Title: Core concept: defining cores in the archaeology of Indigenous Australia
Journal: Lithic Technology
Author: Simon Wyatt-Spratt
DOI: 10.1080/01977261.2025.2451546
Abstract: One of the biggest impediments to the analysis of cores in the archaeology of Indigenous Australia is the slippery use of terminology. This impairs comparative analyses and limits our ability to extrapolate meaningful information from our lithic analyses. This situation has resulted from a history of poorly articulated theoretical and methodological frameworks. While there has been some discussion and debate about the interpretative frameworks used to interpret the results of lithic analysis, the theoretical underpinnings of lithic analysis in Australia have only occasionally been interrogated. This has led to a situation where the same terminology for basic concepts in lithic analysis is used across Australia, but with different meanings depending on the archaeologist who is using it. The aim of this paper is to explore how the historical development of lithic analysis in Australia has resulted in the same terminology for cores being used in subtly but fundamentally different ways.
Keywords: archaeology of Indigenous Australia; lithic technology; cores; history of archaeology; lithic taxonomy
Acknowledgements: Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. Many thanks to Amy Mosig Way for extensive and insightful commentary on early drafts of this paper. Many thanks also to Anuja Limaye and to three anonymous reviewers for many suggestions that greatly improved the paper. All errors and omissions remain my own.
Repository Author: Simon Wyatt-Spratt
Contained within this repository are the R code, data (one *.csv file), the resulting figures and tables produced for the article, and a copy of the final paper.
For anymore information on the paper, code, or resources please contact Simon Wyatt-Spratt at: simon.wyatt-spratt@sydney.edu.au
Text and figures : CC-BY-4.0
Data : CC-0 attribution requested in reuse
