ABSTRACT
The material remnants of the most highly mobile groups are largely stone, bone, and plant materials. Considerable attention has been paid to understanding variation in stone technology as it is conditioned by mobility. Degrees of sedentism vary within a single system of adaptation. Ethnographic and ethnohistoric records of hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists, and agriculturalists indicate scales of economic, social, and political integration much larger than are employed in most archaeological analyses. Broad regional studies often emphasize political and social organization with less attention to land use, sedentism, and mobility. Mobility and sedentism influence the form of tools, the composition of assemblages, and the distribution of tools and debris. Tool assemblages can be viewed as regional phenomena; a view that is consistent with understanding the organization of technology as facilitating prehistoric land use. The regional assemblage view of technology has been employed in both non-site and site analyses.
