 |
||
 |
 |
|
|
MA/PhD Theses Abstracts of Current Students & Alumni |
 |
|
Ballo, George. 1985. Experiments in use-wear formation on stone tools made from Florida chert: A study supporting a microwear analysis of Paleo-Indian lithic artifacts from the Harney Flats site (8-Hi-507), Tampa, Florida.
Abstract: Excavation of the Harney Flats
site (8-Hi-507), a Paleo-Indian site in Hillsborough County, Florida,
resulted in the recovery of over one thousand unifacially and bifacially
retouched stone tools. A primary objective in the analysis of these tools
was to determine how they were used or functioned in various site activities.
To facilitate the analysis of tool function, a series of use-wear experiments
were conducted in which stone tools, similar to those recovered from
8-Hi-507, were manufactured by a contemporary flintknapper. These tools
were then used to work a number of raw materials considered to be available
to the aboriginal inhabitants of the site. The raw materials worked were
bone, antler, wood, and hide. Experimental tools were used in a variety
of scraping, sawing, and chopping tasks involving these raw materials.
Use-wear traces such as tool edge and surface flaking, rounding, polish,
and striation occurring on experimental tools were microscopically examined
at magnifications to 99x for evidence of patterning indicative of the
material worked and tool action employed. Results indicate that subtle
differences in the character, intensity, and distribution of utilization
damage observed on experimental tools can be used to establish the manner
in which a tool was used and to identify the material worked, at least
in terms of broad categories based on the relative hardness of the raw
material. Experimentally derived data concerning utilization damage patterns
were used in an analysis of a sample of the stone tools recovered from
8-Hi-507. This analysis was hindered by the patination and weathering
of many of the archaeological specimens which served to obliterate, obscure,
or, in some cases, mimic potential wear traces. Nevertheless, the experimentally
derived data allowed for the functional interpretation of a number of
tools recovered from the Harney Flats site.
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|