Measuring artefact reduction: an examination of Kuhn's Geometric Index of Reduction

Abstract

A growing number of techniques have been proposed in recent years to quantify how much retouch has been applied to flakes. This paper reviews the most prominent of these, and evaluates one in particular – Kuhn’s (1990) Geometric Index of Unifacial Reduction. This involves a simple experiment designed to explore the performance of the index over a sequence of retouching events for a population of thirty flakes. The results indicate that the index performs admirably in relation to absolute measures of reduction under experimental conditions, and does so especially well in comparison to a number of common alternative techniques.