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Biface technology is one of the most widespread lithic technologies in both time
and space. They have been used by archaeologists to document the evolution of human
technology and cognition during the Pleistocene, as index fossils of a myriad of cultures
in both the Old and New Worlds, and they provide some of the most convincing dimensions of
stylistic variability observable in stone tool assemblages. While it sometimes tempting to
treat bifaces as a single technological unity, there is every reason to think that biface
technology is every bit as complex and varied as any other chipped-stone technology. And,
as with every other class of lithic evidence, there are a number of ways to approach that
variability analytically. The time has come to organize a symposium dedicated to
address the issue of biface variability. |
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This symposium will bring together
a variety of specialists who have studied bifaces from a number of different geographical
and temporal contexts and who represent different analytical approaches. This will include
those working on bifacial material from prehistoric to ethnographic contexts; from Africa,
Europe, the Near East, Asia, and the New World; and who use typological, technological,
functional, experimental or other approaches to describe and interpret biface variability. |
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The venue for this symposium will
be the 65th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (http://www.saa.org), to
be held in Philadelphia during the first week of April 2000. |
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