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Skill Matters

Peter Bleed

Published online: 9 February 2008

# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007

Abstract Skill is a challenging topic for archeologists because it requires balancing

the biases of cultural relativity with the commonsense understanding that some

humans are more able than others. Using the content and results model of

technology, this paper identifies skill as a variable of technological knowledge with

recognizable material results. Late Paleolithic Japanese blade and microblade

assemblages suggest that skill differentials exist on the cognitive, operational, and

motor levels. These examples, together with ethnoarcheological consideration of

modern potters suggest material reflections of technical skill. These include

regularity in performance and product, skilled tools, and obvious signs of practice.

Keywords Skill . Blade production . Japan . Paleolithic

Introduction

All people make things and use tools, but everyone does not perform technical

activities with the same result or equal success. Some people execute tasks betterthan others and use tools more deftly than their neighbors. Likewise, it is hard to

look at a group of artifacts and not see variability that suggests some pieces were

made or used with greater competence than others. All of this is intuitively obvious

and readily observable. It is information that people manage in everyday affairs.

Shoppers easily sort through merchandize for the bestitems. Builders easily avoid

(or hide) poorly formed bricks, boards, and fixtures. And teachers routinely evaluate

student work.

Judgments like these are such a normal part of life that it is worth asking why a

dimension of human diversity as basic as skill has not attracted the interest of

J Archaeol Method Theory (2008) 15:154166

DOI 10.1007/s10816-007-9046-0


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archeologists. It could be that skill escaped archeological attention because we think

skill differences are unimportant. It might also be that archeologists lack the

wherewithal to deal with skill. Skill might, in other words, be either uninteresting or

beyond the abilities of archeologists or the acuity of their sources. Neither of these

arguments should be allowed to stand.If the task of modern archeology is to explain the material diversity of

humankind, then archeologists cannot ignore skill differences. And, if we approach

our work with the belief that the archeological record records and reflects the

entirety of the human condition, we must simply develop means of observing and

addressing skill differences in past humans. Understanding humankinds material

diversity demands that archeologists find ways of defining technical skill, observing

skill diversity, and understanding how skill differences operate.

As legitimate as the goal of recognizing and describing technical skill might be,

the effectiveness with which tasks are executed deserves to be studied byarcheologists not simply because it is there or merely because we can expect to

see in the material record of the human past. The position taken in this paper is that

the ability to carry out steps and processes with proficiency lies at the base of

technological complexity and achievement and much of what passes for intellectual

growth (see Harvey1997; Spier1975). Simply put, skill matters.

This assertion remains little more than a hunch, but to give initial support to

the proposition that developing technical skill has broad intellectual impact, I

would point to the recent history of Americanist lithic analysis. By the early

1970s, archeologists had developed complicated systems for measuring stoneartifacts. Using state of the art data processing tools and real statistical expertise,

lithic analysts of that not so distant past created statistical descriptions of stone

tools that met refined typological constructs. Some terms survive from that work,

but modern lithic specialists use little of that research. Sophisticated processual,

functional, and technological analyses have replaced typological descriptions and

statistical explorations, and it seems safe to say that archeologists know more

about stone tools than they did only a few years ago. Of course, many

developments contributed to this progression, but I would cite as the central

contributing factor the development of flintknapping skill by a number of people

interested in the study of stone artifacts. The point of this example is to show

that the development of technical skill within our community provided us with a

productive context for learning and thinking about stone tools. Development of

technical skill was the central development that led the way to insight and

understanding.

This paper seeks to open the archeological consideration of technical skill by

taking three small steps. First, to position skill within technology, I will try to show

that it is a type of technological knowledge. Second, in order to make skill accessible

to archeological observation, I will propose some material signatures that can signal

the existence of skill. Finally, to show how such reflections can be comparatively

used to investigate differences in skill, I will briefly discuss an event tree analysis of

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What is Skill?

In everyday terms, skill refers to the proficiency with which activities are executed.

