A Swiss Army Knife from the Upper Paleolithic? Experiments on Non-Projectile Uses of Backed Pieces
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Backed lithic artifacts are an important part of the Upper Paleolithic tool kit, and are often among the most abundant categories of lithic tools found at Magdalenian and Gravettian sites. Often these tools are exclusively referred to as projectiles, and indeed many – if not most – backed pieces may have been parts of composite projectile heads, mounted laterally onto organic points (e.g., Allain and Descouts 1957; Allain 1979; Abramova 1982; Bergman and Newcomer 1983; Leroi Gourhan 1983; Plisson 1985; Nuzhnyi 1993; Christensen and Valentin 2004; Sano 2009; Langlais 2010; AraujoIgreja 2011; Tomasso et al. 2018). Experiments of varying comprehensiveness concerned with the use of (Magdalenian) backed pieces as projectile inserts have confirmed the effectivity of this setup (e.g., Moss and Newcomer 1982; Pétillon et al. 2011; Gauvrit Roux et al. 2020). However, backed pieces sometimes also served other purposes like cutting, sawing, shaving, scraping or perforating (Moss and Newcomer 1982; Moss 1983; Owen 1988; PielDesruisseaux 1998; Christensen and Valentin 2004; Taller et al. 2012). The modular technological system involving these lithic artifacts is highly versatile, mobile and dynamic as there are numerous possibilities of use and as the small lithic inserts are easy to transport and the composite tools themselves are easy to maintain and repair. Here, we present the results of an experiment where different tasks were carried out using backed pieces hafted in a wooden handle or operated handheld. The design of the handles loosely follows examples found at Canadian Dorset sites where bladelets comparable in size to Magdalenian backed pieces were hafted and used as knives (Owen 1988, 88ff.). We tried out the tools in various activities (cutting, perforating and carving/whittling) on a set of worked materials (wood, antler, marine shell, smoked meat, dried, semitanned hide, and tanned leather). After the completion of these tasks, the applicability, durability and usefulness of the setup were evaluated and the lithic inserts were checked microscopically for usewear traces.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".