ANDEAN PAST - Latin American Studies Program - Cornell University

11..Table 2: Resultsof blind skills testAnaL,st Usedpart Work Materialof tool action workedDillehay(n=35) 88.5% 63.8% 51.2%Keeley(n= 16) 87.5%Odell75.0% 62.5%(n=46) 82.6%Richards67.7% 39.1%(n=30) 95.0% 90.0% 40.0%The used portion of a tool wasusuallyeasilyidentifiedassuggestedbyDillehay'sscore aswellas by the other skills tests. Mistakes usuallyresult from poorly formed evidence for use,either through use on verysoftmaterialsor veryshort duration of use. Work action may beinferred with more confidence by each analystthan can worked material. This is particularlyevident in the tests reported by.Keeley (1980),Odelland Odell..Vereeken( 1980),and Richards(1988). The score by the first author maybe atleastpartiallyattributed to qualityofthe materi..als from which specimens were made. Manyspecimensanalyzed were made from andesitesand basalts witli la.rge..to..mediumgrain size.These stones do not "behave" as predictablyunder work stress conditions as would be de..sired..Edgesoften tend to erodeand crumblerather than flake as may be expected in chertswith finer texture. Because much of the infer..ence of work action is based on patterns ob..servedin microscarring,this factor accounts forsomeof the mistakes.Specificwork material wasthe most difficultattribute to identify. When the polishis exten..sive and well..formed, the difficulties are de..creasedconsiderably. However,asnoted above,certain polishesare quite similarto one another.Boneand antler polishwere not distinguishablefromeach other bythe firstauthor. Bone..antlerpolish may look very much like wood polish,unless the wood polish is well..formed. Meatand fresh hide polish are very difficultto distin..guish from one another and are both almostimpossibleto recognizein lieu ofother polishes,Dillehay& Rossen:NanchocLithicTraditionwhich maybe correlated with the specificactiv..ity such as butchering. Soft vegetal materialsdid not produce pronounced polish,presumablyas a result oflow silicacontent in temperate andarid zone plants.While numerous clues to the specificuse of aspecimen are provided through physicallyob..servable phenomena, interpretation is a matterof assembling these into alogical framework.Committing to an interpretation of one edgecan produce mistakes on another work area ofthe same tool. This problem was obvious inseveral examples of the skills test in which anintentionally crumbled edge was interpreted asusedamaged and minor damage on the opposingedge was therefore interpreted as the result ofprehension when, in fact, it had also resultedfrom use.Space does not allow for a detail discussionofthe results of the skills test. Several major con..cerns were derived, however. First, bone andantler polish appear so similar on experimentalstone artifacts examined that no distinction wasmade between the two. Second, bone..antlerand wood polishes were hard to distinguish inthe incipient stages of polish formation, at leaston the lithic materials used in this study. Third,while some clear distinctions between soilanddry hide polishes were evident in the experi..mental specimens, the distinctions were muchless clear in the archeological specimens.Fourth, many polishes are difficult to detect inthe absence of other indications of butcheringsuch as bone polish or edge damage.Analysis description and parametersMicroscopic use..wear examination involvesthe recording of a variety of attributes, whichmay then in combination be judged to generallyfit into a particular material use (that is,usedonsoft, medium, or hard material) and action(scraping,slicing,chopping, etc.) .To summarizethe analysis (Table 3), first the curve of the tooledge was coded into one of nine classes,fromincurvate to straight to excurvate. Edge dam..