The term brings to mind competence, ability, craft, and facility. Skillfully produced

items are, thus, well made, regular and complex. A skilled person works withfacility, assuredness, and a high success rate. Moving beyond such common sense

characterizations, however, is hard for archeologists because the topic has not been

the subject of specific archeological investigation. The strong biases of cultural

relativism that have been the central element of Boasian anthropology may have

discouraged Americanist archeologists from making judgmental assessments that

involve finding some humans more skilled than others. We have been able to

measure artifacts and describe their variability in many dimensions, but assigning

any of that diversity to the fact that some folks were betterthan others appears not

to have been an obvious or comfortable conclusion (Eerkens and Bettinger 2001;Ingold2001).

Cultural relativity seems not to have been a serious limitation to other social

scientists and engineers who have done research on skilled behavior. There appears

to be no easily accessible synthesis of this topic, but archeologists might want to

delve into this literature and into the methods and ideas that have been developed by

this work, just as we have used ideas and methods developed by ecologists,

comparative anatomists, and geographers. The barest survey of the issues dealt with

by psychologists and industrial engineers suggests that the focus of their research has

tended to be on intellectual or performance skills rather than on the materialreflections of skill. This may mean that it is especially difficult, arcane, or unrelated

to modern world problems. None of that would reduce the archeological significance

of technical skill. It simply means that we must address the topic without the

guidance or limitations of an established agenda.

As a part of how humans deal with the physical world, technical skill must be a

variable of technology. A few recent studies (Bleed 1996; Fitzhugh 2001; Schiffer

2001; Schiffer and Skibo 1997; Skibo and Schiffer 2001) have tried to make the

operation and determinants of technology an explicit point of archeological

discussion. Given that archeologists deal extensively with the products of

technology, attempts to present an archeological understanding of technology have

proved difficult. We still have few refined ideas about the customs of technology,

how they are linked to one another, and what determines their operation. In an

attempt to make technology a manageable topic of archeological research, I have

proposed a model that described the behavioral content of technology in terms of

knowledge, applications, and standards (Bleed1996). In those terms, skill is a kind

of knowledge. It refers to the developed ability to manipulate the vocabulary of

techniques, designs, and customary resources that are available in a particular

technology. It is a quality that can be developed, something that some people

know. Other kinds of technological knowledge involve managing repertoires of

designs, as well as information about the location and nature of resources and

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developed rather than simply learned like a series of facts, a repertoire of techniques,

or a list of formulae. Technological lore, traditional designs, patterns of tool use, as

well as information of resources can all be acquired through fairly straightforward

processes of enculturation. Skill, by contrast, must be acquired in a process that may

include learning discrete information, but also involves practical mastery. Skilledactivity involves knowing how to do something and doing it with routine, dispatch,

and efficiency. As such, skill draws on cognitive and motor activities. It may be

taught or coached, but it requires development through practice. The behavioral

development of skill means that it may have distinctive archeological visibility. The

distinctive way in which skill is acquired increases its archeological visibility.

Complex activities, with many steps and distinctive residues, are the most likely

context in which skill can be observed, but in the abstract, skill can certainly be

developed in even simple, everyday activities.

In the time-honored method, archeologists describe particular technologies bycataloging the designs people knew how to use and the resources they knew how

draw on. With that information, it has been relatively easy to address the situations

within which all of that knowledge was applied. In modern paradigms, the common

expectation is that those applications will be appropriate in some evolutionary,

cognitive, or structural sense. Approaching skill as a special kind of technical

knowledge makes it variable comparable to the rest of technology. It lets us

investigate how and why skill varies and raises other questions. Under what

condition does skill appear? Is it developed and applied situationally? Is it rational in

its occurrence? When does it make sense? If skill is beneficial in some situations,does it carry costs in others? Indeed, are their situations when ineptitude is desirable?

And finally, how is skill buffered by culture?

Archaeological Measures of Skill

The Americanist archeological paradigm, with its grounding in eco-functionalism,

assumes that the entire human condition is accessible to study through the

archeological record. The only problem we face is developing means of recognizing

material signatures of whatever it is we wish to address. Skill should rather easily

brought into archeological focus since it involves closely linked behavioral and

materials aspects. These are no more subtle than other topics archeologists study, and

the links between the behavior and materials of skilled performance are no more

inferential than other topics of archeological investigation. It is easy to identify direct

and indirect reflections of skilled performance.

