Micro-Mobility: Evidence of Individual Movements in the Archaeological Record

For many years, mobility has been a hot topic in archaeology. However, studies of hunter-gatherer mobility are generally at a scale where “mobility strategies” or “patterns of mobility” are discussed, which may not accurately represent the movement of individuals. For example, the distances between a lithic tool and the raw material source are given as the length of a straight line between the source and discovery sites. This trajectory may have little to do with the actual path that the object travelled or with the movement of people across the ancient landscape.

Angela Close describes a detailed lithic refitting analysis to determine actual movements of individuals within a 15km² survey area in southwestern Egypt. The survey area is sandy with defined rippled sections oriented in a northeast-southwest direction, and the nearest raw material source is 10-15km to the north. The refitting analysis was conducted at the within-site (under 5m), within-ripple, and between-ripple, levels; and the refitted pairs were looked at in terms of minimal movements, raw materials being moved separately, and each artefact being moved separately. Close makes several assumptions such as (1) a single artefact was brought from point A to point B by a single person, (2) direction of movement can be determined by the order of flake removal or number of pieces (where the point with the greatest number of pieces is the origin, and (3) objects moved directly from point A to point B.

Movement between sites (within ripples) occurred 68 times. The majority of these moves appear random; however a pattern occurs in ripple 2 with the pieces being taken from the most southwestern site to others. Close takes this as an indication that people generally entered the ripple from the southwest, removed pieces of flint, and brought them to the other sites in the ripple.

Movement between ripples occurs entirely in the northwest-southeast direction, perpendicular to the direction of the ripples. This occurs with such a striking regularity that Close takes this as an indication that this direction of movement would have extended beyond the extent of the survey area.

Close concludes that although survey areas will rarely have such ideal conditions and preservation, this type of refitting survey could be used elsewhere to understand the movements of individual people – a scale at which past behaviour can rarely be studied.

This survey method fills in the gap between the more common within-site refitting analysis, where pieces are transported no more than a few metres, and the rare cases of long-distance refitting that occurs over many kilometres. The northwest-southeast direction of travel provides enticing evidence that further sites may be found by extending the survey area in either of these directions, and raises the question: Where did these people come from and where were they going?

The difficulty with applying this type of analysis to other areas is that the conditions are unlikely to be as ideal as they were in this case. This survey area was eolian sand with all artefacts deposited at the surface, so no digging was necessary. A survey area this large would simply not be possible in many circumstances. Also, raw material was not immediately available, so those using the sites would have been compelled to re-use pieces from one site by reworking it and carrying it to another. However, raw material was not so scarce that all pieces of flint were highly curated, reworked, and carried away from the area altogether.

On the whole, Close provides a well thought through and meticulous refitting analysis of the lithic artefacts in this survey area. In the future this may inspire more archaeologists to see refitting as a method that can be used beyond the confines of a single site to put the site of study in the context of the trends of individual local movements.

Reference:

Close, Angela E.

2000. Reconstructing Movement in Prehistory. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 7(1):49-77.