Micro‐wear in perspective: A sympathetic response to Lawrence H. Keeley

Abstract

The field of micro‐wear analysis of stone tools has recently witnessed a proliferation of ideas and data. The emergence of certain tendencies and directions makes it both possible and desirable to assess the field at this point. Three major topics are discussed in this paper: (1) the role of experimentation, and a suggested outline for the publishing of the results of experimentation; (2) the forms which utilization traces can assume, assessments concerning the use of each as an index in micro‐wear analysis, and some factors which contribute to their formation; and (3) the goals of functional analysis.