This paper looks at the lithic technology of the Kintampo Complex, a Ceramic Late Stone Age complex that existed in Ghana, West Africa, around 3,500 years ago. The Kintampo Complex is characterized by a lithic technology based primarily, but not exclusively, on the bipolar production of basic (that is, expedient or informal) tools. Basic tool assemblages become common throughout the world at the end of the Pleistocene and are coincident with sedentary lifestyles, broadened resource bases, and/or domestication. Several recent papers have sought to explain the increasing importance of basic toolkits with decreasing mobility (Gero 1991; Parry and Kelly 1987; Sassaman 1992; Torrence 1989). Gender has played a part in all of these explanations, by relating the change to a shift in male activities such as hunting (Parry and Kelly 1989; Torrence 1989; Sassaman 1992) or by highlighting the increased visibility of women’s activities in sedentary communities (Gero 1991). Data from a series of Kintampo sites in northern Ghana shed new light on the issue by demonstrating that the production and use of basic tools was not the exclusive preserve of either men or women and that the high proportion of basic tools in post-Pleistocene archaeological sites indicates not so much a rise in basic tool production as a reduction in the production of highly formal tool types. Basic tools can perform virtually all the same functional duties as formal tools, so what needs to be explained is why people would devote time, labor, and resources to making elaborately worked tools that may not function any more efficiently than less ostentatious ones. With sedentism, relationships between groups of people change, and it is suggested here that the new combinations of basic and formal tools found in the sites of sedentary peoples may be expressing these new social relationships. Men and women have different opportunities for expression, and these, too, are reflected in the archaeological record.
My use of the term “basic” tools as an alternative to the terms “expedient,” “unstandardized,” or “informal” tools is an attempt to get away from the notion that formal, bifacially flaked tools are the only legitimate tool type, and that their presence in archaeological sites requires solely analysis, not explanation (Casey 1993). Unmodified pieces of stone have much sharper edges than formal, bifacially flaked stone tools, are much more quickly and easily produced, and can perform most of the functions of formal tools (Hayden 1977), yet their presence in archaeological sites most often goes unnoticed or unremarked, and seems to inspire a search for explanation rather than analysis (when they are mentioned at all). Any discussion of basic tools is usually couched in negative terms, as though these tools are the ugly stepsister of “normal” tools such as bifaces (Kleindienst 1992). In contrast, the study of bifaces and other formal tool types has been raised to an almost fetishistic level (Gero 1991; Hayden 1977) and as a consequence has masked other important issues that also may find expression in the archaeological record.
Highly formalized bifacial tools have long been associated with hunting and warfare, and therefore with male activities. An emphasis on analyzing formal tools in archaeological assemblages consequently ignores female behavior and renders women invisible in the archaeological record. Only recently have archaeologists started to consider women as agents of stone tool manufacture and use. A recent interest in basic tools has suddenly opened the discussion of lithic technology to include women, but often with the insidious suggestion that while men make precision instruments, women make (or use) expedient items out of substandard local materials or flakes scavenged from the debris left from the male makers of formal tools (Sassaman 1992). The implication is clearly that if women are ever agents of stone tool manufacture, they are merely passive (or untalented) agents.
Four recent papers have attempted to explain the increased significance of basic tools in early sedentary archaeological sites. Torrence (1989) suggests that the “devolution” of lithic assemblages associated with domestication came about owing to a reduction in the short-term risks associated with hunting. She suggests that hunting is a high-risk strategy that requires a reliable set of tools, but that domestication and resource management reduce these short-term risks, with the result that “expedient” tools were adequate for the job at hand. Parry and Kelly (1987) note that where lithic raw materials are plentiful, basic tool assemblages predominate. They suggest that formal tools that can be resharpened and reworked will be made when people have difficulty gaining access to good lithic raw material, either because they are highly mobile and are frequently out of range of the source, or because they have settled far from it and have to rely on long-distance trade or travel to obtain it. Makers of basic tools, by contrast, live near to sources of good lithic raw material, or travel there sufficiently often that material can be stockpiled and utilized expediently. Gero’s (1991) data from highland Peru indicate that basic tools become more common as domestic contexts, and hence women’s activities, become more visible in the archaeological record. Her data chart a change through time, from ceremonial contexts where formal tools are made from exotic raw materials, to domestic contexts where flake tools made from local materials predominate. Sassaman (1992) suggests that with increasing sedentism, men spent more time in the settlements making and repairing their tools. At the same time, a broad-spectrum economy increased women’s need for tools that they could obtain by scavenging waste flakes from men’s flint-knapping activities, as well as by using locally available raw materials.
