Heating of flint debitage from Upper Palaeolithic contexts at Manot Cave, Israel: Changes in atomic organization due to heating using infrared spectroscopy

Steve Weiner; Vlad Brumfeld; Ofer Marder; Omry Barzilai

doi:10.1016/j.jas.2014.11.023

Heating of flint debitage from Upper Palaeolithic contexts at Manot Cave, Israel: Changes in atomic organization due to heating using infrared spectroscopy

Steve Weiner, Vlad Brumfeld, Ofer Marder, Omry Barzilai

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

25 Scopus citations

Abstract

The heat treatment of flint is known to change its mechanical properties and improve its fracture behaviour during knapping. Here we examine 20 flint artifacts from Upper Paleolithic contexts from Manot Cave, Israel, using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and compare them to geogenic flint beds from the walls inside the cave and from outcrops just above the cave. We show that the 512 and 467cm^-1 peaks are broader in most of the flint debitage pieces as compared to the geogenic flint, and that broadening of these peaks occurs when geogenic flint from the cave wall is heated. We also present an empirical simple method to monitor these changes.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	45-53
Number of pages	9
Journal	Journal of Archaeological Science
Volume	54
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2014.11.023
State	Published - 1 Feb 2015
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Partial financial support was obtained from the Max Planck – Weizmann Center for Integrative Archaeology and Anthropology , as well as the Kimmel Center for Archaeological Science . S.W. holds the Dr. Walter and Dr. Trude Borchardt Professorial Chair in Structural Biology. The excavations at Manot Cave are supported by grants from the Dan David Foundation , the Leaky Foundation , the CARE Foundation and the Israel Antiquities Authority . We thank Dmitry Yegorov for his advice and help in analyzing the flint material.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

Keywords

Chert heating
Flint heating
Flint knapping
Infrared spectroscopy
Manot Cave

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abstract = "The heat treatment of flint is known to change its mechanical properties and improve its fracture behaviour during knapping. Here we examine 20 flint artifacts from Upper Paleolithic contexts from Manot Cave, Israel, using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and compare them to geogenic flint beds from the walls inside the cave and from outcrops just above the cave. We show that the 512 and 467cm-1 peaks are broader in most of the flint debitage pieces as compared to the geogenic flint, and that broadening of these peaks occurs when geogenic flint from the cave wall is heated. We also present an empirical simple method to monitor these changes.",

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Heating of flint debitage from Upper Palaeolithic contexts at Manot Cave, Israel: Changes in atomic organization due to heating using infrared spectroscopy

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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