While individual retouchers were more intensively used in some techno-complexes, especially Quina, there’s no obvious explanation for why some sites have huge numbers but others hardly any. Local quality or availability of stone doesn’t seem related, and nor does the number of retouched lithics, age of the site, its function or the animals hunted. The answer may be that these retouchers were tied to contexts and dynamics that are archaeologically elusive, such as the site’s place within a wider occupation cycle, or the social make-up of group members.
