Flint tools and plant working : hidden traces of Stone Age technology : a use wear study of some Danish Mesolithic and TRB implements

The amount of information that can be derived from stone tools has increased dramatically during this century. One of the latest approaches to the topic is functional analysis of flint tool edges using high-power microscopy, a method developed by L. Keeley in the late 1970s. This work is based on this method, and concerns tool functions in the Danish late-Mesolithic Ertebolle culture, as well as in the Neolithic Funnel Breaker (TRB) culture. The investigations focus on evidence of prehistoric plant working, and on "gloss", a lacquer-like sheen or use-wear, well-known to most archaeologists.