Using a rock in a hard place: Native-American lithic practices in Colonial California

There is a frequent assumption among the general public that contact with Europeans and their material technologies prompted all Native Americans to abandon stone tool technology rather quickly. Archaeologists have done a poor job of changing that misperception, but it would be difficult to dispel a myth that many archaeologists hold as part of their own academic worldview. One does not have to look far to see archaeologists writing about how impressed or awed Native-American people must have been at European technological prowess. The underlying premise is that technological choices are related only to functional efficiency, that our notions of functionality were shared by social actors in the past and that rocks must give way to metal. This paper will reveal how problematic such a premise is when it is assumed rather than tested empirically.