How to integrate quantification into qualitative use-wear analysis?

The field of use-wear quantification has seen significant methodological efforts as well as the first archaeological applications in the recent decades, and progress is currently being made in refining techniques to distinguish quantitatively between worn surfaces resulting from tool use. Yet, as it currently stands, use-wear quantification is embedded in an essentially qualitative analytical framework that requires the analyst to be fully trained in “traditional” use-wear analysis to successfully quantify wear. In this paper, we propose ways in which quantitative analysis could be developed further as a meaningful component of qualitative use-wear approach instead of its competitor. Quantitative approaches have mainly focused on polish, but using experimental and archaeological case studies, we highlight four other key points: 1) we state that different forms of edge damage play a crucial role in determining tool use but have largely escaped quantification efforts, 2) we add further data to discuss differences in wear formation on various lithic raw materials and the challenges of finding a one-for-all protocol that could be also applied quantitatively, 3) we demonstrate the difficulties in interpreting trace causality through quantification, and 4) we discuss ways in which the problem of altered use-wear could be approached by future quantification efforts based on our recent experimentation as well as analysis of archaeological material from varied contexts. By contextualising surface metrological approaches, we propose analytical challenges to which they could respond and identify aspects that have thus far been underdeveloped. In doing so, we hope to present wear quantification as a useful component in a comprehensive, sequential use-wear approach that employs different scales of observation in a stepwise manner and relies on rigorous testing of protocols and analyst competence as well as their transparent reporting.