Rethinking Use-Wear Analysis and Experimentation as Applied to the Study of Past Hominin Tool Use

Abstract

In prehistoric human populations, technologies played a fundamental role in the acquisition of different resources and are represented in the main daily living activities, such as with bone, wooden, and stone-tipped spears for hunting, and chipped-stone tools for butchering. Considering that paleoanthropologists and archeologists are focused on the study of different processes involved in the evolution of human behavior, investigating how hominins acted in the past through the study of evidence on archeological artifacts is crucial. Thus, investigating tool use is of major importance for a comprehensive understanding of all processes that characterize human choices of raw materials, techniques, and tool types. Many functional assumptions of tool use have been based on tool design and morphology according to archeologists' interpretations and ethnographic observations. Such assumptions are used as baselines when inferring human behavior and have driven an improvement in the methods and techniques employed in functional studies over the past few decades. Here, while arguing that use-wear analysis is a key discipline to assess past hominin tool use and to interpret the organization and variability of artifact types in the archeological record, we aim to review and discuss the current state-of-the-art methods, protocols, and their limitations. In doing so, our discussion focuses on three main topics: (1) the need for fundamental improvements by adopting established methods and techniques from similar research fields, (2) the need to implement and combine different levels of experimentation, and (3) the crucial need to establish standards and protocols in order to improve data quality, standardization, repeatability, and reproducibility. By adopting this perspective, we believe that studies will increase the reliability and applicability of use-wear methods on tool function. The need for a holistic approach that combines not only use-wear traces but also tool technology, design, curation, durability, and efficiency is also debated and revised. Such a revision is a crucial step if archeologists want to build major inferences on human decisionmaking behavior and biocultural evolution processes.

Polish is quantitatively different on quartzite flakes used on different worked materials

“…By using LSCM, large datasets of worn surfaces on different raw materials could be compiled and shared between researchers. The numerical descriptions of the processed 3D surfaces have the potential to overcome two of the most critical issues of traceology behind researchers' skepticism including subjectivity of interpretation and different terminology employed to describe use-wear [37]. Furthermore, once large experimental datasets are available for comparison, confocal microscopy will become an increasingly viable mean of assessing archaeological assemblages for determining the contact material, if polished areas are available.…”

“…3D topographies are generally acquired to provide quantitative data of the worn areas resulting from contact with different materials. The main underlying goal of doing this is to limit the analysts’ subjectivity and to increase the general accuracy of the method [ 6 , 37 ]. Moreover, it improves repeatability and reproducibility of the analyses [ 38 ].…”

Functional analysis of sandstone ground stone tools: arguments for a qualitative and quantitative synergetic approach

“…However, the researcher's perspective may influence the way traces are described and analysed, hence hampering objective functional interpretations. In particular, a low degree of accuracy in blind tests has been pointed (see 2,3 ) together with the need to implement quantitative approaches to obtain more accurate use wear datasets and guarantee the comparability and reproducibility of functional results 3,4 . In this regard, several works have discussed the application of quantitative methods focused on surface measurements to knapped and ground stone tools (henceforth GSTs), at both macro and microscale [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] .…”

Sandstone Ground Stone Technology: a Multi-level Use Wear and Residue Approach to Investigate the Function of Pounding and Grinding Tools

“…A large variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques, including use wear analysis, mechanical tests, 3D modelling, surface morphometrics, spatial and residue analyses and experimental frameworks have been proposed (Arroyo and de la Torre 2020;Benito-Calvo et al 2015Caricola et al 2018;Caruana et al 2014;Delgado-Raack et al 2009;Hayes et al 2017;Hayes and Rots 2019;Procopiou et al 2002;Zupancich et al 2019). However, scholars have debated the lack of a shared analytical protocol for functional analysis (Cnuts and Rots 2018;Hayes et al 2017;Marreiros et al 2020;Zupancich et al 2019). In particular, arguments have been raised concerning the application of qualitative and quantitative approaches, the protocols for extracting ancient residues and the risk of modern contamination.…”

“…In particular, arguments have been raised concerning the application of qualitative and quantitative approaches, the protocols for extracting ancient residues and the risk of modern contamination. (Cnuts and Rots 2018;Marreiros et al 2020;Mercader et al 2017Mercader et al , 2018. Moreover, patterns of residue spatial distribution have primarily been explored on knapped stone tools (Langejans 2011;Wadley and Lombard 2007;Xhauflair et al 2017), while in the case of GSTs more effort has been put in the analysis of starch granules (Mercader et al 2018;Zupancich et al 2019).…”