Practice and Exercise

As explained, skill is unlike other kinds of technological knowledge in that it

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by separate practice aimed at learninghow to make and use tools rather than at using

those tools. Repetition of the first type might be hard to appreciate archeologically, but

we should be able to recognize practice for the sake of skill building. Processes that

generated numerous similar objects, especially if they are imperfect or unrefined, that

are allowed to enter the archeological record in an unused state can be viewedatleast in partas evidence of skill building. Those kinds of activities will generate

residues that are distinct from, say, industrial production, which has the goal of simple

bulk processing. Refitting studies from sites in Europe (Bodu1996; Fischer1989) and

Japan (Hokkaido Maizon Bunkazai Sentaa 2007) have revealed many instances of

repetitive activities that appear to have resulted only in pieces that were abandoned. As

satisfying and funas flintknapping may be, skill building in this way carries material

and opportunity costs. Processes than required and warranted practice might

reasonably be the focus of special investigation because they would be evidence of

extra cost. They show activities that were worth extra investment.

Routines and Regularity

In addition to requiring acquisition thru practice, motor skills have other qualities

that heighten their archeological visibility. Regularity is probably the most obvious

hallmark of well-crafted objects. On an immediate level, technological regularity

includes smooth surfaces, even spacing of repeated elements like tools marks, and

symmetrical shape. Simply linking any of these qualities to skill is certainly

inappropriate since they are hard to measure and likely to be deeply culturallybuffered. At the same time, there are technological regularities that can be

objectively treated as reflections of skilled performance.

First, behavioral routines are the basis of motor skills. Practiced skills involve the

body in highly routinized patterns. Such routines can be habitual and can easily be

culturally patterned and socially maintained, but they are a necessary context within

which motor skill is acquired and sustained. Knowing the exact behaviors,

movements, and motor patterns of these routines may be difficult or impossible,

but the existence of technical routines can be observed at a higher level. Objects that

are clearly manufactured in highly patterned, routine sequences can be taken to be

reflections of skilled performance that was patterned at other levels. It may have

required careful coaching, but certainly involved repetitive practice.

Furthermore, in addition to behavioral routines, there are material regularities

associated with skilled performance. Work by industrial psychologists and others has

shown that skilled motor and cognitive routines are enhanced with so-called smart

or cognitive tools that guide activities, steady the hand, or present needed

information. They include devices like grips, handles, gauges, templates, and jigs

that free workers from some of the challenges of a task. Making these sorts of tools

and learning how to use them carries costs, but, once they are mastered, they allow

an artisan to work with more regularity and efficiency and greater proficiency.

Finding smart toolscan be taken as direct reflection of technical skill, but we must

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Socio-technic Wherewithal

Technical skill involves more than developed motor abilities and kits that include smart

tools. At the least it also requires access to raw materials that can support and absorb

refined abilities. A social web that can teach, appreciate, and encourage skilled activitiesis also probably vital (Bamforth 1991; Costin1998; Maynardet al.1999; Childs1998).

Skilled people, in other words, need to have developed social networks that are

specifically keyed to technological activities. Pulling these social linkages into focus

may be challenging since they will have much in common to other social patterns.

Still, exchange networks that move selected raw materials over long distance are more

than social institutions. Likewise, elaborately produced and presented goods may well

signal significant great social and symbolic institutions, but they rest on technological

skill. Social institutions that elaborate or build on material systems as opposed to

simple consumables, performances or other non-technical creations can be viewed

atleast in partsas activities that are linked to technological skills.

Production Efficiency and Failure Adversity

The essence of technological skilled performance is effective production of

successful goods. It is notoriously hard to calculate effectiveness and efficiency

since it is hard to identify either currencies or standard. Looked at long after the fact,

it is hard to positively determine effectiveness or measure efficiency. Perhaps the

only easy measures of technological effectiveness are negative ones, reflections oftechnological activity in process failure. Objects that have to be discarded before

they reached a usable state are the bane of a technologist. Production risks can be

accommodated in a number of ways. Designs can be adjusted, materials specially

handled, and expectation lowered (Bleed1986; Bamforth1986; Bamforth and Bleed

1997). Processes that achieve low failure rates on the basic of technical virtuosity

have to be considered evidence of technological skill. This is especially true if the

process is complex or demanding. Free hand potting or virtuosic pressure flaking

with low failure rates have got to be examples of highly skilled performance.

