Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Applied Mineralogy, Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2020 Dec 9;10(1):21512. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-78490-0.
Polished edges of archaeological stone tools are commonly investigated to obtain information on the tools' uses in prehistory. Yet to this day, it remains unclear what exactly such polishes are and how they form. Answering these questions should allow the elaboration of new interpretative methods based on objective measurements. Two major competing hypotheses of polish formation have been proposed: abrasion and the formation of a thin amorphous film on the chert or flint surface. We employ reflectance infrared spectroscopy, a technique particularly sensitive to thin amorphous films, to investigate these two hypotheses. We found no added amorphous layer that would have formed upon friction against bone, antler, ivory or wood. Our observations suggest polish formation by abrasion, notwithstanding previous claims of added amorphous surface structures. This has implications for our understanding of the physical processes taking place during friction of chert and flint against different materials. Our results also open the possibility to propose new pathways for identifying different use-wear processes, based on the degree of abrasion.
考古石器的抛光边缘通常被研究，以获取有关史前工具用途的信息。然而，直到今天，人们仍然不清楚这些抛光到底是什么，以及它们是如何形成的。回答这些问题应该可以根据客观测量来制定新的解释方法。已经提出了两种主要的抛光形成竞争假说：磨损和在燧石或石英表面形成薄的非晶层。我们采用反射红外光谱学，一种对薄非晶层特别敏感的技术，来研究这两种假说。我们没有发现会在与骨头、鹿角、象牙或木材摩擦时形成的额外非晶层。尽管先前曾声称有添加的非晶表面结构，但我们的观察结果表明，抛光是由磨损形成的。这对我们理解在燧石和石英与不同材料摩擦时发生的物理过程有影响。我们的结果还为基于磨损程度来识别不同使用磨损过程开辟了新的途径。
