Number or weight? The effects and implications of quantifying lithic raw material use in two different ways

Abstract

Quantifying archaeological material is an important basis on which interpretations about past lifeways are made. In a stone tool assemblage this typically refers to the number of artefacts made from a specific type of raw material, from which conclusions about mobility and provisioning strategies are drawn. However, the collected weight of that raw material is seldom taken into consideration. Previous work examined stone tool assemblages from the Bau de l’Aubesier (Vaucluse, France), quantifying raw material use by the number of lithic pieces from a particular source area. This study reproduces and directly compares that work with the existing weight data for the assemblages, using Generalized Linear Models that describe the sources of raw material in terms of both the landscape relative to the site and the characteristics of the materials themselves. In the older layers of the site, terrain variables contribute more towards source area use. In the younger layers, raw material characteristics drive source use, but less so in models that quantify stone tools by their weight. The distribution of tool sizes across the assemblages in each archaeological layer may be an important driver for observed differences between the two sets of models, raising important questions about the ways that specific provisioning strategies might be more or less vulnerable to biases that could reshape an understanding of hominin behaviours.