Evaluación de tratamientos de limpieza en material arqueológico y análisis de sus efectos en estudios posteriores

Identifier:  TDX:4454

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX4454

Authors:  Valtierra Pereiro, Noé

Abstract:
The bone material constitutes an importan! part of the archaeological heritage, especially in prehistoric contexts. lts study provides valuable information about hominins' subsistence strategies. The study of its inconspicuous surface modifications by taphonomy is one of the main sources of archaeological information in this regard. However, on many occasions, il is necessary to first clean the bone to remove the sedimentary matrix covering it in order to perform these analyses. One of the most commonly applied cleaning methods is mechanical cleaning. This doctoral thesis has evaluated the modification capacity of sorne of the most common mechanical cleaning tools when cleaning archaeological bone material and has defined the independent variables that influence cleaning. An evaluation methodology has been developed that allows the objective identification of modifications resulting from the use of tools, avoiding equifinality problems, allowing to assess whether they can interfere with taphonomic studies, by creating trephic modifications (neotaphonomic). The results obtained have shown that no tool is completely innocuous, and that ali of them introduce sorne level of modification to the surface of the bone material. On the other hand, it has been ruled out that modifications derived from mechanical cleaning can be confused with taphonomic origin modifications although they may influence their characteristics. The results obtained contribute significantly to the understanding of this type of treatment and its role as a neotaphonomic factor.