through the analysis of artifact assemblages is undoubtedly the chaîne opératoire (operational sequence). This is a concept borrowed from ethnologists to describe how a particular society acquires and uses materials, and it was introduced into archaeology by the French archaeologist-ethnologist andré leroi-gourhan.

Like the functionalists, idealists have come to appreciate that the causes underlying variation in stone artifact assemblages are multidimensional and that to understand this variation requires consideration not only of the types of tools in the assemblages under study but also of the ways in which raw materials were procured, the conceptual schemes that underlay the production of the tools, and the actual techniques employed in their manufacture and maintenance. Practitioners of the chaîne opératoire approach view technology as the process whereby natural materials are transformed into cultural objects, and since technology is both artificial and deliberate, they argue that it must have mental antecedents (see, e.g., Schlanger 1994). Thus, identification of the series of events that ends with the loss or discard of stone tools is seen to provide a key to the “mind in action.” The ultimate goal is to use thechaîne opératoire to document differences in the stone-working skills exhibited by different members of a social group or to document the evolution of technical skills through the course of human history. This approach is often employed by researchers interested in the evolution of human intelligence.

Idealists do not conceive of the mind either as a “black box” or as a “mental template.” Their concern is to determine what prehistoric knappers knew about stone working, how they acquired that knowledge, how they organized themselves on the basis of that knowledge, and how they used, maintained, transformed, transferred, and even forgot it (Schlanger 1994, 148). It is therefore the identification of the body of knowledge with which a prehistoric knapper worked—as embodied in the sequence of activities associated with stone tool production—that allows the archaeologist to see the mind in action.

Insights into this knowledge are obtained by investigating what it is that the knapper needs to know, for example, in order to produce a blade. Here a distinction is drawn between the more abstract, conceptual knowledge that a knapper must have to begin blade production and the practical knowledge or procedural know-how that is required to actually make a blade. In other words, there will be a difference between the conceptual sequence applied to the problem of blade manufacture in the abstract and the actual sequence of events of a particular knapping episode. This is because materials are neither standardized in shape nor homogeneous in composition. Contingency is accepted as part of the process of transforming raw materials into tools. Therefore, there is feedback between the material being worked and the knapper working that material.

The documentation of a chaîne opératoire relies heavily on information obtained through the experimental knapping and refitting analyses that are the primary sources of information about the conceptual knowledge and procedural know-how required for the manufacture of particular tools. The chaîne opératoire itself is a description of the sequence of behaviors, actions, and gestures involved in the making of a particular tool type—from the acquisition of raw materials to tool manufacture, use, and edge maintenance to, finally, the loss or abandonment of tools or the materials from which they were made (see, e.g., Schlanger 1994). At each stage in the analysis, consideration is given to the context within which behaviors, actions, or gestures take place and to the constraints that impinge on their execution. For example, understanding raw material acquisition requires information about the distribution of materials in time and space, the flaking properties and edge qualities of those materials, and their suitability for a specific task. Information is also needed about the settlement system and foraging activities with which the acquisition of the raw material had to be integrated.

Like the functionalists, idealists have advocated the integration of technological information with settlement pattern data. However, idealist analyses of these data are aimed at documenting the ways in which space was used, so as to establish a basis for inferring something