Lawrence H. Keeley | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 24, 1948 Cupertino, California, US |
| Died | October 11, 2017(2017-10-11) (aged 69)[1] |
| Occupation | archaeologist |
| Awards | Society for American Archaeology's Award forExcellence in Lithic Studies[2] |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | San Jose State University(B.A., 1970) University of Oregon(M.A., 1972) Oxford University(Ph.D., 1977) |
| Thesis | An experimental study of Microwear traces on selected British Palaeolithic implements (1977) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Archaeology |
| Sub-discipline | Prehistoric archaeology Experimental archaeology Lithics |
| Institutions | University of Illinois Chicago |
Lawrence H. Keeley (August 24, 1948 – October 11, 2017) was an Americanarchaeologist best known for pioneering the field ofmicrowear analysis oflithics.[3][4] He is also known for his 1996 book,War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Keeley worked as a professor of archaeology at theUniversity of Illinois Chicago.[1][5]
Keeley was born and raised inCupertino, California, where he attendedCupertino High School. After high school, he went on to earn hisB.A. inAnthropology fromSan José State University in 1970. Keeley initially pursued graduate education at theUniversity of Oregon, but his professors encouraged him to enroll in a British university. After transferring, Keeley earned hisPh.D. in Archaeology at theUniversity of Oxford in 1977.[5]
Keeley had a short postdoctoral appointment atMusée royal de l'Afrique centrale in 1977. He began his academic career at theUniversity of Illinois Chicago the following year. Keeley was promoted toassistant professor in 1984, and reachedfull professor in 1991. He retained this position until his 2014 retirement.[5][1]
With the use of high magnification... one can almost always isolate the used portion of the tool and reconstruct its movement during use, as well as, in the majority of cases, determine exactly which material was being worked.
— Lawrence H. Keeley,Experimental Determination of Stone Tool Uses: A Microwear Analysis (1980), p.78.
Keeley's most noted contribution to the fields ofPaleolithic archaeology andexperimental archaeology was his development and defense of microwear analysis in the study of stone tools and hominid behavioral reconstruction.[6] Microwear analysis is one of two primary methods (the other beinguse-wear analysis) for identifying the functions ofartifact tools. Both methods rely on examination of the smoothed down sections of blades, called "polishes," formed on the working edges of lithics. Microwear differs from use-wear because of the scale at which the analysis happens; microwear analysis is the use ofmicroscopy to evaluate and understand these polishes.[7] Keeley is considered to be a pioneer of microwear analysis, and microwear analysis has become a vital method of archaeological research.[8][3]
The primary way that Keeley demonstrated the efficacy of microwear analysis was through the Keeley–Newcomerblind test.[5] The methodology of this test was similar to other early microwear experiments, and it consisted of attempting to correctly determine tool function from analysis of lithics made and used by a researcher. The Keeley-Newcomer test differed from prior tests though because the tools were made and used by a researcher, Mark Newcomer, independent of the archaeologist, Lawrence Keeley. Keeley took up this test as a challenge from Mark Newcomer, a lecturer atLondon University'sInstitute of Archaeology and a skeptic of microwear analysis, to demonstrate the reliability of the method.[9] Running a blind test granted their results objectivity and turned the experiment into an argument for the general use of microwear analysis in archaeological research. As a result of these original results and similar tests, microwear has enjoyed consistent use and development across the field of Paleolithic archaeology since 1977.[3][10]
Despite Keeley's successful identification of the majority of the lithics provided by Newcomer and subsequent similar blind tests by other archaeologists, Newcomer wrote critically of microwear analysis in 1986. He wrote of a series of blind tests run by London University, "there has been no convincing demonstration that anyone can consistently identify worked materials by polish type alone."[11] However, other archaeologists have defended Keeley's contribution and even criticized Newcomer's skepticism.[12][13]
Keeley worked withNicholas Toth in 1981 to analyzeoldowan tools fromKoobi Fora, Kenya. Using microwear and use-wear analysis, the pair narrowed their research to 54lithic flakes from among the oldowan, which they used to understand the at least 1.4 million year-old civilization. Nine of these 54 exhibited signs of wear in their analysis, which involved high power microscopy at 50-400x magnification.[14] Keeley discovered that these nine flakes, which would have been overlooked by most traditional studies, were actually used as stone tools themselves and were not simplydebitage from the creation oflithic cores.[15] Their conclusion was that flakes themselves were the desired tool inlithic reduction, which was supported by their identification of flakes used for butchery, woodworking, and standard cutting of plant matter.[16] At the time of publishing, this use theory ran counter to a competing theory that lithic cores were the primary intended tools.[17] Since publishing, however, their theories have become widely known and have found support in several other studies. Their joint study was published inNature and has been widely cited as an example of hominid behavioral reconstruction.[5]
Toth later hypothesized that these flake tools were likely to have initially been created accidentally from the creation of cores but later became the desired result instead of cores. He also stated that the development of flake tools was crucial in the evolution of human intelligence, a theory that has found support even outside of archaeology.[7][18][19]
Keeley's best known work isWar Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, published by theOxford University Press in 1996. This book was an empirical rebuttal of the popular romantic anthropological idea of the "noble savage."[4] Keeley's core thesis is that western academics had "pacified" history, especially relating to the role ofviolence in the history of human development, and that overall death rates in modern societies were remarkably lower than among small-scale Paleolithic groups.War Before Civilization reinvigorated classic arguments regardinghuman nature, largely inspired byThomas Hobbes andJean-Jacques Rousseau's perspectives on the subject. This book also initiated a renewedinterdisciplinary interest inwar in the context ofsociocultural evolution, which lasted through the latter 1990s.[20][21][22]
The findings of this book have been the subject of some criticism, including a short 2014 article reprinted byIndian Country Today.[23]Keith F. Otterbein, an anthropology professor, criticized Keeley's book inAmerican Anthropologist, explaining that Keeley was right to identify two competing theories on human nature, but that he did not capture the full scope of historical developments by disregarding the idea of peaceful prehistoric hominids.Neil L. Whitehead, another notable anthropologist and someone identified by Keeley[citation needed] as a proponent of the myth of the peaceful savage, sympathized with Otterbein but saw other ways to challenge Keeley's "peculiar view" of anthropology.[24][25]
