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Breakage, scarring, scratches and explosions: understanding impact trace formation on quartz

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences volume 11, pages 3013–3039 (2019)Cite this article

Abstract

Quartz projectiles have received attention in the recent years due to, for instance, their discovery at prominent South African Middle Stone Age sites. However, very few methodological studies have been dedicated to quartz armatures and the ones published so far are not built on an understanding of the particular behaviour of quartz under mechanical stress. Here, we investigate impact damage formation on automorphic and xenomorphic quartz (crystal quartz and vein quartz) through the microscopic analysis of 91 experimental armatures using a combination of low and high magnifications and SEM. Our results show that the structural properties of quartz affect the attributes of impact breaks and other damage. We also examine wear patterns on three different types of projectiles and offer preliminary guidelines for identifying them in archaeological assemblages. We argue that while quartz assemblages withhold significant potential for understanding past hunting technologies, the methods used for identifying and interpreting quartz projectiles need to be adjusted so that they take into account the notable differences between the macrocrystalline and cryptocrystalline varieties of this raw material.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Johanna Seppä who kindly provided us with her experimental material that supplemented this study and Hanna Konttinen who transported the material. We are grateful to the members of TraceoLab for their support and advice and particularly want to thank Christian Lepers for his participation in the experiments, Dries Cnuts for his help with the SEM imaging and Justin Coppe for his assistance in the experiments and his comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013, ERC Grant Agreement No. 312283, Veerle Rots). Noora Taipale is also indebted to the Kone Foundation (grant number 088817) and Veerle Rots to the Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS-FRS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. TraceoLab/Prehistory, University of Liège, Quai Roosevelt 1 B (Bât. A4), 4000, Liège, Belgium

    Noora Taipale

  2. TraceoLab/Prehistory, Chercheure qualifiée du FNRS, University of Liège, Quai Roosevelt 1 B (Bât. A4), 4000, Liège, Belgium

    Veerle Rots

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  1. Noora Taipale
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Correspondence to Noora Taipale.

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Taipale, N., Rots, V. Breakage, scarring, scratches and explosions: understanding impact trace formation on quartz. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 11, 3013–3039 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-018-0738-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-018-0738-z

Keywords

  • Quartz
  • Projectiles
  • Barbs
  • Transverse points
  • Impact damage
  • Microwear