All four of these models indicate that basic tools are adequate to the tasks that settled peoples perform. Parry and Kelly (1987) explicitly regard basic tools as being the most desirable tool form overall, while Sassaman (1992) and Torrence (1989) regard basic tools as being adequate for women and adequate for settled peoples, respectively.
But if basic tools are functionally adequate for most purposes, why does the manufacture of highly elaborated bifaces persist in assemblages that are otherwise devoid of formal tools? I believe that the answer has to do with relationships between settled groups of people and the mobility of male hunters, which should be clarified by analyzing the place of basic and formal tools in the economy of the Kintampo peoples in northern Ghana. First, I will demonstrate that the entire technology of the Kintampo peoples is oriented toward the production of basic tools, and that the production of bifaces is only a minor component of that technology. Next, I will demonstrate that basic tools are used preferentially by all members of the society. There appear to be very few situations where specialized chipped stone equipment is necessary, and these needs are easily met by the production of semiformal tools that are produced identically to the informal tool types. I will also discuss the place of hunting in the settled, subsistence agricultural regime, showing that the needs for wild animal protein do not diminish with sedentism, nor with the addition of minimal numbers of small livestock. Finally, I will speculate on why the production of formal tools persists, even though most practical needs are easily met with basic tools. Whereas the models chart a change through time, the data represent a point in time. However, the data are capable of demonstrating the place of basic and formal tool technologies in the context of a settled prehistoric complex.
Some 40 or 50 Kintampo sites are known from Ghana, primarily from the center of the country in the savanna and forest ecotone. Kintampo assemblages are characterized by pottery, groundstone tools, grinding stones, and evidence for permanent or semipermanent structures. They may also contain worked stone projectile points; geometric microliths; bored, grooved, and pitted stones; stone beads; stone arm bands; and chips of quartz and siliceous mudstone, usually reduced by bipolar percussion. In rare instances, bone harpoons have also been found. The most diagnostic artifact of the Kintampo Complex is the “Terra Cotta Cigar,” a flattened, elliptical object made of stone or clay. They are often scored, sometimes bored and abraded, and virtually always broken, but no function has been determined for them. They do not appear to have ever been made by anyone other than the Kintampo people, to whom they were obviously very important because they are found in profusion at virtually every Kintampo site. The material culture of the Kintampo peoples points to a settled, horticultural lifeway, but little is known about their subsistence base. Organic remains have been found at only two Kintampo sites (Carter and Flight 1972; Davies 1980; Stahl 1985a,b), but only at one of these were they recovered systematically. Domestic sheep or goat have been confirmed at both of these sites, but the analysis of plant remains has thus far produced no evidence of cultigens. The most intensive treatment of the Kintampo subsistence base is at K6 Rockshelter (Stahl 1985a,b). Here a change through time from deep forest faunal species to commensal species and those that prefer open and cleared land seems to indicate a change to the environment and the scheduling of human activities due to stock raising and land clearing for cultivation. Radiocarbon dates have been determined for only seven Kintampo sites (Stahl 1985a,b; Kense 1992), and while they range from more than 4000 BP to less than 3000 BP, they tend to cluster between 3000 and 3500 BP.
The focus of this study is the Gambaga Escarpment in northern Ghana, the location of the most northerly Kintampo sites yet known. During surveys in 1987, five large Kintampo sites, plus numerous small, random scatters of quartz and mud-stone that are undoubtedly attributable to the Kintampo Complex, were identified north of the villages of Gambaga and Nalerigu (Figure 5.1). Test excavations were undertaken in 1987, followed by full-scale excavations in 1988 and 1996. The material from 1987 and 1988 has been fully analyzed (Casey 1993) but the material from the 1996 excavations has not. The 1996 excavations concentrated on the Birimi Site (BM) to the northwest of Nalerigu, a site that had only barely been tested in 1988. This site is the largest and most intact of any Kintampo site yet known. It has the potential to more fully answer many of the questions that have been raised about Kintampo, in this paper and elsewhere. I will use some of the data from this site as corroborating evidence for the trends that are visible in the other Kintampo sites, though, unfortunately, full quantitative data are not yet available.
Table 5.1 lists the total cultural material from the 1988 excavations. The vast majority of the lithic material was chips of siliceous mudstone and quartz, some of which had obvious evidence of use. The Gambaga Escarpment upon which the site is located marks the northern edge of the Voltaian Formation, a massive geological formation of bedded sandstones and mudstones. The mudstone found at the sites is a silicified variety that outcrops some 20 km away from Fulani Kuliga (Pavilish et al. 1989). No closer sources have yet been found. Quartz is found at the bottom of the escarpment. Because neither rock type is found anywhere near the sites, it can be assumed that every piece was brought there by human agency.
