The impact of white patina in obscuring use-wear traces

Poster presented at the 18th UISPP conference in Paris. Abstract: To examine the effect of white patination on use-wear analysis, we produced replica artifacts and used them in wood scraping tasks. We then compared casts of these use- traces before and after experimentally induced patination. We found that patination does not always obfuscate microscopic use-wear traces dependent on lithic raw material type and intensity of patination. This indicates that assemblages that have traditionally been overlooked for use-wear analysis may indeed be suitable for (limited) study.