Evaluating the effect of force and duration on lithic use­wear using a force­ and impedance ­controlled robot

Summary

Use­wear analysis relies on the strength of the analogy between microscopic wear patterns produced in

laboratory experiments and those present on archaeological tools. Unfortunately, the physical processes that

control the production of these patterns, both in the lab and in the past, are subject to complex interactions.

One approach to reducing this complexity is to isolate factors (duration, material properties, or dynamics) that

influence wear patterns and try to identify their contribution. An important issue concerns the

possibility that wear on tools thought to have been used for a long time may in fact reflect

use with a higher force, as both factors should, in theory, affect wear (e.g., Key et al. 2014, JAMT).

We present results from experiments using a KUKA LWR­iiwa force­ and impedance-

controlled robot to scrape beech plates. The input data for controlling the robot (force, torque, velocity,

position) were obtained from a dynamically monitored scraping experiment performed by humans

(Pfleging et al., 2015, PLoS One). Because of the high level of control, we are able to systematically vary the

duration and force and investigate their effect on the wear patterns, which are quantified via 3­D surface

metrological methods using a focus­ variation instrument from Alicona.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Controlled Experiments in Lithic Technology and Function

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16484