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about the value past societies placed on different activities. Such inferences can be made on the basis of an examination of the distribution of artifacts marking different stages in the production and use of tools.
The history of approaches to the study of stone artifacts charts the enrollment of an increasing number of variables to explain variation in artifact form and assemblage composition. The early- to mid-twentieth-century preoccupation with artifact form as a means of accessing information about past cultures has been replaced by a broader array of approaches that investigate both the reasons for the existence of different artifact types and the variations in their patterns of co-occurrence. These approaches investigate the impact of raw material properties, techniques of artifact manufacture, the uses to which artifacts were put, and the effects of resharpening on artifact form and assemblage composition, in addition to style. Both functionalist and idealist approaches recognize the importance of analyzing stone artifacts in relation to other artifacts and in relation to other categories of archaeological data, including their position on a landscape. Attempts are made to integrate information generated from the analysis of different categories of archaeological data in order to assess the behavioral information that can be gleaned from the stones themselves. The ubiquity and durability of stone artifacts means that they will always be an important source of information about past human behavior.
References
Binford, L. R., and S.R. Binford. 1969. “Stone Tools and Human Behavior.” Scientific American 220: 70–84.
Bordes, F. 1961. “Mousterian Cultures in France.” Science 134: 803–810.
Dibble, H. L., and O. Bar-Yosef, eds. 1995. The Definition and Interpretation of Levallois Technology. Monographs in World Archaeology, no. 23, Madison,WI: Prehistory Press.
Gardin, J.-C., and C.S. Peebles, eds. 1992. Representations in Archaeology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Isaac, G. Ll. 1986. “Foundation Stones: Early Artifacts as Indicators of Activities and Abilities.” In Stone Age Prehistory: Studies in Memory of Charles McBurney. Ed. G.N. Bailey and P. Callow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jones, P.R. 1994. “Results of Experimental Work in Relation to the Stone Industries of Olduvai Gorge.” In Olduvai Gorge, vol. 5, Excavations in Beds III, IV and the Masek Beds, 1968–1971. Ed. M.D. Leakey and D.A. Roe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nelson, M. 1991. “The Study of Technological Organization.” Method and Theory in Archaeology 3: 57–100.
Sackett, J.R. 1982. “Approaches to Style in Lithic Archaeology.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1: 59–112.
Schlanger, N. 1994. “Mindful Technology: Unleashing the Chaîne Opératoire for an Archaeology of Mind.” In The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archaeology, 143–151. Ed. C. Renfrew and E.B.W. Zubrow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shea, J.J. 1992. “Lithic Microwear Analysis in Archaeology.” Evolutionary Anthropology 1:143–150.
Torrence, R. 1989. Time, Energy and Stone Tools. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The history of archaeology in Lithuania mainly began in the nineteenth century. The first information about single archaeological objects was obtained during the sixteenth century, while Lithuania was a grand duchy, but during the period when Lithuania and poland formed a single state (1569–1795), there was little interest in the past, and only a few mentions about stray finds survive from that era.
It was while Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire that the study of archaeology began, with the main feature being the search for the oldest roots and evidence of states and nations. Archaeology in Lithuania started in a small local museum in Barzdz˘iai in western Lithuania in 1812. The museum was founded by the landowner
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