ASM Occasional Electronic Papers No. 1: Homol'ovi IV

Chapter Ten:
Flaked Stone, cont.

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The Flaked Stone Assemblage

Reduction Strategies

As already noted in the reports on Homol'ovi III (Young 2001) and Homol'ovi II (Lyons and Pitblado 1996) flaked stone assemblages, lithic technology during the late prehistoric Pueblo period had become expedient. This is certainly evident in the Homol'ovi IV assemblage as well. The causes of this expediency are abundant local raw materials and a sedentary lifestyle based on farming. One method for measuring the level of expediency employed by Young (2001: 243-244) is the biface to core ratio, which is a method of measuring the shift away from standardized reduction strategies. The lower the ratio, the more expedient the technology. For Homol'ovi III the ratio was 0.29. For Homol'ovi IV the ratio is 30/358 = 0.08. This low number is probably partly a product of raw material at Homol'ovi IV, in contrast to Homol'ovi III where a walk of a kilometer would be required to obtain raw material. Still, there is no question that the Homol'ovi IV assemblage is expedient, especially in light of the fact that four of the bifaces are obsidian, imported from Anderson Mesa communities (Harry 1989).

Tool Assemblage

Another measure of the degree of expedient technology is the frequency of informal tools (wedges, utilized and retouched flakes) versus formal tools (scrapers, projectile points, bifaces, and drills, Figures 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3). At Homol'ovi III, Young (2001:table 10.6) records 1279 informal tools versus 251 formal tools for a ratio of 0.196 or a frequency of 16.4% formal tools (Table 10.6). At Homol'ovi IV the frequencies are 175 and 50 for a ratio of 0.286 and a frequency of 22.2% formal tools. The Homol'ovi IV frequencies are almost identical to those Young (2001:table 10.6) reports for the Pueblo III period in the Homol'ovi area, which are a ratio of .292 and a frequency of 22.6% formal tools (Table 10.6). The dates for occupation of Homol'ovi IV, A.D. 1250s to 1280s fits within the usual definition of Pueblo III in the region. The Pueblo III and Pueblo IV periods are characterized as fully sedentary periods and the formal tool ratio is consistent with that characterization. In contrast, Homol'ovi II, which dates A.D. 1350-1400, had 1415 informal tools and only 78 formal tools for a ratio of 0.055 and a frequency of only 5.2% formal tools (Table 10.6).

Figure 10.1 Scrapers

Figure 10.2 Hammerstones

Table 10.6 Temporal changes in retouched tool assemblages from the Homol’ovi area

Tool Type	Pueblo III	Homol’ovi IV	Homol’ovi III	Homol’ovi II
Utilized	1	107	363	1099
Retouched	101	67	839	307
Wedge	4	1	77	9
Total Informal	106	175	1279	1415
Scraper	1	11	13	21
Projectile Point	20	22	136	23
Biface	8	8	94	30
Drill	2	9	8	4
Total Formal	31	50	251	78
Ratio	.292	.286	.196	0.55
Formal %	22.6%	22.2%	16.4%	5.2%

The later assemblages from Homol'ovi III and Homol'ovi II continue a trajectory toward fewer and fewer formal tools as a component of the flaked stone assemblage as site size and sedentism increase. These temporal changes could also reflect a landscape that is more and more hunted out. Therefore, formal tools, such as projectile points and scrapers, are needed less to process larger animals. The faunal assemblage from Homol'ovi II has only 2.6% artiodactyla (Strand and McKim 1996:table 10.2a) and Homol'ovi III has only 1.6% artiodactyla (Pierce 2001:table 11.1); whereas, Homol'ovi IV has 10.6% artiodactyla (Table 11.2, this volume). The significantly higher frequency of large mammals at Homol'ovi IV signal a greater need for formal tools and may account for their higher frequency in the assemblage than found at Homol'ovi II and III.

