In the 1870s the amateur archaeologist Dr Charles Abbott discovered roughly-flaked bifacial artefacts that he called “paleoliths” near Trenton, New Jersey, which he claimed were artefact types similar to Lower Palaeolithic handaxes being found in western Europe at that time. This interpretation gave rise to what has been called the Great Palaeolithic War, a debate in the United States about the existence of an “American Palaeolithic” that only ended in 1890 when the archaeologist William H. Holmes from the Smithsonian Institution excavated the Piney Branch lithics site in Washington D.C.. On the basis of the bifacial reduction sequence that he reconstructed from the lithics excavated at Piney Branch, Holmes argued that any resemblance of paleoliths to Lower Palaeolithic handaxes was accidental. Holmes believed that paleoliths were discarded elements from the sequential reduction of stone nodules (which he called the “Progressive Series”) by recent American Indian knappers during the manufacture of projectile points. In other words, the Trenton paleoliths, and by implication similar roughly-flaked bifaces, were nothing more than quarry refuse (or “waste”). Since Holmes’ day the quarry-refuse model for the interpretation of large roughly-flaked bifacial implements as “waste” and not artefact types used in other activities, particularly for lithics sties in the arid western regions of the US, has been applied at times without adequate bridging arguments. A review of Holmes’ interpretation of the Piney Branch evidence suggests that his quarry-refuse model, even when applied to Piney Branch, required numerous untested assumptions, and that the model may inadvertently obscure a range of other prehistoric activities not strictly related to quarrying and knapping. As a consequence, the application of the quarry-refuse model today to lithics sites found in North America without careful examination may also fail to identify the complete range of cultural activity at those sites, and should be applied to lithics sites only with due caution and the testing of alternative hypotheses.

中文翻译：

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派尼科遗址（美国哥伦比亚特区）和采石场-垃圾模型对岩屑遗址解释的意义

1870 年代，业余考古学家 Charles Abbott 博士在新泽西州特伦顿附近发现了粗糙的双面人工制品，他称之为“旧石器”，他声称这些人工制品类型类似于当时在西欧发现的旧石器时代晚期手斧。这种解释引发了所谓的旧石器时代大战争，这是一场关于“美国旧石器时代”存在的争论，直到 1890 年史密森学会的考古学家威廉·H·福尔摩斯挖掘了派尼科石碑时才结束。站点在华盛顿特区。基于他从 Piney Branch 出土的岩石重建的双面还原序列，Holmes 认为旧石器与旧石器时代早期手斧的任何相似之处都是偶然的。福尔摩斯认为，旧石器是最近的美洲印第安人在制造抛射点的过程中，连续减少石头结节（他称之为“渐进系列”）而丢弃的元素。换句话说，特伦顿的旧石器，以及类似的粗糙的双面石，只不过是采石场的垃圾（或“废物”）。自福尔摩斯时代以来，用于将大型粗片双面工具解释为“废物”而不是用于其他活动的人工制品类型的采石场-垃圾模型，特别是用于美国干旱西部地区的石片区，有时已被应用没有足够的桥接论据。对福尔摩斯对派尼分支证据的解释的回顾表明，他的采石场垃圾模型，即使应用于派尼分支，也需要许多未经检验的假设，并且该模型可能无意中掩盖了与采石和敲击不严格相关的一系列其他史前活动。因此，今天将采石场-垃圾模型应用于北美发现的石器遗址而没有仔细检查也可能无法识别这些遗址的完整文化活动范围，应仅在适当谨慎和谨慎的情况下应用于石器遗址。替代假设的检验。