202.

15. R. C. Dunnell (2002) Systematics in Prehistory, Illustrated Edition, The Blackburn Press.

16. M. Hegmon (2003) Setting Theoretical Egos Aside: Issues and Theory in North American Archaeology. American Antiquity 68, 213–243. https://doi.org/10.2307/3557078

17. R. Torrence (2001) “Hunter-gatherer technology: macro- and microscale approaches” in Hunter-Gatherers: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Cambridge University Press.

18. C. N. Cipolla, R. Crellin and O. J. T. Harris (2024) Archaeology for today and tomorrow, Routledge.

The community of archaeologists, bioanthropologist and paleontologists relying on tools use-wear and dental microwear has grown in the recent years, mainly driven by the spread of confocal microscopes in the laboratories. If the diversity of microscopes is quite high, the main software used for 3D surface texture data analysis are mostly different versions of the same Mountains Map core. In addition to this software, since the beginning of 3D surface texture analysis in dental microwear, surface sensitive fractal analysis (SSFA) initially developed for industrial research (Brown & Savary, 1991) have been performed in our disciplines with the Sfrax/Toothfrax software for two decades (Ungar et al., 2003). This software being discontinued, these calculations have been integrated to the new versions of Mountains Map, with multi-core computing, full integration in the software and an update of the calculation itself.

New research based on these standard parameters of surface texture analysis will be, from now on, mainly calculated with this new add-on of Mountains Map, and will be directly compared with the important literature based on the previous software. The question addressed by Calandra et al. (2022), gathering several prominent researchers in this domain including the Mountains Map developer F. Blateyron, is key for the future research: can we directly compare SSFA results from both software?

Thanks to a Bayesian approach to this question, and comparing results calculated with both software on three different datasets (two on dental microwear, one on lithic raw materials), the authors show that the two software gives statistically different results for all surface texture parameters tested in the paper. Nevertheless, applying the new calculation to the datasets, they also show that the results published in original studies with these datasets would have been similar. Authors also claim that in the future, researchers will need to re-calculate the fractal parameters of previously published 3D surfaces and cannot simply integrate ancient and new data together.

We also want to emphasize the openness of the work published here. All datasets have been published online and will be probably very useful for future methodological works. Authors also published their code for statistical comparison of datasets, and proposed a fully reproducible article that allowed the reviewers to check the content of the paper, which can also make this article of high interest for student training.

This article is therefore a very important methodological work for the community, as noted by all three reviewers. It will certainly support the current transition between the two software packages and it is necessary that all surface texture specialists take these results and the recommendation of authors into account: calculate again data from ancient measurements, and share the 3D surface measurements on open access repositories to secure their access in the future.

References

Brown CA, and Savary G (1991) Describing ground surface texture using contact profilometry and fractal analysis. Wear, 141, 211–226. https://doi.org/10.1016/0043-1648(91)90269-Z

Calandra I, Bob K, Merceron G, Blateyron F, Hildebrandt A, Schulz-Kornas E, Souron A, and Winkler DE (2022) Surface texture analysis in Toothfrax and MountainsMap® SSFA module: Different software packages, different results? Zenodo, 7219877, ver. 4 peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Archaeology. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7219877

Ungar PS, Brown CA, Bergstrom TS, and Walker A (2003) Quantification of dental microwear by tandem scanning confocal microscopy and scale-sensitive fractal analyses. Scanning: The Journal of Scanning Microscopies, 25, 185–193. https://doi.org/10.1002/sca.4950250405

The manuscript "ARIADNEplus Visual Media Service 3D configurator: toward full guided publication of high-resolution 3D data​" by Potenziani et al. [1] provides an excellent introduction to the Visual Media Service 3D Configurator.  This is an exciting tool, focused on cultural heritage, that forms part of the Visual Media Service, a web-based platform for uploading a range of complex data sets, including high-resolution images, Reflectance Transformation Imaging images and 3D models and transforming them into an appropriate format for interation and visualisation on the web.  The 3D Configurator Tool provides researchers with a wizard which assist with the presentation of 3D models.

This manuscript provides a history and context for the development of the Visual Media Service and previous related tools such as 3DHOP, Nexus and Relight/OpenLIME.  It also provides detailed information about the functionality of the 3D Configurator, including the Alignment, Material & Light, Navigation, Interface and Annotation steps.  The Discussion section provides information about applications and users of the Visual Media Service, current limitations and planned future developments.

Reviewers Hageneuer, Champion, Trognitz and Panagiotidis all provided important suggestions to the authors which have improved the clarity and scope of this manuscript.  While this manscript does not present a case study using this tool, I recommend it to readers as a detailed and clear introduction to the Visual Media Service 3D configurator which may inspire them to use this for their own research.

