Traceology

The traceology or analyzes functional is a scientific discipline related to the Archéologie - and in particular with prehistoric archeology - the purpose of which is to determine the function of the tools by the study of the traces produced during their use.

It was developed initially for the stone tools cut by Serguei Semenov.

It is based on the examination of polished and the marks of wear, in particular on a microscopic scale. Each matter of work (wood, meat, skin, plants, minerals…) leave a more or less specific signature, which it is possible to identify thanks to corpora of comparison established at the time of experimentation S. the actions (cutting, slotting, scraping, perforation….) as well as the duration of the activity are also identifiable. To date, it was primarily applied to the tools in Silex or in Obsidienne but of rare conclusive tests also concerned materials such as the quartz, the Quartzite S or the Basalte S.

More recently, tie left progress of the Tribology, the traceology was also applied to other materials such as the animal hard matters (Os, Ivoire, wood of Deer tribe) or even metals.

References were

Anderson-Gerfaud, P., Moss, E. and Plisson, H. (1987) “With what useful? The contribution of the functional analysis”, Bulletin of the French Prehistoric Company , T. 84, n° 8, pp. 226-237.
Vaughan, P. (1983) “the function of the prehistoric tools”, Research , n° 148, vol. 14, pp. 1226-1234.

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