Discriminant Analysis of Polythetically Described Older Palaeolithic Stone Flakes: Possibilities and Questions

Abstract

Archaeological inventories of flaked stone artefacts are the most important sources for the reconstruction of mankind’s earliest history. It is necessary to evaluate also the blanks of tool production (“waste”) as the most numerous artefact category using statistical methods including features like absolute measurements and form quotients of the pieces and their striking platforms, the flaking angles, and the dorsal degradation data. In Central Europe, these three major chrono-technological groups of finds can be determined: from the Middle Pleistocene interglacial(s) 250,000 or 300,000, the Early Saalian glacial perhaps 200,000, and from the Early Weichselian glacial 100,000-60,000 years ago—represented by the inventories from Wallendorf, Markkleeberg, and Königsaue B. In this study, the attempt has been undertaken to separate these flake inventories using linear discriminant analysis and to use the results for the comparison with other artefact complexes with rather unclear chrono-technological positions.