When Should I Stop? Discerning the Minimum Number of Lithic Artifacts Required to Accurately Characterize Mode of Reduction

Summary

Several methodologies have been developed to analyze flaked stone debitage. Among the more popular methodologies are flake typologies similar to Sullivan and Rozen’s (1985) "interpretation free typology", which focused on measuring breakage patterns by classifying debitage into complete flakes, broken flakes, flake fragments and debris. While many discussions have focused on the usefulness of these measures, especially in regards to gaining an understanding of reduction methods via the relative proportions of flake types, they fail to document how many artifacts need to be analyzed to accurately reflect these relative proportions. Using several lithic assemblages gathered from 76 Draw, an Animas Phase Site in Luna County, New Mexico, this study uses bootstrapping to discern the optimal range of artifacts required to characterize reduction methods before substantial time is wasted to redundant sampling.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage