Use-Wear Analysis (Other Keyword)
1-25 (45 Records)
Much of the early theoretical framework for our understanding of the colonization and occupation of interior Alaska has been established on technological variability in lithic assemblages of the region. This initial research has been limited in scope, focusing on the presence or absence of microblades. Recent research has sought to push beyond the significance of debatably diagnostic tool forms, microblades, in defining cultural complexes and has attempted to more fully address models of...
Beyond Projectiles: Experimental Study of Microblades as Cutting Tools (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The miniaturization of lithic artifacts indicates a significant shift in lithic technology and functions since the Upper Paleolithic, revealing a probable shift in subsistence strategy. Microblades are specific kinds of small stone tools that occur in sites dating back to the Upper Paleolithic through Neolithic in many parts of the world. Although it is widely...
Determination of Use-Wear Evidence on Quartzite Tools: Experimental and Archaeological Studies (2017)
Use-wear analysis has become an essential method for functional study of archaeological lithic artifacts. Quartzite is one of the main raw materials for lithic tools during Paleolithic period in many sites in the world. However, use-wear studies on quartzite tools are poorly developed due to its poor quality and rough surface. In this paper, the objective is to provide some reference data of determination of use-wear evidence, including both of the experimental and archaeological studies. In...
Diversity and Lithic Microwear: Quantification, Classification, and Standardization (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Defining and Measuring Diversity in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past decade, lithic microwear analysis has witnessed a shift in how data is collected, moving away from optical microscopy towards a more quantifiable practice. The adoption of surface metrology microscopes, including confocal and focus variation, allows for the measurement of surface roughness or texture, thus distinguishing...
Dry-Grinding or Wet-Grinding? Use-Wear Reveals the Grinding Technique Used for Cereal Processing in Early Neolithic Central China (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Different food processing techniques often shed light on the dietary habits and subsistence strategies adopted by prehistoric populations. Studies have shown that grinding cereals into flour took place since the Paleolithic age. Nevertheless, the grinding method employed in the prehistoric periods was often not investigated. This study discovered the different...
Early Holocene Leporid Processing at the LSP-1 Rockshelter, Oregon (2017)
Human occupation of the Little Steamboat Point-1 (LSP-1) rockshelter in southcentral Oregon began ~9,600 cal BP. Artifacts recovered from the pre-Mazama deposits include a faunal assemblage comprised primarily of leporid remains and a lithic assemblage dominated by informal flake tools. I designed and conducted an experiment using replicated obsidian flake tools to identify leporid processing strategies employed by Early Holocene occupants. I performed hide, carcass, and meat processing tasks...
Early Native American Prehistory on the Maryland Western Shore: Archeological Investigations at the Higgins Site, Vol. 1 (1992)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
El uso del adobe en el valle de Colima (600-900 dC) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La propuesta de trabajo abordará el uso del adobe en el Occidente Mesoamericano durante el periodo comprendido entre los años 600-900 dC, el cual representó para los habitantes del Valle de Colima, un movimiento transformador que modificó de manera radical la ideología y costumbres que hasta el año 600 dC fueron utilizadas alrededor de mil años; lo cual se...
Evaluating a Stratified, Prearchaic, Open-Air Site in Grass Valley, Nevada (2018)
Current views of the Prearchaic draw heavily from investigations of sites near pluvial lakes in the eastern and western Great Basin. The record from the Central Great Basin remains impoverished, largely due to the limited number of stratified archaeological sites containing well preserved material suitable for faunal analysis and radiocarbon dating. Recent investigations of an open-air site (26La4434) along the northern shore of Pleistocene Lake Gilbert in Grass Valley, revealed a buried deposit...
Explaining Shifts in Dalton Paleoindian Adaptations at the End of the Pleistocene through Usewear and Technological Organization Analyses (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Late Paleoindian period in North America approximately 12,000 years ago, Dalton hunter-gatherers substantially altered their hunting technology by modifying their point blades with teeth-like serrations and bevels. The functions of these attributes have been the focus of a long-held debate. Some argue that the variation relates to use as knives and...
Exploring Domestic Tasks at Kharaneh IV using Lithic Microwear Analysis (2015)
The use and division of space in the Early Epipalaeolithic gives insights into the nature of social interaction in the Southern Levant prior to the advent of permanent architecture. This presentation presents preliminary results from the microwear analysis of the Jordanian Epipalaeolithic site Kharaneh IV to explore the nature of domestic tasks within a hut structure. Kharaneh IV is located in the Azraq basin, Eastern Jordan, dating to the Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic periods. The site’s...
Feeding the Household and the Spirit During the Ubaid Period at Kenan Tepe, Turkey (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Ubaid Period, a small village overlooked the Tigris River at the site we now call Kenan Tepe. Here, household members carried out activities both inside and around their houses, as well as utilizing roof-top spaces. During its habitation one of the structures burned and collapsed, preserving evidence...
