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:''Not to be confused with
industrial archaeology Industrial archaeology (IA) is the systematic study of material evidence associated with the industrial past. This evidence, collectively referred to as industrial heritage, includes buildings, machinery, artifacts, sites, infrastructure, doc ...
, the archaeology of (modern) industrial sites.'' In the
archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsc ...
of the
Stone Age The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 4,000 BC and 2,000 BC, with ...
, an industry or technocomplex is a typological classification of stone tools. An industry consists of a number of lithic assemblages, typically including a range of different types of tools, that are grouped together on the basis of shared technological or morphological characteristics. For example, the
Acheulean industry Acheulean (; also Acheulian and Mode II), from the French ''acheuléen'' after the type site of Saint-Acheul, is an archaeological industry of stone tool manufacture characterized by the distinctive oval and pear-shaped "hand axes" associated ...
includes hand-axes,
cleavers ''Galium aparine'', with common names including cleavers, clivers, catchweed and sticky willy among others, is an annual, herbaceous plant of the family Rubiaceae. Names ''Galium aparine'' is known by a variety of common names in English. They ...
, scrapers and other tools with different forms, but which were all manufactured by the symmetrical reduction of a bifacial core producing large flakes. Industries are usually named after a
type site In archaeology, a type site is the site used to define a particular archaeological culture or other typological unit, which is often named after it. For example, discoveries at La Tène and Hallstatt led scholars to divide the European Iron A ...
where these characteristics were first observed (e.g. the
Mousterian industry The Mousterian (or Mode III) is an archaeological industry of stone tools, associated primarily with the Neanderthals in Europe, and to the earliest anatomically modern humans in North Africa and West Asia. The Mousterian largely defines the latt ...
is named after the site of Le Moustier). By contrast,
Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...
axeheads from the
Langdale axe industry The Langdale axe industry (or factory) is the name given by archaeologists to a Neolithic centre of specialised stone tool production in the Great Langdale area of the English Lake District. (For accompanying material seSupplement 1of same vo ...
were recognised as a type well before the centre at Great Langdale was identified by finds of
debitage In archaeology, debitage is all the material produced during the process of lithic reduction – the production of stone tools and weapons by knapping stone. This assemblage may include the different kinds of lithic flakes and lithic blades, bu ...
and other remains of the production, and confirmed by
petrography Petrography is a branch of petrology that focuses on detailed descriptions of rocks. Someone who studies petrography is called a petrographer. The mineral content and the textural relationships within the rock are described in detail. The class ...
(geological analysis). The stone was quarried and rough axe heads were produced there, to be more finely worked and polished elsewhere. As a taxonomic classification of artefacts, industries rank higher than
archaeological culture An archaeological culture is a recurring assemblage of types of artifacts, buildings and monuments from a specific period and region that may constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society. The connection between thes ...
s. Cultures are usually defined from a range of different artefact types and are thought to be related to a distinct cultural tradition. By contrast, industries are defined by basic elements of lithic production which may have been used by many unrelated human groups over tens or even hundred thousands of years, and over very wide geographical ranges. Sites producing tools from the Acheulean industry stretch from France to China, as well as Africa. Consequently, shifts between lithic industries are thought to reflect major milestones in human evolution, such as changes in cognitive ability or even the replacement of one human species by another. However, findings from ancient DNA studies describe several changes and periods of stasis in European populations that are not strongly reflected in the current cultural taxonomic frameworks. Therefore, artefacts from a single industry may come from a number of different cultures.


References


See also

* Archaeological horizon * Lithic technology Methods in archaeology {{archaeology-stub