The effect of patination on the preservation of use-wear traces : preliminary experimental observations

While use-wear analysis has become a standard method to identify tool functions in the past, an important challenge this approach still faces resides in the assessment of the effect of post-depositional alterations on the preservation of use-wear. In the case of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic stone tools, one of the most present alteration types is patination. Patination can take on a multitude of forms and colours and can, for example, be glossy, white, or blueish. They all refer to different kinds of chemical and structural changes occurring in the raw material. In the research practice, patinated pieces are often discarded from the use-wear analysis, which might cause a research bias in interpreting tool-kits and activities. This problem is recognised by many other research groups as lately, an increasing number of projects focuses on similar research questions (Caux et al., 2018, Glauberman and Thorson, 2012, Burroni et al., 2002). On the lithic artefacts, dating to the Final Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, within our research area, the Scheldt Basin (BE), we predominantly encounter white or blueish patinas and less frequently glossy patination. Two methods are currently being tested to reproduce these patinas, one in an alkaline environment and one in an acidic environment. Tool replicas of different types of raw materials were used in various experiments mimicking prehistoric activities. These tools were then either put in a warm sodium hydroxide solution (alkaline environment) or buried in soil and regularly watered with a lactic acid solution (acidic environment). The two methods differ in many ways, i.e. aggressiveness and time duration of the experiment. Therefore, their effect on the use-wear traces is also expected to differ. In this presentation, the first results of their impact on the preservation of experimentally produced use-wear traces will be compared and linked to the archaeological patinas.

ISBN:9788090727069

Jaar van publicatie:2019

Toegankelijkheid:Open