Update: Measurements are completed!
Hello everyone! I'm happy to report that I've just completed measuring the stone tools from Dr. Reti's experimental collection here at UCSC. It took some long days and weeks of committed, monotonous work, but it's finished! Here's a peak into what my life has looked like for the past 3.5 weeks...
Dr. Reti kept a catalogue of all of the stone tools he had analyzed from his experimental collection. Methods evolve all of the time in archaeology, so I came to his lab to take some new measurements. The beauty of collaborative work is that by sharing data, we gain so much more than the costs of both time and money. I gain the initial measurements that Dr. Reti took for his dissertation so that I can complete mine, and Dr. Reti gets to update his database with the new information that I collect.
I use digital callipers to take the measurements on the stone tools in a careful and standardized manner. Some of the new measurements that I'm adding to this dataset involve flake "platforms". If you can recall, flakes are the pieces of stone that come off of the rocks when the tool-maker strikes. These actions are irreversible, and due to the fracture mechanics of the rock, traces of these actions are imprinted on the flakes themselves.
The platform is the part of a flake where the tool-maker struck the rock - the fracture extends from that point. So, the shape and features of that platform can provide information about the kinds of forces the tool-maker used to break it off in the first place. One of the most important things for making flakes is to hit the rock at the right angle. By measuring the platform angles of the flakes, I am recording the angle at which Dr. Reti struck the rock the moment he created that flake. In other words, I'm turning actions into measurements. These measurements can then be understood within large patterns of the shapes and sizes of stone tools.
I have taken the same measurements on archaeological stone tools from Kokiselei in Kenya that are nearly 2 million years old. I can explore questions about the actions of these ancient human ancestors by comparing using the action to measurement relationships that I ascertained from Dr. Reti's experimental collection to the archaeological stone tools from Kokiselei. These databases are full of thousands of stone tools that each have records of dozens of measurements. It's going to be a long and challenging journey understanding all of these relationships, but I think it's going to be fun as well!
I also had some time to enjoy my surroundings here in northern California. Really not a bad place to be doing science! I also enjoyed meeting some of the local wildlife both on and off campus...
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