Projectile Points

Twenty-two projectile points were recovered from Homol'ovi IV. Four are obsidian and the remainder of the points are chert or related local materials (Table 10.5). All, but one, of the points were recovered from plaza contexts with the other from structure 301 (Table 10.4). Projectile points during the late Pueblo III and Pueblo IV periods in the Anasazi or ancestral Pueblo region are typically small, triangular, side-notched, and have flat or slightly concave bases (Burton and Farrell 1993:130-131) (Figure 10.4). Freeman (1989) and Young (2001: 266-267) note that side-notched points are prevalent during this period at Homol'ovi III, but that triangular unnotched points are also common. These descriptions fit the Homol'ovi IV assemblage perfectly. Half of the 22 points are side-notched and 7 are triangular and unnotched. Similarly, 10 of the 22 points have flat bases and 8 are concave (Tables 10.4 and 10.5). Four of the points are too fragmentary to determine attributes.

Figure 10.3 Drills

Figure 10.4 Projectile points

Conclusions

The flaked stone assemblage from Homol'ovi IV fits within the patterns of material types, reduction strategies, tool types and frequencies, and projectile point morphology that have been described for much larger assemblages from Homol'ovi II and III. The notable differences at Homol'ovi IV from the other analyzed assemblages relate to the low frequency of obsidian and chert, higher frequency of quartzite, and the high ratio of formal tool types to informal tool types at the village (Tables 10.6 and 10.7). The ratio of formal tools types has been discussed in some detail and was related to the possibility of the need for more formal tools as a result of the much higher frequency of large mammals, specifically various species of artiodactyl, at Homol'ovi IV.

Table 10.7 Distribution of material types from Homol’ovi villages

	Chert	Petrified Wood	Quartzite	Obsidian	Igneous	Other	Total
Homol’ovi III	22,933 (.654)	2626 (.075)	7242 (.207)	1962 (.056)	6 (.000)	293 (.008)	35,062
Homol’ovi II	11,334 (.812)	1264 (.091)	774 (.056)	539 (.039)	2 (.000)	38 (.003)	13,951
Homol’ovi IV	969 (.492)	346 (.176)	557 (.283)	7 (.004)	29 (.015)	63 (.032)	1,971
TOTAL	35,236 (.691)	4236 (.083)	8573 (.168)	2508 (.049)	37 (.001)	304 (.006)	50,984

Homol'ovi IV has a much lower frequency of chert, at slightly less than half of the assemblage, versus over 65% at Homol'ovi III and over 81% at Homol'ovi II (Table 10.7). The high frequency of natural quartzite cobbles on the surface at Homol'ovi IV probably accounts in part for the higher frequency of quartzite in the Homol'ovi IV assemblage and thus a lower frequency of chert. Nevertheless, the Homol'ovi IV occupants were still deciding to choose quartzite over chert for some tasks. The need to shape building stones and the large amount of rock art at Homol'ovi IV, both preferring quartzite cobbles for their manufacture, might explain part of the discrepancy. The discrepancy is even more pronounced when one combines fine-grained materials (chert, petrified wood, and obsidian) and contrasts them to quartzite. The total fine-grained material at Homol'ovi IV is only 1302 pieces or 66.1%. For Homol'ovi III the count is 27,521 or 78.5%. Finally, for Homol'ovi II the count of fine-grained material is 13,137 or 94.2% of the assemblage. Activities requiring flaked stone tools at Homol'ovi IV and the access to raw materials clearly vary at Homol'ovi IV from the other later villages. The variation is striking in contrast to Homol'ovi II with Homol'ovi III intermediate. Interestingly, when only the early, year-round occupation of Homol'ovi III is considered, the frequency of fine-grained material is 75.6% with quartzite at 23.7% of the assemblage (Young 2001:table 10.7). This assemblage is even more similar to Homol'ovi IV and suggests that there is a temporal component to the variation in material preference at Homol'ovi villages with quartzite falling out of favor and replaced by a variety of finer-grained materials. Certainly, the relative ubiquity of obsidian at the other sites signals a shift in material preference.

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