The method of lithic reduction of the Kintampo people is bipolar technology where a nucleus of raw material is rested on a firm surface and struck from above with an impactor. Although bipolar technology is known from the Lower Paleolithic at Olduvai Gorge (Leakey 1971) to the ethnographic present (Brandt et al. 1992; Hayden 1973; Strathern 1969; White 1968) and from all continents where evidence for human occupation has been found, it is still regarded with suspicion by many lithic analysts who view it as being an inferior technique that produces pieces with “undesirable attributes” (Patterson and Sollberger 1976:41). This, of course, assumes that the lithic analyst can know the “desires” of the prehistoric flintknapper. Ethnographic examples indicate that the objective of bipolar technology is to quickly reduce a chunk of rock into a variety of pieces, and then to pick out the ones with useful edges for immediate use (Masao 1982:265; McCalman and Grobelaar 1965:12; Sillitoe 1982:35), and this appears to be borne out in the archaeological record. Bipolar technology, and consequently the purposeful production of basic tools, is often overlooked in the archaeological record because many analysts accept only the presence of classic “bipolar flakes” that show crushing on both ends, and Pièces Esquillées, which are wedge-shaped, battered pieces often associated with bipolar assemblages, as evidence of bipolar reduction. These items can be byproducts of bipolar reduction, but they are not always produced, nor are they necessarily the objective of bipolar reduction (Casey 1993). A more profitable way of viewing bipolar technology, or any other technology oriented toward the production of basic tools, is to define it by the actual operation or activity, not by any conception of what the desired end product may have been (Haynes 1977:5). Assemblages that contain large amounts of amorphous shatter with little evidence for formal tool production are likely oriented toward the production of unmodified basic tools.
Figure 5.1. Map of the study area and location of the sites investigated.
The vast majority of lithic material at virtually all Kintampo sites is quartz (over 75 percent) that comes from the bottom of the escarpment some 5 km away. At present, there is no reliable way of identifying use-wear on grainy quartz using the low-power approach—the only practical method of analyzing large quantities of lithic material (Flenniken 1981; Odell 1979; Odell and Odell-Vereecken 1980; Shea 1988; Sussman 1988a,b; Tomenchuk 1983, 1985). I restricted the identification and analysis of use-wear to the mudstone materials where it could be more easily and positively identified. It should also be noted that the only basic tools that can be identified are those where use has left some traces on the edge of the piece. Activities that use an edge repeatedly or involve resistant materials that chip, blunt, or leave striations on edges will be recognized while those used only once, or against soft materials, will not. This is a huge source of bias in the archaeological record because the number of identified basic tools is undoubtedly only a fraction of the number of unmodified pieces that were used throughout the lifetime of the site. The absence of formal tools to perform most cutting, piercing, incising, and scraping functions would seem to argue strongly for basic tool technology’s being the primary technology of the people at these sites. A total of 286 pieces had been recognizably used, and many of these had more than one used edge.
Table 5.1. Total cultural material of the Gambaga sites (1989) (raw counts).
Among the advantages of bipolar technology is that it can break up very small pieces of lithic raw material that could not be knapped freehand (Crabtree 1972; Flenniken 1981).
The presence of large numbers of broken quartz pebble fragments and the few large pieces of mudstone found at any of the sites seems to suggest strongly that bipolar basic tools were the only option available to the Kintampo peoples, perhaps because of a lack of sufficiently large-sized raw material; but the recent discovery of a Middle Stone Age component to the Birimi Site (Hawkins et al. 1997) seems to refute this. The Middle Stone Age material, though heavily patinated, is siliceous mudstone, probably from the same source as the Kintampo material. Today, mudstone is a commercial resource used to make gun flints and strike-a-lights (consisting of a piece of flint, a piece of steel, and a piece of flammable material), and the source to which we were directed is the only one in the area known to produce high-grade mudstone. Patinated Middle Stone Age pieces occur in profusion on the site in all stages of production, suggesting that the source of the raw material was close enough for the workers to have made regular trips there. In contrast to the Kintampo peoples, the Middle Stone Age people were selecting large pieces of mudstone to produce prepared cores, bifaces, and Levallois flakes and blades. At some Kintampo sites, the presence of random Middle Stone Age pieces indicates that the Kintampo peoples were mining the Middle Stone Age sites for raw material, and further reducing it to suit their own needs. The Kintampo people were clearly not making basic tools because of a raw material restriction.
