Production, Use, and Microwear Analysis of Experimental Quartz Tools

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the Eastern United States, the most common material stone tools are made from is quartz (Lewis 2021). However, there have been only a few microwear studies published on quartz in the Americas. Sussman (1985; 1988) used a combination of incident light microscopy and SEM, but she relied on bright field illumination instead of the now more commonly used Differential Interference Contrast (DIC) prism. In the Midwest and Plains, where chert and flint are the most commonly used raw materials, microwear analysis is regularly used to better understand site function. However, on the East Coast, these studies are much rarer because a robust set of procedures for conducting microwear analysis on quartz does not yet exist. In the summer of 2022, we collected large quartz samples from an outcrop in northern Virginia. We produced 30 quartz flakes that were then used in various tasks for different amounts of time. Consideration of the knapping process, as well as microscopic examination of the flakes before and after use provides us with a base upon which to build future quartz studies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35930.0