Ref ID:	22894
Ref Type:	Book Section
Authors:	Xhauflair, Hermine Pawlik, Alfred F. Dizon, Eusebio Z.
Title:	How can stone tools help to understand the importance of plants in the subsistence stratagies of prehistoric hunter-gatherers in the Philippines and Southeast Asia?
Date:	2012
Source:	Crossing borders: selected papers from the 13th International Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists
Place of Publication:	Singapore
Publisher:	NUS Press
Abstract:	A number of observations suggest that plants have played a major role in the economy of Southeast Asian hunters-gatherers during the Pleistocene. The use of plants and the production of complex and specialized implements made of wood or bamboo has actually been suggested by some archaeologists as a means to explain the apparently simple lithic technology and paucity of formal stone tools in Southeast Asia's prehistory. The absence of vegetal artifacts in the archaeological record and the present lack of a detailed and widespread reference collection of related use traces from lithic assemblages in the region limit the possibility to detect and characterize plant use and prevent the suggested models of prehistoric plant use to be put to the test. We propose a multi-disciplinary approach for the identification of wear traces resulting from the plants working and for establishing such a reference collection. The method involves ethnoarchaeological fieldwork and experimental archaeology.
Date Created:	9/12/2013
Editors:	Tjoa-Bonatz, Mai Lin Reinecke, Andreas Bonatz, Dominik
Volume:	1
Page Start:	26
Page End:	34