Another possibility for the Kintampo peoples’ reliance on basic tools is that they did not possess the technology or the need to make bifacially flaked stone tools. The presence of projectile point fragments at the sites indicates that this is likely not so. Kintampo projectiles are flaked and/or ground and they come in a variety of styles, from small, triangular ones with concave bases to long, delicately flaked and serrated ones with rounded bases (Figure 5.2). Theoretically, they could have been received in trade, or scavenged from Saharan sites whose points they strongly resemble (Davies 1966:30, 1980:216; Flight 1976:219), but the presence of broken preforms, points, and flaking debris in association at the Birimi Site clearly indicates that at least some of the Kintampo people possessed the knowledge for bifacial production, and manufactured their own points rather than receiving them in trade from elsewhere.
Since virtually the entire technology is oriented toward the production of basic tools, there was no restriction on the size of raw materials, and the skills for producing formal tools were present and being used under special circumstances, these factors seem to indicate that the emphasis on basic tools was a choice for the Kintampo peoples and not something that they were forced into because of circumstances. The next question that needs to be addressed is, who were the users of the basic tools? Sassaman (1992) and Gero (1991) suggest that women primarily, but not exclusively, make and use basic tools, and that such use becomes evident in the archeological record either because women’s needs and the ability to fulfill them have increased, or because with sedentism and the identification of domestic contexts they have suddenly become visible in the archaeological record.
Figure 5.2. Kintampo projectiles.
Discrete loci of human activity were evident at only one of the sites that have been analyzed. Fulani Kuliga West Main Hill (FKWMH) is a sandstone outcrop of approximately 70X20 m. This is a section of the site I have termed Fulani Kuliga West (FKW), which appears to have been a very large site that over the years became exposed and eroded—a biased sample of which is found in the deep, unstratified deposits downstream at FKA. FKWMH appears to have escaped the severe erosion by virtue of the fact that the outcrop on which it sits is level and solid, while around the outcrop the land has considerable gradient and consists of sandy silts. Evidence for the integrity of the site exists primarily in the presence of lithic materials of every size range—from large grinding stones to tiny stone chips.
Visible on the surface of FKWMH are concentrations of sandstone often accompanied by daga (chunks of burned clay with the impressions of sticks and poles in them). Such concentrations are not uncommon in Kintampo sites (Anquandah 1976; Davies 1967, 1980; Dombrowski 1976, 1980; Stahl 1985a) and are thought to represent the remains of structural features, the foundations of which have sometimes been recovered (Dombrowski 1976, 1980). The integrity of the structures at FKWMH have been lost, so their actual shape and size is not known. Apart from a few ceramic sherds that appear to be very recent, nothing at the site suggests that it was occupied by anyone other than Kintampo peoples. No materials for dating were obtained from the site, though the affiliation is clearly Kintampo on the basis of the artifacts.
A test unit excavated in FKWMH indicated that a maximum of 36 cm of deposit covered the outcrop, with the actual bedrock being entirely exposed in some parts. Cultural material was confined to the surface of the site, followed by some 20 cm of silty sand, and finally 16 cm of gravel before bedrock was encountered. Our strategy for investigating the site was to construct a grid of 555 m squares over it and then map and collect each of the squares. Figure 5.3 shows FKWMH with the superimposed collecting grid. The concentrations of stone and daga are clearly visible. Figures 5.4 through 5.8 show the distribution of different artifact categories across the site, supporting the suggestion that the concentrations are activity areas and allowing us to interpret the nature of the represented activities.
Figure 5.3 shows the distribution of cultural material at FKWMH. Material is relatively evenly distributed with peaks at Units 7, 15, and 18. Units 31 through 34 are distinguished by their extremely low frequencies of artifacts. Site patterning is much more obvious when specific categories of artifacts are shown. Figure 5.4 shows the distribution of siliceous mudstone that concentrates at the western end of the site with a notable peak in Unit 7. Figure 5.5 shows the distribution of basic tools. Here three peaks are evident—again at the western end in Unit 7 and its adjacent units, in Unit 18, and in Unit 23. Mudstone and basic tools are virtually nonexistent at the eastern edge of the site in Feature 4. Elsewhere (Casey 1993) I have mapped the distribution of nine shape categories of basic tool edges. While there is some low-level correlation between activity areas and edge shapes, correlations are not completely clear, and it is not apparent whether the analytical categories I have used bear any meaning for the people who were actually making and using the tools.
Figure 5.3. Fulani Kuliga West Main Hill with superimposed collecting grid.
Figure 5.4. Distribution of all cultural material.
