Department of Anthropology, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 74104, USA.
College of Aeronautics and Engineering, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, 44242, USA.
Sci Rep. 2019 Oct 10;9(1):14591. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-51139-3.
Intentional heat treating of toolstone has been documented to have begun at least by 70 K BP; however, the advantages of such treatment have been debated for decades. There are two schools of thought with regard to its purpose. One, is that it merely reduces the force required for flake propagation. A second is that it also alters flake morphological properties. We systematically tested these hypotheses by generating flakes from cores exposed to three different temperatures (ambient, 300 °C, and 350 °C) using automated propagation procedures that bypassed any human agency. While the force propagation magnitude is altered by heat treatment, the flakes were not. We examined these flakes according to nine measures of morphology. None differed significantly or systematically within the three categories. While our results confirm that heat treatment does reduce the force needed for flake propagation, they also demonstrate that such treatment has no significant effect on major morphological aspects of flake form.
有意对工具石进行热处理的做法至少可以追溯到 70000 年前，但这种处理的优势已经争论了几十年。关于其目的有两种观点。一种观点认为，它只是减少了鳞片扩展所需的力。另一种观点认为，它还改变了鳞片的形态特征。我们通过使用自动化扩展程序从暴露于三种不同温度（环境温度、300°C 和 350°C）的核心中生成鳞片来系统地测试了这些假设，这些程序绕过了任何人为因素。虽然热处理改变了力的传播幅度，但鳞片并没有。我们根据形态的九个度量标准来检查这些鳞片。在这三个类别中，没有一个有显著或系统的差异。虽然我们的结果证实热处理确实减少了鳞片扩展所需的力，但它们也表明这种处理对鳞片形态的主要形态方面没有显著影响。
