Bedrock features: An overview

A great deal of progress has been made by archaeologists in recognizing the importance of groundstone and bedrock features as well as in detailed descriptions of these features. We are now well positioned to undertake some of the more probing issues of what these features were used for and why they become common in some times and places but not others. In these endeavors, analysts should avail themselves of critical ethnographic observations and employ analytical frameworks like Design Theory. Of particular importance will be determining whether specific groundstone types were used primarily for processing high-effort feasting foods or whether they were used for processing daily subsistence foods.