Abstract:

Technological organization entails the ways in which hunter-gatherers shape, make, use, maintain, recycle, and discard stone tools. Those decision-making processes are dependent upon the mode of occupation and land-use patterns. These issues are widely discussed in both ethnographic and Paleolithic literature; however, it has rarely been demonstrated technologically in Lower Paleolithic contexts. In this paper, using the case study of the Late Lower Paleolithic site of Holon in Israel, I address questions regarding the selection of particular curational strat-egies differently employed for various parts of the assemblage. Tool maintenance and the byproducts of such strategies will be described and articulated within the organization of technology at Holon. In addition, I will examine the micro-environmental setting in which these curational behaviors exist. In Holon, the complexity of the curational organization can be regarded as a chosen tactic, rather than an obligatory response to a deficiency in raw material. Thus, the results of this study exemplify how possible functional needs modify the known techo-typological repertoire. The nature of this interplay has rarely been described within Middle Pleistocene contexts.