Figure 5.5. Distribution of mudstone.
The distribution of more formal tool types also sheds light on the activity areas of the site. Figure 5.7 shows the distribution of siliceous mudstone geometric microliths that are confined almost exclusively to Feature 1. An entirely different distribution is apparent for ceramics that are most common in Feature 2 (Figure 5.8).
Ethnographic evidence suggests that the material remaining behind on living surfaces does not necessarily give an accurate picture of the activities that were undertaken there (Binford 1973:242–243; Yellen 1977:97), and that there is great variation among different peoples in their propensity to create activity areas that may be recognized or accurately interpreted (see Kent 1984, 1987). As Kent points out (Chapter 3), gender-specific areas are rare in the sites of noncomplex peoples, and she cautions against making simplistic assumptions about gendered activity areas based on the presence of either lithic materials or pottery. She demonstrates that in domestic contexts, male and female activities often overlap, and that this can obscure any patterning of activity areas that may be expected to exist. I would also add that the movements of young children, who are often ungendered beings and therefore are often not subject to any gender restrictions or conventions that may exist, will move freely between the activity areas, often bringing the waste products from one activity area into another and consequently further obliterating the patterning. Furthermore, postdepositional processes of various sorts (trampling, bioturbation, slope wash) will undoubtedly ensure that materials in reasonably close proximity during the lifespan of the site have an excellent chance of becoming mixed at some point between the time of deposition and excavation. I would suggest that as long as production takes place within the domestic sphere, it is unrealistic to expect to find pristine areas of gendered activities—even less so in the absence of permanent architecture to delineate and protect the areas. We can, however, find areas where activities undertaken by either males or females predominate, and these areas clearly give us insight into the structure of the site.
Figure 5.6. Distribution of mudstone basic tools.
Figure 5.7. Distribution of geometric microliths.
Figure 5.8. Distribution of ceramics.
Bearing this in mind, I feel that a case can be made for regarding as valid the evidence for activity areas at FKWMH.
The features at FKWMH can be interpreted as indicating loci of gendered activity. The high concentration of ceramics at Feature 2 is perhaps a locus of domestic activity where quantities of ceramics were necessary for temporary storage and food preparation. In ethnographic sources, it is predominantly women who are engaged in the preparation and serving of food (Hastorf 1991:134), hence it is likely that this area represents a locus of female activity.
It is most likely that the geometric microliths at FKWMH were associated with the production of composite tools for hunting. The association of geometric microliths with hunting requires some explanation because the function of such microliths is somewhat debatable. They are found in profusion in European Mesolithic sites, and in Africa they may appear as early as 40,000 BP, but they reach their peak in the Late Stone Age all over the continent (Phillipson 1980:229). Wherever microliths have been found in contexts that have preserved evidence for their use, they have been hafted singly or in series as points or barbs for projectiles (Phillipson 1980:229) or set in handles for use as knives or other cutting implements (Soper 1965); they may have served many other purposes as well (Stahl 1989; McIntosh and McIntosh 1983:236). Although microliths are most often thought to be associated with hunting, the fact that their appearance coincides with an increase in technologies used to process plant foods may also be significant. There is no clear evidence that the microliths from FKWMH were used for the collection of plant foods. An absence of microliths with sickle sheen as an indicator of plant harvesting is not surprising, as the technology used today to harvest grasses in northern Ghana does not involve the use of sickles, scythes, or other specialized cutting implements. The large heads of domestic millet and sorghum are snapped off when dry, often over a blunt instrument, and the grasses that are collected on the stem for use in thatching and mat making are harvested by “capturing” a bunch of them in the hook of a metal instrument and snapping them off near the root with a quick jerk. In fact, only two microliths in the combined assemblages from all the Gambaga sites showed any evidence of use, and these were two mèches de fôret that had been used as drills. If Feature 1 at FKWMH can be interpreted as an area for the production of composite hunting tools, it is most likely the locus of male activity. Ethnographically, women often play an important role in the acquisition of animal protein (Wadley, Chapter 4), but they serve predominantly as trappers, as bearers, and in supporting roles as butchers, participants in drives, and supernatural support. With few exceptions (e.g., Estioko-Griffin and Griffin 1981), hunting that involved the use of projectiles is an activity that is undertaken by men (see also Hayden 1992b).
