An Experimental Program to discuss Ancient Technologies Categories

Описание: Camila Brizuela and Roxana Cattáneo
Instituto de Antropología de Córdoba (CONICET/UNC)(Argentina)
Departamento de Antropología, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades (Argentina)

A Micro-wear Analysis for Lithic Gouges, Chisels and cold Chisels

Gouges, chisels and cold chisels: these three typological groups were recently introduced by Carlos Aschero (creator of the morphologically-based typological classification used by the archaeological community of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay). Aschero noted the presence in archaeological sites of diverse chronology of instruments with edges that resembled those used in modern carpentry and for which only the brush/wood polisher category existed in their classification. The primary function defined for these instruments would be roughing, to which is added cutting in the case of chisels, with the expectations of working on wood and bone, among other materials. Later, this author, together with the archaeologist S. Hocsman, discussed aspects related to the primary functions and the modes of action in relation to the gestures of use of each one. However, the creation of new typological categories implies not only a macro- but also a microscopic characterization that allows to establish differences with other types of instruments. For this reason, we developed an experimental program to apply microscopic-based functional analysis to a set of these three types of instruments in order to discuss our analytical categories along with advances and paradigm shifts in the study of lithic material. The sample under study consists of 96 experimental lithic instruments, made from two different raw materials, quartz and vulcanite. A video of the flintknapping experiments by the Profs. Aschero and Hocsman, the actions of use of the same during the experiments, and the first results of the traceological analysis are going to be presented and the categories discussed.
#EXARC #ExperimentalArchaeology #EAC12