Lithic resource management during the Belgian Early Upper Paleolithic: Effects of variable raw material context on lithic economy

The relationships among lithic needs, the raw material context of a site, and lithic economy are examined during the Belgian Early Upper Paleolithic in order to explain technological and typological variability in lithic assemblages across space. These relationships have implications for the degree of mobility of prehistoric human groups, possible territoriality, and degree of flexibility in adapting technology to the environment. It is argued that a lithic economy is a set of strategies for procurement, transport, reduction and tool production and that different strategies to meet lithic needs are appropriate in different raw material contexts. In this way, different raw materials present in an assemblage may be subject to different reduction techniques or used to make different kinds of tools, depending on the constraints imposed by the raw material context.;Research on the technological organization of raw material utilization is relatively rare (but see Demars 1982, Geneste 1985). A detailed study of a specific region, within a specific time period, clarifies the nature of the tripartite relationship between lithic needs, raw material context and lithic economy, and permits subsequent comparison of a regional lithic economic system to other regions or time periods.