Significantly, basic tools are present at all activity areas that contain tools, and their amounts are roughly proportional to the amount of artifactual material deposited in each area. This would seem to indicate that basic tools are used equally by men and women. Mudstone flaking debris (which probably also contains unrecognized basic tools) is most common at Feature 1, which is where the vast majority of geometric microliths were located, and such debris would seem to indicate that much of it was the result of stone tool manufacture. But lithic debris, particularly quartz debris (and unrecognized basic tool debris), is also present in quantity throughout the site in areas where formal stone tool manufacture is not evident. This suggests that lithic reduction for the purpose of making basic tools carries on continuously all over the site as necessary, and is not the exclusive preserve of any specialist, whether a man or a woman.
Changes in hunting strategies have been cited as having contributed to the “devolution” of lithic technology at the end of the Pleistocene. Torrence (1989) suggests that with sedentism and domestication, the need to hunt wild animals for protein diminishes and toolkits no longer need to be so specialized in order to reduce the risks that are inherent in the hunting of large mammals. Neither sedentism nor domestication necessarily reduces the need for wild protein, though reduced mobility may force a change in the hunting focus and consequently in technology.
The presence of geometric microliths argues for the continued importance of hunting in the Kintampo sites along the Gambaga Escarpment. Unlike the highly formalized geometric microliths from North Africa (Tixier 1963), the geometric microliths from FKWMH can be described as semiformal at best. Whereas the North African geometrics are made on blades and result in highly standardized specimens, the Kintampo geometrics are made on wedge-shaped chips of stone that result in a variety of irregular shapes. I have made some attempt to classify these according to morphology (Casey 1994), but shape categories often overlap, and the Kintampo peoples seem to me to be little concerned with the difference between a trapezoid and a triangle. Functionally, the Kintampo geometrics seem to require at least one sharp edge, with the other edges blunted by steep bipolar crushing. They are recognizable as tools that have been formed for a purpose, but fortuitously shaped pieces appear to have also served that purpose equally well, receiving only minimal backing as necessary.
In both Europe and Africa the shift to the use of microliths has been under apparently contradictory circumstances. Over much of Africa this shift coincides with the expansion of forests at the end of the Pleistocene, and a concomitant shift in hunting focus from large, gregarious herd animals and the large projectiles that were used to hunt them, to small, solitary, forest-dwelling species (Phillipson 1980). Quite the opposite phenomenon has been noted in West Africa where geometric microliths are associated with savanna environments and apparently high animal biomass (Shaw 1978/79). In Europe, the appearance of geometric microliths has been interpreted as being a strategy for reducing risk in changing environments that have become either more homogeneous (Myers 1989) or more diverse (Jochim 1989). Projectiles fitted with microliths are undoubtedly equally capable of killing a large animal as a small one, but virtually all researchers stress the versatility of microlithic tools, indicating that microliths are easily made and composite tools easily repaired.
Evidence from central Ghana indicates that small, wild animal species account for the majority of faunal species in Kintampo sites along with low numbers of domestic sheep or goat (Carter and Flight 1972; Stahl 1985a,b). This combination of wild and domestic fauna is typical of many subsistence farming communities that rear domestic stock, because it is not practical for people who tend small herds of domestic animals to slaughter them regularly for consumption (Segobye, Chapter 12; Swift 1981; White 1986). Sheep and goats only produce one or two offspring a year, so regular consumption would quickly decimate the population. The addition of small stock to the prehistoric economy was probably more significant as an item that can be traded, that produces byproducts such as milk, that can consume the waste generated by the processing of plant foods, that can fertilize garden plots, and that may have forced changes in mobility; but it is unlikely that changes in diet brought about by the addition of ovicaprids had to do with a significant increase in animal protein, or in a reduced need to hunt it. It is likely, however, that with reduced mobility, the focus of hunting shifted away from long-distance trips into the bush and became concentrated closer to the settlements.
The Kintampo peoples lacked neither the technology nor the raw material for making formal tools. Nor did they lack the need to continue to hunt animals for meat. They therefore possessed many of the criteria necessary for the production of formal tools, yet they did not produce them. Basic tool technology was a choice that the Kintampo peoples made, and it appears that basic tools adequately served their purposes. The question should therefore change from “why don’t people make formal tools” to “why do people make any formal tools at all if basic tools can perform virtually the same functions as formal tools but are easier to make?” The shift in mobility may be the key to this question, but not for the technological reasons suggested by Torrence, Sassaman, and Parry and Kelly.
Gero (1989:103) has suggested that a reduction in biface production at Huaricoto in Peru marks a change in the role of bifaces as transmitters of information. She suggests that other, more plastic media (such as clay) overshadowed bifaces as information-bearing objects that served to mark social relations. The ability of artifact forms to reflect social relationships has been discussed by numerous authors (Wobst 1977; Hodder 1982, 1993; Weissner 1983, 1993; Sackett 1973, 1977, 1982, 1985, 1989, 1993, to name but a few) with the conclusion that the information encoded in artifact “style” is complex, seems multidimensional, and may or may not be intentional.
