The DOI matches its Crossref record; 2 of the 2 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Explanation of Artifact Variability
Abstract
We furnish a theoretical framework for explaining that portion of formal variability in artifacts attributable to the behavior of the artisan. Major causal factors are the artisan's knowledge and experience, extent of feedback on performance in activities along the artifact's behavioral chain, situational factors in behavioral chain activities, technological constraints, and social processes of conflict and negotiation. In identifying the causal factors at work in a specific case, the investigator must focus analytically on activities-that is, on people-people, people-artifact, and artifact-artifact interactions-and on the performance characteristics relevant to each. Application of this behavioral framework allows abandonment of many cherished but unhelpful concepts, including style and function. Ceramic artifacts, the low-fired, clay cooking pot in particular, are employed for illustrative purposes.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective
(1986) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511819582 · Cited by 6,267
A Formal Approach to the Design and Assembly of Mobile Toolkits
Kuhn, S. L. (1994) · American Antiquity · doi:10.2307/282456 · Cited by 435
Cited by
THE CHALLENGE OF ‘TECHNOLOGICAL CHOICES’FOR MATERIALS SCIENCE APPROACHES IN ARCHAEOLOGY*
SILLAR, B., & TITE, M. S. (2000) · Archaeometry · doi:10.1111/j.1475-4754.2000.tb00863.x · Cited by 266
Setting Theoretical Egos Aside: Issues and Theory in North American Archaeology
Hegmon, M. (2003) · American Antiquity · doi:10.2307/3557078 · Cited by 133
On Evolutionary Ecology, Selectionist Archaeology, and Behavioral Archaeology
Broughton, J. M., & O'Connell, J. F. (1999) · American Antiquity · doi:10.2307/2694351 · Cited by 81
Metadata
- Authors
- Schiffer, M. B., & Skibo, J. M.
- Venue
- American Antiquity
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 1997-01
- Volume
- 62
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 27-50
- ISSN
- 0002-7316 (ISSN-L)
- 2325-5064
- OpenAlex
- W2062239099
- Cited by
- 339
- References
- 2
- FWCI
- 108.51
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Explanation of Artifact Variability. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.2307/282378
- The paper
- Schiffer, M. B., & Skibo, J. M. (1997). The Explanation of Artifact Variability. American Antiquity. https://doi.org/10.2307/282378
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
