Towards an understanding of retouch flakes: A use-wear blind test on knapped stone microdebitage.
The retouching and resharpening of lithic tools during their production and maintenance leads to the production of large numbers of small flakes and chips known as microdebitage. Standard analytical approaches to this material involves the mapping of microartefact densities to identify activity area...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2020-01-01
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| Series: | PLoS ONE |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243101 |
| _version_ | 1818591754375397376 |
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| author | Benjamin Chan Juan Francisco Gibaja Virginia García-Díaz Christian Steven Hoggard Niccolò Mazzucco Jake Thomas Rowland Annelou Van Gijn |
| author_facet | Benjamin Chan Juan Francisco Gibaja Virginia García-Díaz Christian Steven Hoggard Niccolò Mazzucco Jake Thomas Rowland Annelou Van Gijn |
| author_sort | Benjamin Chan |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The retouching and resharpening of lithic tools during their production and maintenance leads to the production of large numbers of small flakes and chips known as microdebitage. Standard analytical approaches to this material involves the mapping of microartefact densities to identify activity areas, and the creation of techno-typologies to characterise the form of retouch flakes from different types of tools. Whilst use-wear analysis is a common approach to the analysis of tools, it has been applied much less commonly to microdebitage. This paper contends that the use-wear analysis of microdebitage holds great potential for identifying activity areas on archaeological sites, representing a relatively unexplored analytical resource within microartefact assemblages. In order to test the range of factors that affect the identification of use-wear traces on small retouch flakes, a blind test consisting of 40 retouch flakes was conducted. The results show that wear traces can be identified with comparable levels of accuracy to those reported for historic blind tests of standard lithic tools suggesting that the use-wear analysis of retouch flakes can be a useful analytical tool in understanding site function, and in increasing sample sizes in cases where assemblages contain few tools. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-16T10:17:28Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-b135ae9314ff49c4b02e2ef768ce39a0 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1932-6203 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-16T10:17:28Z |
| publishDate | 2020-01-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS ONE |
| spelling | doaj.art-b135ae9314ff49c4b02e2ef768ce39a02022-12-21T22:35:23ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032020-01-011512e024310110.1371/journal.pone.0243101Towards an understanding of retouch flakes: A use-wear blind test on knapped stone microdebitage.Benjamin ChanJuan Francisco GibajaVirginia García-DíazChristian Steven HoggardNiccolò MazzuccoJake Thomas RowlandAnnelou Van GijnThe retouching and resharpening of lithic tools during their production and maintenance leads to the production of large numbers of small flakes and chips known as microdebitage. Standard analytical approaches to this material involves the mapping of microartefact densities to identify activity areas, and the creation of techno-typologies to characterise the form of retouch flakes from different types of tools. Whilst use-wear analysis is a common approach to the analysis of tools, it has been applied much less commonly to microdebitage. This paper contends that the use-wear analysis of microdebitage holds great potential for identifying activity areas on archaeological sites, representing a relatively unexplored analytical resource within microartefact assemblages. In order to test the range of factors that affect the identification of use-wear traces on small retouch flakes, a blind test consisting of 40 retouch flakes was conducted. The results show that wear traces can be identified with comparable levels of accuracy to those reported for historic blind tests of standard lithic tools suggesting that the use-wear analysis of retouch flakes can be a useful analytical tool in understanding site function, and in increasing sample sizes in cases where assemblages contain few tools.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243101 |
| spellingShingle | Benjamin Chan Juan Francisco Gibaja Virginia García-Díaz Christian Steven Hoggard Niccolò Mazzucco Jake Thomas Rowland Annelou Van Gijn Towards an understanding of retouch flakes: A use-wear blind test on knapped stone microdebitage. PLoS ONE |
| title | Towards an understanding of retouch flakes: A use-wear blind test on knapped stone microdebitage. |
| title_full | Towards an understanding of retouch flakes: A use-wear blind test on knapped stone microdebitage. |
| title_fullStr | Towards an understanding of retouch flakes: A use-wear blind test on knapped stone microdebitage. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Towards an understanding of retouch flakes: A use-wear blind test on knapped stone microdebitage. |
| title_short | Towards an understanding of retouch flakes: A use-wear blind test on knapped stone microdebitage. |
| title_sort | towards an understanding of retouch flakes a use wear blind test on knapped stone microdebitage |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243101 |
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