I would like to suggest that the finely made Kintampo projectiles had a very important function in transmitting information, and that they appear in assemblages where less elaborate tools perform most tasks. I hypothesize this because they continue to send their messages to the same sources that are the intended recipients of the information encoded on tools in formal assemblages, though with less frequency than expected by mobile hunters.
Ease of mobility has often been cited as one reason why men and not women undertake most of the hunting in human societies. It has been demonstrated that there are few physical barriers to women’s hunting or travel, yet overwhelmingly in the ethnographic record it is men who do the majority of both these things in most societies (Hayden 1992b). Men travel to hunt, but their tools may have a life and mobility independent of the men to whom they belong. Projectiles that miss their mark and cannot be retrieved, or that penetrate the prey but are lost as the animal escapes, or that break and are abandoned by their owners, are, in a sense, calling cards indicating the presence of a particular society or even a particular man. They are little packages of social information, and, just as the information on a calling card is accessible to anybody who understands the symbols printed on it, so too can someone understand the symbols encoded in the projectile. But who is the intended recipient of these communications?
Today in Gambaga, most hunting is performed on the farm, but there are many men who specialize in hunting animals beyond the reaches of the fields. People who go into the far bush, or hunt at night, risk coming into contact with supernatural beings, wild animals, and other humans whose territories abut the forests on the other side. Hunters are in danger from all these sources, and they do not go out to hunt without taking both magical and practical precautions that have material correlates in the hunter’s regalia, equipment, and even the charms around his house. Hunting and trapping in the farms and fields is contrasted by a complete lack of supernatural assistance, and though a significant amount of animal protein—in many cases, the most significant amount in the diet—is gained from the more pedestrian hunting on the farm, it is not regarded as being a particularly noteworthy endeavor, and certainly not worthy of the elaborate preparations that a “real” hunter must make when he ventures beyond the limits of the village’s fields.
It is likely that the contrast between the unremarkable basic tools or semiformal microliths and the exquisitely designed projectile points is the material expression of symbolic behavior for social or supernatural protection. Once people settle down in an area, they claim it as their own in a very real sense. The construction of permanent structures, the clearing of land, or the custodianship of communities of plants and animals establishes a particular physical environment as being the property of that group of people. Within this bounded area, life can be controlled and predicted, and all persons are known. Consequently, hunting and other extractive activities may be performed with regard only to the task at hand. Outside this controlled environment, life is wild and unpredictable. The act of settling and taming an area sets up a dichotomy between the domesticated and the wild, between culture and nature (Hodder 1990), and consequently, when one travels outside the safe boundaries of the living area, it becomes more important to prepare and protect oneself. One means of doing this is to encode tools with messages.
Mobile hunters and gatherers who roam the landscape litter it with evidence of their presence. The messages are subtle, even invisible, to our unaccustomed eyes, but the lost and broken projectiles, knives, and other tools are clear evidence of the presence of other groups of people, or even single individuals. These messages are not necessarily particularly elaborate. They may simply be marking the presence or the range of the person or group to whom they belong. Perhaps they claim territory beyond the immediate physical reach of the band or the individual. The recipients may be human beings who are real or imagined, or they may be supernatural sources. With sedentism, the need for people to send messages marking their presence to people or things outside the controlled environment becomes confined to particular circumstances.
The role of women as agents of external symbolic communication cannot be discounted, but evidence for their role is not as obvious as it is for men. The ethnographic record indicates that women regularly travel long distances in pursuit of resources, but there are four possible suggestions as to why they are not primary participants in long-distance messaging. First, women’s tools may also have been symbolically encoded, but were made of organic materials that have not survived the archaeological record. Second, it may be that women’s tools are lost and broken less frequently, and physically stray less far from the woman herself, reducing the need to encode them. Third, some of the tools that we do find, such as extravagantly flaked knives and scrapers, are likely to have been the property of women, and when the likelihood of their being broken or discarded in the field is high, they are also symbolically elaborated. Finally, it is possible that in the past, as now, women’s activities simply received less recognition and were considered less worthy of social and spiritual elaboration.
