TY - JOUR
T1 - Edge damage distribution at the assemblage level on Middle Stone Age lithics
T2 - an image-based GIS approach
AU - Bird, Catherine
AU - Minichillo, Tom
AU - Marean, Curtis
N1 - Funding Information:
This project was made possible by the Mossel Bay Archaeology Project, Curtis W. Marean and Peter J. Nilssen, directors, and funded by National Science Foundation Grant BCS-0130713 to Marean with REU supplement for Bird, Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant GR 6894 to Minichillo, and the Hyde Family Trust. We gratefully acknowledge the academic and financial support of the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University. Michael Barton, Jocelyn Bernatchez, Erin Thompson, Margaret Nelson, and Steve Swanson, Arizona State University, and Angela Close, University of Washington, provided useful assistance and comments. Three anonymous reviewers provided useful comments that improved the quality of the paper.
PY - 2007/5
Y1 - 2007/5
N2 - Lithic artifacts represent the most abundant cultural remains from Middle Stone Age sites in southern Africa. Of these, pointed forms (under a variety of names), blades, and flakes have long been recognized as the three most abundant general types, and retouch on all three is rare relative to similar forms of equivalent age elsewhere. Here we offer a new technique for documenting concentrations of edge damage on an assemblage level to infer taphonomic processes and to record usewear and retouch. This approach is specifically aimed at patterning on the assemblage scale, rather than on individual artifacts. We use points from a Middle Stone Age assemblage from Pinnacle Point Cave 13B, near Mossel Bay, South Africa, to illustrate the technique. Combining GIS, rose diagrams, and polar statistics, we were able to visually and statistically summarize lithic artifacts for patterns of edge damage. For the points made on quartzite in this assemblage, edge damage was found to be significantly patterned and taphonomic causes of the damage were rejected. The technique also opens avenues for many other quantitative analyses that are either impossible or difficult with current non-visual systems of recording, such as measurements of distance, angle, and area of edge damage.
AB - Lithic artifacts represent the most abundant cultural remains from Middle Stone Age sites in southern Africa. Of these, pointed forms (under a variety of names), blades, and flakes have long been recognized as the three most abundant general types, and retouch on all three is rare relative to similar forms of equivalent age elsewhere. Here we offer a new technique for documenting concentrations of edge damage on an assemblage level to infer taphonomic processes and to record usewear and retouch. This approach is specifically aimed at patterning on the assemblage scale, rather than on individual artifacts. We use points from a Middle Stone Age assemblage from Pinnacle Point Cave 13B, near Mossel Bay, South Africa, to illustrate the technique. Combining GIS, rose diagrams, and polar statistics, we were able to visually and statistically summarize lithic artifacts for patterns of edge damage. For the points made on quartzite in this assemblage, edge damage was found to be significantly patterned and taphonomic causes of the damage were rejected. The technique also opens avenues for many other quantitative analyses that are either impossible or difficult with current non-visual systems of recording, such as measurements of distance, angle, and area of edge damage.
KW - Edge damage
KW - GIS
KW - Image Analysis
KW - Lithics
KW - Middle Stone Age
KW - Taphonomy
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jas.2006.08.005
DO - 10.1016/j.jas.2006.08.005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:33845672668
SN - 0305-4403
VL - 34
SP - 771
EP - 780
JO - Journal of Archaeological Science
JF - Journal of Archaeological Science
IS - 5
ER -