Technology, Flaked Stone Technology, and Risk Douglas B. Bamforth University of Colorado Peter Bleed University of Nebraska ABSTRACT Recent theoretical studies of flaked stone technology have identified many factors that affect the ways in which human beings make and use tools. However, these studies lack a unified body of theory that might help to integrate their diverse perspectives. This paper expands recent anthropological discus- sions of risk as the basis for such a theory. We begin by defining risk, emphasizing two distinct compo- nents of this concept-the probability that some problem will occur and the cost of such an occurrence- and argue that technology can be seen as a means of reducing such probabilities in the face of unaccept- ably high costs. We support this argument using cross-cultural data on hunter-gatherer technology and archaeological and historic data on the construction of defensive works on the northern Great Plains. Next, we consider specific problems in applying this perspective archaeologically, concluding that exist- ing limits on our ability to estimate failure probabilities and costs prevent us from testing the ideas outlined here in archaeological contexts. However, accepting this perspective as provisionally validated by ethnographic data allows us to see how it can illuminate archaeological cases, and we exemplify this by comparing the production of Araya microblade projectile points in the Japanese Paleolithic and Folsom fluted projectile points on the North American Great Plains. This is a paper outlining a way to think about flaked pattern of change, which means, or ought to mean, that stone tools, contained in a volume addressing the role of one pattern of behavior or artifact type is selected over Darwinian theory in archaeological explanation. We another on the basis of its effects on the reproductive think that this volume is an appropriate place for this pa- fitness of individual human beings, per to be, but we also think that the relation between Dar- It is absolutely essential to distinguish these two winian theory and stone tools requires some explication. arguments, because addressing them archaeologically The version of Darwinian theory which is currently poses very different problems. These problems are most popular in archaeology is often referred to as severe in the case of attributing change to the causal force "selectionist", following O'Brien and Holland (1990) and of reproductive fitness, which, no matter how we dance others. Selectionist archaeologists make two important around it, is what Darwinian theory is about. Direct claims, one regarding the mechanisms by which cultural observation, archaeologically or otherwise, of the pro- change occurs and the other regarding the causal forces cesses on which Darwinian evolution depends-the effect driving such change. First, selectionists argue that changes of differences in reproductive fitness among individuals in human ways of life occur as the result of the differen- within a breeding population-is exceedingly difficult, and tial persistence of one variant of a pattern of behavior or we would argue that archaeologists who have attempted kind of artifact over another, with successful variants or to look directly at reproductive fitness have achieved artifact types "selected" by external, usually environmen- ambiguous results at best. For example, Leonard and tal, conditions; they often contrast such a pattern with Reed (1993; also see Larson et al. 1996) take regional transformational views of change. Second, selectionist population growth as a measure of fitness, despite the scholars argue further that Darwinian forces drive this fact that Darwinian theory explicitly refers to the differ- 109