The Effects of Secondary Recycling on the Technological Character of Lithic Assemblages

Recycling of lithic artifacts, including both lithic scavenging and secondary recycling, is a widely recognized phenomenon in the Paleolithic archeological record, in some instances creating tools with morphological signatures characteristic of multiple time periods or technological systems. These types of tools often define transitional industries including those at the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition, suggesting a variety of behavioral interpretations for the supposed evolution of Middle Paleolithic to Upper Paleolithic toolkits. Here we test an alternative hypothesis that transitional assemblages formed via secondary recycling of stone artifacts produced by two technologically divergent populations. Results from the application of an agent-based model indicate how ordered sets of assemblages resembling archeological transitional sequences can result from the combination of simple recycling behaviors and periods of sediment deposition and erosion. This implies that some transitional assemblages could have formed without the interaction of different populations and/or without technological evolution.