Fire-Cracked Rock Technology and Life History: Reuse, Recycling, and Usage as Tools

This chapter focuses on technological organization and archaeological life history based on the behavioral chain of Schiffer (Technological Perspectives on Behavioral Change. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson and London, 1992), and Schiffer and Skibo (Am Antiquity 62:27–50, 1997), which includes the procurement of raw material and transportation, manufacture, use, reuse, maintenance, recycling, disposal and loss, and postdepositional processes. This approach can be applied to the study of fire-cracked rock (FCR), as well as hearths, which are discussed as an example based on Bentsen’s (Fire as an Instrument: The Archaeology of Pyrotechnologies. Archaeopress, Oxford, 2007) characterization of the chaîne opératoire of hearths. Andrefsky’s (Am Antiquity 59:21–34) lithic raw material model is also examined in this chapter. Finally, the challenges that recycling (interaction in a completely new activity) and reuse behaviors pose to lithic typology are discussed through three cases studies, from: (1) Brazil in South America, (2) the Great Lakes region in eastern North America, and (3) the Pacific Northwest in western North America. These case studies thus provide examples in the archaeological record of the utilization of FCR as tools (e.g., with retouch, edge use-wear), as well as the knapping of heat-fractured FCR to manufacture artifacts, such as projectile points. In addition, a case study investigating the accuracy and adequacy of in-field analysis is also explored. Lastly, the chapter provides concluding remarks and future directions for the study of FCR.