Transitions, Truncations, Correlations, and Disassociations in Early Bronze Age Lithic Systems of the Southern Levant: Issues of Process

The lithic systems of the 4th and 3rd millennia BC of the Southern Levant follow chronological trajectories independent of standard periodization schemes. Although coinciding in some particulars—as in the association of the introduction of Canaanean blade technology with the transition from the Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age—in other particulars, there is little correspondence between the lithic systems and other realms of the period’s material culture or socio–political change. Furthermore, given the geographic variability in lithic systems, chronological transitions, as seen from a lithic perspective, may not even coincide from region to region, particularly the desert systems and those of the settled zones. The Egyptian incursion of the late 4th millennium BC offers another anomaly in terms of lithic trajectories. Explanation of lithic variability, and that of material culture in general, requires reconstruction of full systems of production, distribution, and use, well beyond the mere explication of typological or technological chronologies.