Friction and Contact Temperatures in the Cleaving of Bone and Wood Using Stone Tools – A Case Study in Palaeolithic Tribology

Abstract

During archaeological fieldwork wedge-shaped quartz stones that show clearly visible "glossy patches" composed of high quartz have been found. It is generally accepted that these tools have been used to cleave or punch wood and bone materials. For the transformation from quartz to high-quartz to occur, the temperature should exceed 574 °C. The hypothesis tested in this manuscript is that the phase change in the stone tool results from frictional heating during the cleaving action. Dry sliding friction measurements were carried out on a reciprocating tribometer using four types of stone, representing the punch tool, and pine, oak and bovine bone, representing the work piece. Measured coefficients of friction were approximately 0.1 on oak, 0.2 on pine and up to 0.35 on bovine bone, with some minor fluctuations for the different types of stone. These coefficients of friction were inserted into a computational model describing the flash temperatures in a moving contact, from which it was shown that the hypothesis might hold in the case of lydite-bone contact. This means that the glossy patches on the stone tools may have been caused by frictional heating during the cleaving of bone.