Foreseeable Tools: Lithic Use-Wear and Technological Organizations in Evolutionary Perspectives (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The paper explores some problems concerning the relationship between aspects of lithic technology and the cultural evolutionary theory. There are three fundamental realms in stone tool analysis, namely, typology, technology, and functional studies. These research phases are integrated into the study of "technological organizations" in the sense of Binford...
Functional Riddles, Chipped Stone Technologies, and Fiber Processing in the Late Sixth and Fifth Millennium BCE in Turkmenistan and Northwestern Europe (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Use-wear and residue analysis draws attention to complexities of technological processes that otherwise remain out of reach archaeologically. Enigmatic wear traces described by microwear analysts as “polish 23,” “polish 10,” and “polis non familiar” occur on distinctive chipped stone tools from Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic sites in...
Inscribing Behaviors on Oracle Turtle Plastrons: A New Method to Analyze Tributary Networks of Late Shang China (c. 1250 BCE–1046 BCE) (2018)
Processed from turtle shells and bovid scapulae, oracle bones were massively exploited by the ruling house of the late Shang Dynasty for divination. As opposed to traditional scholarship that holds primary interest in inscriptions engraved on these bones, I consider late Shang divination in entirety as a technological process that proceeds from the preparation and delivery of bone material via tributary networks all the way to bones’ after-use discard into pits. By switching the attention to the...
Jade and the Illusion of Jade: Gokok and Magatama in Korea and Japan from 250–700CE (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Two Approaches to Archaeological Jades: Source Characterization and Social Valuation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual stone ornaments (gokok and magatama) found in elite burials in Korea and Japan were examined to determine raw material and manufacturing process as well as use life. The primary materials examined were hard jadeite and nephrite, though softer stones such as alabaster/gypsum, amblygonite and...
The Kuahuqiao and Hemudu bone spades: use contexts and beyond (2015)
Bone spades crafted from large mammal scapulae recovered from archaeological contexts have generally been assumed to be earth-working implements, based on analogies with ethnographic artifacts. On the Ningshan Plain in eastern China, hundreds of scapular spades have been discovered. The majority of these scapular spades belong to the early Hemudu culture (7,000-6,000 BP), with a few earlier examples dating to the last stage of the Kuahuqiao culture (7,200-7000 BP). To identify the use contexts...
Large Interpretations from Small Things: The Potential and Need for Large-Scale Microwear Studies (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Old Technology, New Methodology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since its broad application in the 1980s, a core critique of microwear analysis of lithic tools in North America has been its examination of very small sample sizes. This has often relegated microwear to the fringes of prehistoric studies—a curiosity, or an anecdote that does not add true substance to site interpretations. While our European colleagues...
Lithic Micro-Wear Traces at Morphological Junctions: Function Vs. Typology Reconsidered in Terms of Technological Organizations (2018)
The paper investigates some fundamental aspects of use-wear of lithic artifacts, concerning the relations between function and morphology. During the course of micro-wear research since the 1960s, it was often questioned whether tool typologies actually reflects their functions, or which morphological attributes are diagnostic of their utilization. Case studies in the Upper Paleolithic of East Asia also revealed variability in end-scrapers whose functions seem to be relatively consistent as hide...
Microremains on Stone (Tools): Discriminating Function-Related from Natural Residues (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances and Debates in the Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Plant microremains from stone tools speak to ancient hominin behaviour if genuinely related to usage. Residues, however, attach to rock surfaces naturally. My objectives are to identify pathways for microremain adherence prior to and after burial; study residue abundance in relation to petrography, microstructure, and...
Neolithic Resource Use and Adaptation in the Eastern Gobi Desert: A Functional Analysis of Axes and Adzes (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Flaked and ground stone axes and adzes first appeared in the eastern Gobi Desert at 8.0 cal BP and were incorporated into the technological package. At the same time, changes in local ecological conditions reflect a transition from continuous grass/shrub-steppe across the Mongolian Plateau to the development of dispersed patches of dune-field...
Obsidian Tool Functions at Early Formative Altica, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In central Mexican archaeology, tool functions have often been assumed for lithic artifacts based on material types and tool forms, which are classified broadly with labels such as bifaces, scrapers, blades, and flakes. Integrating the method of use-wear analysis derived through experimental archaeology is the most effective way to improve our understanding of...
Overlapping Traces: Categorizing Ceramic Use-Wear across Functions (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Practitioners of ceramic use-wear analysis often document qualitative patterns to distinguish between past behaviors as well as taphonomic processes. If comparisons can be operationalized in a quantitative framework, analyzing assemblages across sites at a regional scale could inform our understanding of normative patterns of use as well as the diversity of...
Phase I Archeological Survey of the Proposed Water Line for a Resource Recovery Facility, Dickerson, Maryland (1990)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Phase II Archaeological Investigations at Russett, Phase Two of Development, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, Site 5 (18AN665) and Site 10 (18AN667) (1989)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.