Introduction

The Lithic Microwear Research Laboratory is based in the Division of Archaeological, Geographical and Environmental Sciences at the University of Bradford under the direction of Dr Randolph Donahue.

The laboratory carries out pure and applied research and contractual work for the archaeological community. Research focuses on developing innovative approaches to enhance the power of the technique, on exploring the potential of new applications, and to analyse artefact assemblages.

Latest news

Members of the Lithic Microwear Research Laboratory have recently published on the use of LSCM (Laser Scanning Confocal Microscopy) to help with the identification of lithic microwear traces. An Olympus LEXT system was used to study wear traces on a number of experimental flint tools, used to work a variety of materials. Roughness analysis was used on the resulting cloud data to characterise each of the wear types. The preliminary study found that different types of wear could be statistically differentiated from each other where two scales of analysis were used.

More detail on this research can be found here.

Evans, A. A. & Donahue, R. E. (2008). Laser Scanning Confocal Microscopy: A potential technique for the study of lithic microwear. Journal of Archaeological Science 35: 2223-2230.

The article is available online at ScienceDirect.com and will be available in print later in the year.

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Background

Lithic microwear analysis is the microscopic study of wear and fracture scars that occur on stone artefacts. Experimental studies demonstrate that microscopic wear and fracture scar characteristics resulting from tool use vary systematically according to the worked material (e.g., hide, wood, meat, bone) and to the applied forces and motions (e.g., cutting, scraping, wedging).

The development of principles regarding these relationships enables microwear analysts to infer the past use or uses of lithic artefacts with greater precision and accuracy than through reliance on either ethnographic analogues or macroscopic attribute analysis, which has proved inadequate even at identifying used pieces. It can also be applied to understanding natural formation processes.

The current method applied at our laboratory is based on a combination of microscopic techniques and, where applicable, non-destructive chemical analysis techniques.