MR TOO MANY STONES
Bearing in mind that most of the artifacts shown on my website were recovered from a pit no more than 1m x 1m x 1.5m I was surprised to be told the other day that I had "too many" items that appeared to be worked from this small area. My critic (an expert in lithics) in that case was trying to assert that too much material was flaked for the flaking to be the result of human workmanship - no explanation for why he could distinguish human agency in many pieces, simply denial that it could ALL be the result of hominid activity. Yet we are discussing the possibility that there was a window of over one hundred thousand years when this area may have had potential for occupation (e.g. between Isotope 21 and the Anglian glaciation around 472,000 BP.)
If my brain serve me correctely, i understand that i can choice any stone broken anywhere anyhow ,without bulb scars ,without waves of repplies etc.....If i believe your paper the half of theses stones are shaped by man.
You may have misunderstood the paper and purpose.
here's the abstract, it summarises the objective, method and results;
Abstract
Distinguishing between naturally and culturally produced, simply flaked cobbles has been a problem for proponents of a pre-Clovis occupation in the Americas. Several sites in Alberta have been assigned a pre-Clovis status based on the presence of simply flaked cobbles found in Late Pleistocene till deposits. Historically, these types of assemblages have been assigned a cultural status based on subjective criteria and appeals to the analyst's expertise. To determine the archaeological status of two such assemblages from Alberta (Varsity Estates and Silver Springs), they were compared to a known natural assemblage and two known cultural assemblages. Chi-square testing was used to evaluate several lithic attributes. Only those attributes that statistically differentiated between natural and cultural assemblages were used for further analyses. All cobbles were then scored using these attributes. A point was awarded when a statistically significant attribute of human-manufacture was present. These points were then totaled, providing an aggregate score for each cobble. These scores were plotted to determine whether the test assemblages had closer affinities with the known natural or known cultural assemblages. The results indicate that the proposed pre-Clovis assemblages have closer affinities to known natural assemblages than to cultural assemblages. Our results suggest that these sites provide no evidence for a pre-Clovis occupation in the Americas.
With some statistic i coud collect the half of the beach.....and there is artifacts on the moon...
That may be stretching your point in the latter case but I'd be most interested if you did collect a sample from a beach and parse them through the same attributes. The results would be very enlightening and serve as a further reference point to evaluate the data presented in this paper, my own work and indeed that of Charlie Hatchett who is currently analysing his own site material in addition to that from the Calico site. (
http://www.hallofmaat.com/read.php?1,475355,476031#msg-476031) In this way your efforts wouldn't be wasted as they would if you simply picked a statistic from the sky. My day job involves analysing data and therefore I am quite comfortable with critiquing the same for validity or significance.
the basic fact in this question for me , and the common sence, is that we can not assert that one flake alone is the work of an human , nor 2 or3. I think it is necessary to see 5 or6 arranged with some logic. For me we can not assert that the mask of ROCHECHOUART , makapansat pebble, the old tools found in cantal (FRANCE) are shaped.
Again refer to the first paragraph in this post and please also note that I show over twenty simple tools - including flakes - on my website in Tools Galleries 1 and 2 which are just a few from many many more.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wilson740/palaeoart/tools%20gallery.htmlhttp://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wilson740/palaeoart/tools%20gallery%202.htmlThis of course is in addition to the many other items shown throughout the website and presented as possible iconography often in addition to their evident use (example 1 below) or potential to function as a tool (example 2 below).
e.g. 1.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wilson740/palaeoart/lion%2001.htmle.g. 2.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wilson740/palaeoart/face%2007.htmlI am disappointed you wouldn't accept my challenge to dispute the authenticity of any item I present as worked on my website, I was quite looking forward to it. However, I am more disappointed that you should feel it necessary to cease posting here. Your input will surely be missed.
kind regards
Richard.
