Ground stone technology is present in various Upper Paleolithic chronologies of Portuguese sites covering most of the country. Although the premature state of research does not allow a detailed characterization, this type of artifacts is present both in the south, mostly made in greywacke and in central Portugal mainly made in quartzite. In order to identify, characterize and compare use wear traces, this project seeks to develop an experimental program, based in the application of pressure and impact with several types of organic and lithic elements, in greywacke and quartzite blocks with metric and morphological features similar to the archeological materials. The marks will be macro and microscopic analyzed in order to identify, describe, quantify and recognize their distribution patterns, in order to relate them with the different human activities. The main goal is to infer human behavior by understanding the differences among raw-materials from a use-wear perspective. This study will be essential to recognize how different raw-materials preserve use wear marks and which preserves better and worst some specific marks that are caused by different activities. In the end, we intend to contribute to the understanding of which raw materials represented a better canvas for some specific past human tasks and why.

Peer reviewed