Disentangling carcass processing activities and the state of worked hide from use-wear patterns on expedient bone tools: A preliminary experiment

Abstract

Understanding the role of expedient osseous tools in past technological systems remains a central question in research on the cultural evolution of our lineage. Often, these tools are interpreted as objects used in hide processing activities based on use-wear patterns documented on their surface. However, traditional use-wear analyses are essentially qualitative and fail to capture the diversity of hide processing techniques and processes documented in the ethnographic literature. In addition, use-wear patterns produced while flaying skin and cutting meat can sometime be confounded with those that develop while processing hide. Here, we report an experimental study that aims to overcome these limitations. We use unretouched expedient bone tools in one flaying, five fleshing and two meat cutting activities. The use-wear patterns are studied qualitatively under SEM at 100x, 200x, 500x and 800x lens magnifications, and with confocal microscopy at 50x lens magnification. We also perform flexible discriminant analyses (FDA) to infer the function of the bone tool from surface textural parameters. Our results suggest that FDA and morphometric data on the striations may be combined to infer the function of expedient bone tools with high accuracy.