These factorsand perhaps otherscan be used to recognize the existence of

skilled production. Systematic archeological study of skill aimed at identifying

where and when skilled production occurs will require a means of assessing skill

disparities in different archeological assemblages.

Assessing Skill in Archeological Assemblages

To illustrate how skill differences might be monitored in the archeological record,

this section discusses an event tree analysis of two terminal Pleistocene microblade

assemblages from Kakuniyama and Araya, central Honshu, Japan (Fig. 1). These

analyses are fully presented and discussed elsewhere (Bleed 1996,2002). The goal

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that were associated with specific types of tools, and the design strategies and

technological organization toolmakers brought to their tasks, event tree models also

expose the real behavior of tool makers.

Microblade technology was widely distributed across northeast Asia, and manyother parts of the world, during the later Pleistocene and early Holocene. Microblade

technology has attracted considerable attention for two reasons. First, the technology

appears relevant to the initial occupation of the high arctic and the New World

(Goebel et al. 2003). Beyond that, wherever they were made, microblades were

produced with interestingly complex processes that are well-suited to archeological

analysis (Kuhn and Elston 2002). Microblades are the hallmark technology of

terminal Japanese Paleolithic cultures. Formal variation in the cores and technolog-

ical variations in the ways they were formed and blades were detached have been

studied by Japanese researchers to expose regional diversity in terminal Paleolithic

cultures of Japan (Nakazawa et al. 2005). Organic materials virtually never survive

in Japanese archeological sites, so the ways in which microblades were used is

uncertain. Based on patterns and objects observed in Siberia, however, it is assumed

that they were components of composite projectile points. The fact that they are

common in terminal Paleolithic sites, when there were no other common stone

projectiles, suggests that they were critical parts of hunting weapons.

Araya

Araya was among the very first microblade assemblages recovered in Honshu and

Fig. 1 A sketch map showing

the locations of Kakuniyama

and Araya.

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assemblage, giving the process a production failure rate just over 10%. With the

pending pieces abandoned at the site, the overall failure rate for Araya microblade

production is 27%.

Since only one of the core-related pieces from Araya is represented by more than

one flake, it appears to indicate that much of the work on the individual pieces wasdone elsewhere. All stages of core manufacture were undertaken at the site, but there

are many more 1st, 2nd, and platform spalls than finished cores. This indicates that

more cores were started at Araya than were left there. At least, this indicates that

cores were used in the context of mobility.

Kakuniyama

In typological terms, the microblade assemblage from Kakuniyama is identical to theone from Araya. Behind those similarities, there are minor but readily apparent

differences in how the people of the two communities made microblades.

Kakuniyama is located in northern Yamagata Prefecture, some 200 km east from

Araya (Bleed 1996; Uno and Ueno 1983). Like Araya, it is located above a river

confluence that certainly had good fishing potential in pre-modern times. A major

difference between Kakuniyama and Araya, however, is in their proximity to raw

materials. Cobbles of high quality hard shale available immediately below the site

were used for essentially all of the tools worked at the site. The assemblage includes

both many hammerstones as well as decortication flakes, angular shatter, and testedcobbles.

The basic processes of shaping cores and making microblades at Kakuniyama

were like those described for Araya, although, as summarized in Fig. 3, there were

three kinds of differences apparent in the technologies of the two sites. First, the

process of beveling, re-beveling, and flattening a biface was rather less routine than

the lock-step sequence used to reduce biface to core blanks at Araya. Second, after

the initial shaping steps, Kakuniyama microblade makers used a variety of core

rejunivation techniques to extend the use-lives of their cores. This activity is simply

not seen at Araya. Failures in this process accounted for most of the failures

observed in the Kakuniyama assemblage. Finally, difference in failure rates is

another area of differences between these two sites. The production failure rate (the

portion of pieces that failed as they were being worked) at Kakuniyama, 17%, was

somewhat higher than that observed at Araya. Adding the pending pieces left at the

site, the gross failure rate rises to 34%, again somewhat higher than the rate

reconstructed for Araya. As at Araya, residues of the early steps of biface beveling

and shaping far out number finished cores.

Discussion - Were the Araya Flintknappers More Skilled Than

those at Kakuniyama?

