Modern humans and their hominid ancestors relied on chipped-stone technology for well over two million years and colonized more than 99 percent of the Earth's habitable landmass in doing so. Yet there currently exist only a handful of informal models derived from ethnographic observation, experiments, engineering, and "common sense" to explain variability in archaeological lithic assemblages. Because the fundamental processes of making, using, and discarding stone tools are, at root, exercises in problem solving, Todd Surovell asks what conditions favor certain technological solutions. Whether asking if a biface should be made thick or thin or if a flake should be saved or discarded, Surovell seeks answers that extend beyond a case-by-case analysis. One avenue for addressing these questions theoretically is formal mathematical modeling. Here Surovell constructs a series of models designed to link environmental variability to human decision making as it pertains to lithic technology. To test the models, Surovell uses data from the analysis of more than 40,000 artifacts from five Rocky Mountain and Northern Plains Folsom and Goshen complex archaeological sites dating to the Younger Dryas stadial (ca. 12,600-11,500 years BP). The primary result is the production of powerful new analytical tools useful to the interpretation of archaeological assemblages. Surovell's goal is to promote modeling and explore the general issues governing technological decisions. In this light, his models can be applied to any context in which stone tools are made and used.

Stone tool analysis relies on a strong background in analytical and methodological techniques. However, lithic technological analysis has not been well integrated with a theoretically informed approach to understanding how humans procured, made, and used stone tools. Evolutionary theory has great potential to fill this gap. This collection of essays brings together several different evolutionary perspectives to demonstrate how lithic technological systems are a by-product of human behavior. The essays cover a range of topics, including human behavioral ecology, cultural transmission, phylogenetic analysis, risk management, macroevolution, dual inheritance theory, cladistics, central place foraging, costly signaling, selection, drift, and various applications of evolutionary ecology.

The objective of this edited volume is to bring together a diverse set of analyses to document how small-scale societies responded to paleoenvironmental change based on the evidence of their lithic technologies. The contributions bring together an international forum for interpreting changes in technological organization - embracing a wide range of time periods, geographic regions and methodological approaches.​ ​As technology brings more refined information on ancient climates, the research on spatial and temporal variability of paleoenvironmental changes. In turn, this has also broadened considerations of the many ways that prehistoric hunter-gatherers may have responded to fluctuations in resource bases. From an archaeological perspective, stone tools and their associated debitage provide clues to understanding these past choices and decisions, and help to further the investigation into how variable human responses may have been. Despite significant advances in the theory and methodology of lithic technological analysis, there have been few attempts to link these developments to paleoenvironmental research on a global scale.

The Folsom lithic technology is found among the hunter-gatherers of the Pleistocene grasslands of west-central North America. The eleven papers in this volume focus on identifying patterning within the lithic assemblages, detecting structure and variation and providing insights into the organisation of the technology.

This monograph summarizes findings from nine seasons of excavation at Barger Gulch Locality B, a Folsom campsite in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Archaeologist Todd A. Surovell explains the spatial organization of the camp and the social organization of the people who lived there.

Archaeological research on the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods has tended to focus on rock shelters, caves, large game kills, and occasionally butchery sites. Diversity in Open-Air Site Structure across the Pleistocene/Holocene Boundary examines a diverse range of open-air sites—bounded both naturally and culturally—in Siberia and Germany and throughout North America. Open-air sites are difficult for researchers to locate and, because of depositional processes, often more difficult to interpret; they contain many superimposed events but often show evidence of only the most recent. Working to overcome the limitations of data and poor preservation, using decades of prior research and new analytical tools, and diverging from a one-size-fits-all mode of interpretation, the contributors to this volume offer fresh insight into the formation and taphonomy of open-air sites. Contributors: Douglas B. Bamforth, Ian Buvit, Brian J. Carter, Robin Cordero, Robert Dello-Russo, George C. Frison, Kelly E. Graf, Bruce B. Huckell, Michael A. Jochim, Joshua D. Kapp, Robert L. Kelly, Aleksander V. Konstantinov, Banks Leonard, Madeline E. Mackie, Christopher W. Merriman, Matthew J. O’Brien, Spencer Pelton, Neil N. Puckett, Beth Shapiro, Todd A. Surovell, Karisa Terry, Steve Teteak, Robert Yohe