Comment raconter des histoires lithiques dans les labours de La Martre (Québec, Canada)
This thesis binds various lithic remains fragmented and scattered by decades of plowing at La Martre (Gaspé Peninsula, Quebec, Canada). Plowing creates a specific type of archaeological palimpsest. It erases units allowing for: the comparison of lithic practices contained within each biface and flake that make up a context; the chronological control of said units; and using various methods and theories according to an archaeological unit’s appropriate scale. A maximum chronological boundary following the deglaciation of the northern Gaspé Peninsula, the exposure of La Martre’s higher terraces by the receding sea, and the production of Plano projectile points (dated to between 11 600 and 9000 cal BP in northeastern America) provide archaeologists with some chronological control that floats within La Martre’s hundreds of thousands of lithic remains. Yet, it is argued that plowing cannot preclude archaeologists from telling lithic and other stories, provided that some practices and habits are changed. Indeed, plowing points to theoretical, epistemological and methodological problems that elsewhere may have remained invisible. These problems pertain to the bifurcation of reality inhibiting its development by laying down a ready- made and unchanging reality prior to any engagement with it. Plowing requires for this specific engagement with reality to be turned upside down, starting from a moving and dispersed reality that a consciousness perceives and thinks with. Telling lithic stories at La Martre requires that this turn be extended by following its movements: that of a conscience, of knapping and of plowing; thus telling new stories that a bifurcated relationship to reality had inhibited. It is suggested here that this turn be extended using description along fifteen dispersion surfaces: (i.) two plowed terraces, stations 15 and 16; (ii.) shaped blanks; (iii.) chaînes opératoires; (iv.) a sample of 447 shaped blanks; (v.) a reduction continuum; (vi.) shaped blank integrity; (vii.) skill; (viii.) raw material; (ix.) knapping objectives; (x.) technical groups; (xi.) lithic fluxes; (xii.) skill combinatorics; (xiii.) possible evolutions; (xiv.) places; (xv.) production sequences. Such surfaces allow for several things: first, for knapping diversification rather than refining; second, for changing the condition of use of the chaîne opératoire or the reduction sequence; third, for starting from movement and relationships rather than defined groups or individuals; fourth, for differentiating La Martre’s plowed terraces; fifth, for delimiting a place, 16-West, structured by the sociocultural dynamics of learning and distinction; sixth, for growing several production sequences; seventh, for reconnecting La Martre to the northeastern Paleoindian landscape and multiplying its lithic and archaeological stories; and eighth, for working within the “in between” places, landscapes and shapes that grow from such stories. Thus, telling lithic stories within La Martre’s plowed fields is a fourfold narrative: (i.) exploring how past people engaged with their landscape through knapping; (ii.) deconstructing conditions allowing for such an exploration; (iii.) creating new conditions allowing for new stories to be told; and (iv.) telling these new stories.
Palimpsest Lithic technology Paleoindian Northeastern North America Metaphysics Stories