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dealing with those differences, let me first ask if, using the measures I laid out

earlier, microblade manufacturers were genuinely skilled. Certainly, the clear

patterns exposed by the event tree models indicate that making microblades

followed a highly patterned sequence of steps. Exercises aimed at learning both

the routines and the motor patterns of microblade production would be expected in a

situation like this. And, indeed, there are several assemblages known from northern

Japan wherein entire microblade sequences have been undertaken, sometime several

times, without one piece having been removed for use. It is easy to see discoveries

like this as the residues of skill building exercises.

One of the great disappointments of Japanese stone age research is that the acid

volcanic soils of Japanese sites essentially never preserve biodegradables. Wood,

fiber, or bone smart tools that might have guided microblade detachment and

contributed to the skills of Paleolithic stoneworkers are unknown. In the case of

Fig. 3 An event tree model of microblade production at Kakuniyama.

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Managing necessary raw material, in-process cores, groups of batch-produced blades

awaiting use, and the necessary pressure tools and hammers, could not have been

carried without bags or containers. Such container would also organize the materials

and serve as contexts for carrying out the steps of microblade production. They

could easily provide a material guide for the process.The postures and motor habits used to detached microblades are not known. Some

researchers assume that blades were detached with a pressure technique. Others

believe that they were made with indirect percussion. In either case, a vice or grip to

hold the cores would have guided the process, increased the artificers strength and

reach, and enhanced precision. A consistent step in the core shaping process

suggests that these skill enhancing small tools were, indeed, a regular part of

process. At both Araya and Kakuniyama, after the biface was split, the lateral

margins of the blank were trimmed. This trimming is very consistent. It is present on

every core on both assemblages. And in all cases, it made the cores narrower. Thetrimming reflects a cost, since it removed mass that could have yielded microblades.

Positively, the trimming may have adjusted the width of the cores and made the sides

of the cores more regular. It also set up a series of more or less regular ridges. These

positive results may have helped the cores fit into grips or vices. In sum, then, the

trimming seems to indicate that cores were carefully adjusted to fit with other tools

that would have guided effort, determined postures and routines, and generally

provided material contexts for the work of microblade production.

As similar as they are, these two ETA reveal slight differences in the production

of microblades at these two sites. At Araya, 10% of potential cores failed inproduction. The comparable number at Kakuniyama was 17%, and fully one-third of

the potential cores did not yield microblades. These differences are not easily

amenable to statistical analysis since the assemblages are small and there is no easy

basis for defining expected failure rates. All that can be said securely is that

Kakuniyama knappers had a higher failure rate that those at Araya.

Beyond that, Kakuniyama knappers practiced a number of techniques to correct

the minor glitches that marked their work. These core rejuvenation techniques were

not practiced as Araya. While it is possible that Araya knappers were nave of these

techniques, it can positively be said that none of their cores required them. Should

we assume that the Araya folk did not know corrective these techniques, orthat they

managed the work of microblade production so skillfully that they did not need

them? Given that Araya was far removed from sources of high quality stone and was

a place where having usable hunting weapons was important, this would be a

situation were developing means of assuring a supply of microblades was critically

necessary. Technical virtuosityeither as a general characteristic of members of the

group or as a capacity of select individuals whose products were distributed to others

would be a reasonable part of that adjustment.

Conclusions

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that people can acquire and call up when needed. This example appears to show that

becoming adept at something is something people can do when and where it is

appropriate. The examples of Araya and Kakuniyama further indicate that skill can

be called up rationally and developed when it can contribute to success and survival.

It appears to occur in ways that can be seen as adaptive and practical.There may be other benefits to skill. It could, for example, be a visible reflection

of health, fitness, and social connection. It could offer tactile satisfaction that

reinforces other technological activities and processes. Practicing a craft, observing

other skilled artisans, paying close attention to the outcomes of work, and doing all

of the other activities that lie behind the acquisition of skill may also offer an

important context for technological advance. Finally, making or acquiring equipment

that supports skill offers another context for thinking about technology and work.

Getting good at technological activities enhances technology itself. It helps people to

become more discerning, more thoughtful, and aware of the capabilities oftechnology. In that case, the human adjustment to technology may have itself

offered a strong positive selection for skill.

Acknowledgements The editors of this volume and three anonymous reviewers proposed significant

improvements for this paper.

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