0000000001301811
AUTHOR
Antonella Pedergnana
Evaluating the microscopic effect of brushing stone tools as a cleaning procedure
Cleaning stone tool surfaces is a common procedure in lithic studies. The first step widely applied at any archeological site (and/or at field laboratories) is the gross removal of sediment from the surfaces of artifacts. Lithic surface alterations due to mechanical action applied in wet or dry cleaning regimes have never been examined at a microscopic scale. This could have important implications in traceology, as any modern surface modifications inflicted on archeological artifacts might compromise their functional interpretations. The current trend toward quantification of use-wear traces makes the testing even more important, as even slight, apparently invisible surface alterations migh…
Why should traceology learn from dental microwear, and vice-versa?
Dental and artifact microwear analyses have a lot in common regarding the questions they address, their developmental history and their issues. However, few paleontologists and archeologists are aware of this, and even those who are, do not take into account most of the methodological insights from the other field. In this focus article, we briefly review the main developmental steps of both methods, highlight how similar their histories are and how combining methodological developments can improve both research fields. In both cases, the traditional analyses have been strongly criticized mainly because of their subjectivity and their lack of repeatability and reproducibility. Quantitative …
Using mechanical experiments to study ground stone tool use: Exploring the formation of percussive and grinding wear traces on limestone tools
Ground Stone Tools (GST) have been identified in several Levantine archaeological sites dating to the Middle Paleolithic. These tools, frequently made of limestone, are often interpreted based on their morphology and damage as having been used for knapping flint, and sometimes for breaking animal bones or processing vegetal materials as well. However, the lack of experimental referential collections on limestone is a major obstacle for the identification of diagnostic traces on these types of tools and raw material. In this sense, the understanding of the specific function of these GST and the association between tool types and activity often remains unknown or merely speculative. Recent di…
Polish is quantitatively different on quartzite flakes used on different worked materials.
Metrology has been successfully used in the last decade to quantify use-wear on stone tools. Such techniques have been mostly applied to fine-grained rocks (chert), while studies on coarse-grained raw materials have been relatively infrequent. In this study, confocal microscopy was employed to investigate polished surfaces on a coarse-grained lithology, quartzite. Wear originating from contact with five different worked materials were classified in a data-driven approach using machine learning. Two different classifiers, a decision tree and a support-vector machine, were used to assign the different textures to a worked material based on a selected number of parameters (Mean density of furr…
Evaluating the microscopic effect of brushing stone tools as a cleaning procedure [Python analysis]
This upload includes the following files related to the Python analysis: Raw data as a XLSX table (brushing_v2.xlsx), i.e. results from R Script #1 (see https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3632517) Python script of the whole analysis (RunEveryParameter.py) Convenience script for running RunEveryParameter.py in background and logging all output (RunSingleParametesBash.sh) Log file for output of sampling from the model for each parameter in a loop (logAll.txt) Jupyter notebooks of the analysis run on epLsar as an example (Notebook_SingleParameter.inpyb) and of a summary of the whole analysis (Notebook_Overview.ipynb), plus associated HTML output files (*.html) For each parameter: Full samples of p…
Polish is quantitatively different on quartzite flakes used on different worked materials [ConfoMap analysis]
Each surface has been processed with two templates: 1) Extract two 50x50 µm sub-areas and extract topography layer from each sub-area. Export sub-areas as SUR files. File names start with "A35" or "VSH4". 2) Process all extracted sub-areas for quantitative analysis. File names start with "processing-quartzite-final". All ConfoMap templates are saved in MNT format (including all original and processed surfaces, as well as results). Each template has also been exported to a PDF file. Instructions to download all files at once are given here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4011952 Additionally, the results of the second template are collated into "proce…
Evaluating the microscopic effect of brushing stone tools as a cleaning procedure [R analysis]
This upload includes the following files related to the R analysis: - Raw data as a CSV table (brushing_v2.csv), i.e. results from the ConfoMap analysis (see https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3632490) - RStudio project (Brushing_project.Rproj) - R scripts as R Markdown files (*.Rmd) - Output from R scripts knitted to HTML files (*.html) - A text file containing the version of RStudio used (RStudioVersion.txt) Instructions to download all files at once are given here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4011952
Polish is quantitatively different on quartzite flakes used on different worked materials [Python analysis]
This upload includes the following files related to the Python analysis: 1. Raw data as a XLSX table (processing-quartzite-final-2020-04-29.xlsx) is the output from R Script #1 (see https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3979139), even though the filename is slightly different. Plus, for each analysis (full and restricted datasets), included in the corresponding ZIP archive: 2. Jupyter notebooks of the analysis (Classification_RandSplitFeature_Revision_VXX.ipynb) rendered to HTML file (Classification_RandSplitFeature_Revision_VXX.html) 3. Dataframe including the artificially filled datapoints 4. Output of the analysis as PDF: • Confusion matrices ("CM&qu…
Evaluating the microscopic effect of brushing stone tools as a cleaning procedure [ConfoMap analysis]
ConfoMap templates for each surface in MNT format (including all original and processed surfaces, as well as results). Each template has also been exported to a PDF file. Additionally, results are collated into 'brushing_v2.csv' Instructions to download all files at once are given here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4011952
Polish is quantitatively different on quartzite flakes used on different worked materials [R analysis]
This upload includes the following files related to the R analysis: - Raw data as a CSV table (processing-quartzite-final.csv), i.e. results from the ConfoMap analysis (see https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3979116) - RStudio project (Quantification quartzite final.Rproj) - R scripts as R Markdown files (*.Rmd) - R scripts knitted to HTML files (*.html) - An R script (RStudioVersion.R) to write the used version of RStudio to a text file (RStudioVersion.txt) - Output from script #1: processing-quartzite-final.Rbin and processing-quartzite-final.xlsx - Output from script #2: processing-quartzite-final_summary-stats.xlsx - Output from script #3: all plots as PDF files. Note that for running the s…