This summer in Guatemala, I focused on analysis of chert tools and debitage from household groups at Holtun. While working in the Holtun Project laboratory in Guatemala City, I had to get a little creative trying to analyze large amounts of debitage quickly.
We decided that the best way to quickly analyze the 13+kg of chert was to do a class size analysis. Normally when you do class size analysis you create circles on a piece of paper of various diameters. You then see which circle each piece fits in and assign it to that class size. This, however, can still be extremely time consuming.
Instead we decided to use a series of screens and baskets of various sizes. This separated the chert pieces into different size classes based on what fell through each size of screen/basket. In this way, we were able to more efficiently sort over 28,000 pieces of chert debitage into size classes in the extremely short period of time we had…even with having to count all of those pieces once they were sorted into size class!
Just a note – it’s always a good idea to wear gloves when dealing with lithic debitage! I didn’t and my hands definitely paid for that decision!
