Experimental evaluation of Kuhn's geometric index of reduction and the flat-flake problem

Peter Hiscock; Chris Clarkson

doi:10.1016/j.jas.2005.02.002

Experimental evaluation of Kuhn's geometric index of reduction and the flat-flake problem

Peter Hiscock^*, Chris Clarkson

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

77 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an experiment designed to explore the performance of Kuhn's Geometric Index of Unifacial Reduction [S. Kuhn, A geometric index of reduction for unifacial stone tools, Journal of Archaeological Science 17 (1990) 585-593] in measuring the amount of material removed over a sequence of retouching events for a population of 30 flakes. The index provides a reliable absolute measure of reduction under experimental conditions, and does so irrespective of blank cross-section, suggesting that the "flat-flake" problem is not necessarily a serious difficulty for the index. Furthermore, Kuhn's Index provided a more sensitive and robust measurement of the extent of reduction than any of the alternative techniques proposed in recent years.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1015-1022
Number of pages	8
Journal	Journal of Archaeological Science
Volume	32
Issue number	7
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2005.02.002
Publication status	Published - Jul 2005

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10.1016/j.jas.2005.02.002

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AB - This paper presents the results of an experiment designed to explore the performance of Kuhn's Geometric Index of Unifacial Reduction [S. Kuhn, A geometric index of reduction for unifacial stone tools, Journal of Archaeological Science 17 (1990) 585-593] in measuring the amount of material removed over a sequence of retouching events for a population of 30 flakes. The index provides a reliable absolute measure of reduction under experimental conditions, and does so irrespective of blank cross-section, suggesting that the "flat-flake" problem is not necessarily a serious difficulty for the index. Furthermore, Kuhn's Index provided a more sensitive and robust measurement of the extent of reduction than any of the alternative techniques proposed in recent years.

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Experimental evaluation of Kuhn's geometric index of reduction and the flat-flake problem

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