At the same time that external messaging was being confined to fewer instances, symbolic communication within the group was also changing. Ceramics increase in importance, not only as functional objects, but also as carriers of information. Ceramics are usually associated with women, who are both the primary consumers of ceramic vessels while often being their producers as well. Whereas men appear to be the primary agents of symbolic communication directed toward the external world, women are likely to have been important agents of symbolic messaging within the new, larger, and more stable communities. During the Kintampo period we also see beads, bracelets, and other items of personal adornment, and more permanent structures. More attention appears to be have been spent in communication among people who live together, with less directed toward the outside world, and possibly the unknown.
This paper examines the question of why elaborately made lithic tools become a minor component of the assemblages of less mobile peoples. With sedentism comes increased attention to the immediate environment. In subsistence terms, this means intensification of technologies for procuring and processing local resources. Sedentism forms a positive feedback loop whereby the acts of accumulating waste, storing food, and clearing land attract additional foods in the form of voluntary plant species and commensal animals that can be easily harvested and trapped in those areas that have been domesticated and claimed by the acts of clearing and building. Thus, while cultural or environmental influences may promote a change in mobility, the act of settling and impacting the surrounding environment can reinforce and enhance this change. The shift from a mobile to a sedentary mode of existence brings a shift in focus from a large territory with its dispersed resources, flexible kin ties, and fluid relationships with people, resources, and the supernatural, to a small territory with fixed relationships with both people and resources, as well as a delineated and reasonably controlled living environment. With sedentism comes an increased attention to the elaboration and maintenance of social relationships within these domestic boundaries.
The need for travel outside the domesticated boundaries of village and field was probably greatly reduced with sedentism, as people had most resources at hand and had to spend more time within the boundaries to protect, collect, and process them. Women’s work greatly increases with sedentism, because the resources that are reliable and can be enhanced and stored often require increased amounts of processing. Since it is women who worldwide are primarily responsible for transforming raw ingredients into food (Hastorf 1991), it is likely that the bulk of the additional work of processing, and perhaps even producing the tools (such as pottery) necessary for the task, fell to them. Both these factors—the decreased need to travel, and the increased demands on women’s labor—may have resulted in lower mobility for women.
Men’s mobility would also have been lessened for precisely the same reasons as women’s would. But while the processing of foodstuffs is a daily occupation, the collection or cultivation of seasonal resources is a sporadic one requiring periods of intensive labor followed by periods of rest. Obviously, we cannot know who was producing or harvesting the resource that enabled the Kintampo peoples to settle in northern Ghana, but over much of Africa it is women who often do this (though not in Gambaga) while the men specialize in other occupations such as hunting, waging war, or growing cash crops (for example, see Goheen 1996). Regardless of whether men were intensively involved in farming or harvesting, or engaged in other occupations, it is likely that they had greater opportunity for travel than did women. It is also likely that they had more need. Certainly during Kintampo times somebody needed to make the journeys to fetch lithic raw materials and trade for ground-stone axes. Given the demands on women’s time, it is likely that these travelers and traders were men. Women in large households can and do, of course, exchange household duties with other women in order to enable them to do other things, but often there seem to be greater restrictions on women, particularly on women during their child-bearing years. Such restrictions are not necessarily related to women’s being encumbered with small children, but do concern the control over women’s childbearing potential, and particularly the issue of paternity. Obviously it is difficult to read this into the archaeological record.
What is relevant in the archaeological record, however, is the increased elaboration of domestic equipment such as pottery, which functions primarily locally and in the sphere of women’s influence, while at the same time tools that are often elaborated in hunter-gatherer societies become less so in sedentary societies, with the exception of a single tool type. I have argued that the persistence in elaboration of this single lithic tool type has to do with hunting strategies that take hunters beyond the “safe” zones of villages and fields. Within the domestic area, the acquisition of resources is not accompanied by much elaboration or ceremony, though other aspects of material culture are (perhaps the serving of food?). But, given the dangers of crossing the boundary between the domestic and the wild, elaboration of the equipment needed to undertake the journey successfully is probably accompanied by ceremony.
The material from northern Ghana does not chart a change through time, but rather indicates the way in which materials are used at one point in time in a settled community. However, this example has the power to suggest reasons why the phenomenon of early settled peoples redirecting their symbolic energies away from the elaboration of lithic tools may have come about. Men and women were clearly producers and consumers of basic tool technology, but it is their differing opportunities for travel and contact outside the domesticated areas that shape their participation in symbolic messaging.
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) has been very generous in its support of this project. Fieldwork in 1987 and 1988 were carried out under the direction of Dr. F. J. Kense, and SSHRCC has supported my own work with a doctoral fellowship (1998–1990), postdoctoral fellowship (1994–1996), and research grant (1994–1997).
I would like to thank Sue Kent and Joan Gero for reading and making comments on earlier versions of this paper.
