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Flint Use and Population Pressure
SS51000 (SS51@NEMOMUS.BITNET)
Thu, 16 Mar 1995 10:05:55 CST
represents more efficient use of flint, and whether this could have been
due to population pressure. I think he probably is correct on both
counts. Leroi-Gourhan is said to have estimated that a two-pound lump
offlint yields sixteen inches of working edge worked in the Acheulian
fashion, two yards in the Mousterian, and twenty-five in the
Upper-Paleolithic (blade)! I get this from Ember and Ember's
*Anthropology:A Brief Introduction* (Prentice Hall 1992, p. 78); they
reference Jacques Bordaz's *Tools of the Old and New Stone Age* (Natural
History Press 1970, p. 68). Ember and Ember don't seem to link this
with increasing density of population, but I do in my own textbook
manuscript. Did Bordaz and/or Leroi-Gourhan? Don't know. Research
time I guess. Thanks to Tiller for raising an interesting, important,
but seemingly little-noted possibility! --Bob Graber
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