Increasingly researchers have employed confocal microscopy and 3D surface texture analysis to assess bone surface modifications in an effort to understand ancient behavior. However, quantitative comparisons between the surfaces of purported archaeological bone tools and experimentally manufactured and used bones are complicated by taphonomic processes affecting ancient bone. Nonetheless, it may be reasonable to assume that bones within the same deposits are altered similarly and thus these alterations are quantifiable. Here we show how unworked bones can be used to quantify the taphonomic effect on bone surfaces and how this effect can then be controlled for and incorporated into an analysis for evaluating the modified surfaces of purported bone tools. To assess the baseline taphonomy of Middle Paleolithic archaeological deposits associated with typologically identified bone artifacts, specifically lissoirs, we directly compare the surface textures of ancient and modern unworked ribs. We then compare the ancient unworked ribs and lissoirs to assess their differences and predict the ancient artifacts’ original surface state using a multilevel multivariate Bayesian model. Our findings demonstrate that three of five tested surface texture parameters (Sa, Spc, and IsT) are useful for distinguishing surface type. Our model predictions show that lissoirs tend to be less rough, have more rounded surface peaks, and exhibit more directionally oriented surfaces. These characteristics are likely due to anthropogenic modifications and would have been more pronounced at deposition. Quantifying taphonomic alterations moves us one step closer to accurately assessing how bone artifacts were made and used in the ancient past.

越来越多的研究人员采用共聚焦显微镜和3D表面纹理分析来评估骨表面修饰，以了解古老的行为。但是，由于影响古代骨骼的Thonomic过程，使声称的考古骨骼工具的表面与实验制造和使用的骨骼之间的定量比较变得复杂。但是，可以合理地假设相同沉积物中的骨骼发生了类似的变化，因此这些变化是可以量化的。在这里，我们展示了如何使用未加工的骨头来量化骨表面上的tophonomic影响，以及如何可以控制这种影响并将其并入分析中，以评估声称的骨头工具的修改后的表面。lissoirs，我们直接比较古代和现代的未加工肋骨的表面纹理。然后，我们使用多层多元贝叶斯模型比较古代未加工的肋骨和lissoirs，以评估它们的差异并预测古代文物的原始表面状态。我们的发现表明，五个测试表面纹理参数（Sa，Spc和IsT）中的三个可用于区分表面类型。我们的模型预测表明，lissoirs往往不那么粗糙，具有更多的圆形表面峰，并表现出更多的定向表面。这些特性可能是由于人为因素引起的，并且在沉积时会更加明显。量化局部变化可以使我们更加精确地评估古代人工骨的制作和使用方式。