Challenging current perspectives on Late Pleistocene stone toolkits across Beringia through use-wear analysis

Abstract

International audienceMicroblade technologies are a structuring component of the Late Pleistocene archaeology across the Bering Strait because of their wide chronological and geographical extension. To fully understand the techno-economical strategies underlying the success of this innovative toolkit in periglacial environments, this presentation proposes a macro-regional techno-functional comparison of contexts yielding early microblade components on Hokkaïdo (Pirika), in Eastern Siberia (Kovrizhka IV) and in Interior Alaska (Swan Point). Use-wear data allow defining how tools were implemented (gesture, worked materials, hafting) and managed (sharpening, reuse, multiple uses, recycling, transport). Specific tool categories such as endscrapers were specialized in a task and had long biographies, while microblades were multipurpose tools with short lifetimes. Their high standardization and overproduction may have aimed at a fast and easy maintenance of composite tools. Chaînes opératoires were segmented at different steps (e.g., tools production and use, hide processing), facilitating the mobility of groups. These data show that in the contexts considered, the anticipation of needs was an important feature of the life of nomadic societies of hunter-gatherers