Dynamic multiscalar approach for structuring and scaling human activities involving lithics

This paper aims to contribute to the discussion on borders and boundaries from the perspective of lithics. European archaeological and historical research has seen numerous endeavours to create an overarching definition of borders of spatial, social, political, linguistic and religious kinds. This is particularly important in the context of the modern, strongly divided European nation states, and this situation has a strong impact on the archaeological concept of culture. Lithic materials are usually not associated with the concepts of culture and group, which was and often still is the coordinate system for prehistoric communities since the Neolithic. How can we look at prehistoric societies as social units and integrate lithic studies into the overarching archaeological narrative? As a first step, we should put these artificial borders aside and take into account as many variables that can interfere with human behaviour as possible. This paper tries to create a framework (referring to some case studies) at micro-, meso-, and macro-scales for structuring spatial, temporal, social, contextual and habitual variables based solely on lithic materials to demonstrate the importance of stone assemblages and litho-scapes in archaeological narratives. By looking at activities involving lithics, we become aware that borders are very diverse and variable, thus cannot be treated as part of a static system. On the contrary, different boundaries (instead of borders) need to be treated as continuously changing units that function in different ways at different scales. Thus, we should try to use a dynamic multiscalar approach in lithic research.