References

[1] Potenziani, M., Ponchio, F., Callieri, M., and Cignoni, P. (2024). ARIADNEplus Visual Media Service 3D configurator: toward full guided publication of high-resolution 3D data. Zenodo, 8075050, ver. 5 peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Archaeology. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10894515​

“Research perspectives and their influence for typologies” by E. Giannichedda (1) is a contribution to the upcoming volume on the role of typology and type-thinking in current archaeological theory and praxis edited by the recommenders. Taking a decidedly Italian perspective on classificatory practice grounded in what the author dubs the “history of material culture”, Giannichedda offers an inventory of six divergent but overall complementary modes of ordering archaeological material: i) chrono-typological and culture-historical, ii) techno-anthropological, iii) social, iv) socio-economic and v) cognitive. These various lenses broadly align with similarly labeled perspectives on the archaeological record more generally. According to the author, they lend themselves to different ways of identifying and using types in archaeological work. Importantly, Giannichedda reminds us that no ordering practice is a neutral act and typologies should not be devised for their own sake but because we have specific epistemic interests. Even though this view is certainly not shared by everyone involved in the broader debate on the purpose and goal of systematics, classification, typology or archaeological taxonomy (2–4), the paper emphatically defends the long-standing idea that ordering practices are not suitable to elucidate the structure and composition of reality but instead devise tools to answer certain questions or help investigate certain dimensions of complex past realities. This position considers typologies as conceptual prosthetics of knowing, a view that broadly resonates with what is referred to as epistemic instrumentalism in the philosophy of science (5, 6). Types and type-work should accordingly reflect well-defined means-end relationships.

Based on the recognition of archaeology as part of an integrated “history of material culture” rooted in a blend of continental and Anglophone theories, Giannichedda argues that type-work should pay attention to relevant relations between various artefacts in a given historical context that help further historical understanding. Classificatory practice in archaeology – the ordering of artefactual materials according to properties – must thus proceed with the goal of multifaceted “historical reconstruction in mind”. It should serve this reconstruction, and not the other way around. By drawing on the example of a Medieval nunnery in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy, Giannichedda explores how different goals of classification and typo-praxis (linked to i-v; see above) foreground different aspects, features, and relations of archaeological materials and as such allow to pinpoint and examine different constellations of archaeological objects. He argues that archaeological typo-praxis, for this reason, should almost never concern itself with isolated artefacts but should take into account broader historical assemblages of artefacts. This does not necessarily mean to pay equal attention to all available artefacts and materials, however. To the contrary, in many cases, it is necessary to recognize that some artefacts and some features are more important than others as anchors grouping materials and establishing relations with other objects. An example are so-called ‘barometer objects’ (7) or unique pieces which often have exceptional informational value but can easily be overlooked when only shared features are taken into consideration. As Giannichedda reminds us, considering all objects and properties equally is also a normative decision and does not render ordering less subjective. The archaeological analysis of types should therefore always be complemented by an examination of variants, even if some of these variants are idiosyncratic or even unique. A type, then, may be difficult to define universally.

In total, “Research perspectives and their influence for typologies” emphasizes the need for “elastic” and “flexible” approaches to archaeological types and typologies in order to effectively respond to the manifold research interests cultivated by archaeologists as well as the many and complex past realities they face. Complexity is taken here to indicate that no single research perspective and associated mode of ordering can adequately capture the dimensionality and richness of these past realities and we can therefore only benefit from multiple co-existing ways of grouping and relating archaeological artefacts. Different logics of grouping may simply reveal different aspects of these realities. As such, Giannichedda’s proposal can be read as a formulation of the now classic pluralism thesis (8–11) – that only a plurality of ways of ordering and interrelating artefacts can unlock the full suite of relationships within historical assemblages archaeologists are interested in.

Bibliography

1. Giannichedda, E. (2023). Research perspectives and their influence for typologies, Zenodo, 7322855, ver. 9 peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Archaeology. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7322855

2. Dunnell, R. C. (2002). Systematics in Prehistory, Illustrated Edition (The Blackburn Press, 2002).

3. Reynolds, N. and Riede, F. (2019). House of cards: cultural taxonomy and the study of the European Upper Palaeolithic. Antiquity 93, 1350–1358. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.49

4. Lyman, R. L. (2021). On the Importance of Systematics to Archaeological Research: the Covariation of Typological Diversity and Morphological Disparity. J Paleo Arch 4, 3. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-021-00077-6

5. Van Fraassen, B. C. (2002). The empirical stance (Yale University Press).

6. Stanford, P. K. (2006). Exceeding Our Grasp: Science, History, and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives (Oxford University Press). https://doi.org/10.1093/0195174089.001.0001

7. Radohs, L. (2023). Urban elite culture: a methodological study of aristocracy and civic elites in sea-trading towns of the southwestern Baltic (12th-14th c.) (Böhlau).

8. Kellert, S. H., Longino, H. E. and Waters, C. K. (2006). Scientific pluralism (University of Minnesota Press).

9. Cat, J. (2012). Essay Review: Scientific Pluralism. Philosophy of Science 79, 317–325. https://doi.org/10.1086/664747

10. Chang, H. (2012). Is Water H2O?: Evidence, Realism and Pluralism (Springer Netherlands). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3932-1

11. Wylie, A. (2015). “A plurality of pluralisms: Collaborative practice in archaeology” in Objectivity in Science, (Springer), pp. 189–210. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14349-1_10