Historia y actualidad del análisis funcional sobre materiales líticos en España

Abstract

History of functional analysis in Spain began in Barcelona in the late seventies and it is an important part of my own scientific biography. In 1980 I published the first paper on functional analysis, where both its methodology and possibilities were presented through three different applications on archaeological materials from Serinyà (Girona), a zone with important prehistoric sites. From the beginning I understood lithic use-wear analysis as an essential part of a new theoretical and methodological global and alternative approach which should replace the typological and formal approaches dominant at that time. The proposal became definite in my PhD theses (1981) and in a meeting I tought in 1986 (published in 1987). Since then we have been working and introducing methodological improvements to get reliable data and profitable analysis. Finally, the team working in the Archaeological Laboratory of the CSIC (Spanish Council for Scientific Research) has developed a proposal for lithic analysis that is based on both, our own technical experience, and the information gained through our ethnoarchaeological projects.

Only at the beginning of the nineties new PhD theses and papers on functional analysis appeared, and today they have become very common, yet, these studies do not constitute a new option to traditional approaches. In most cases they are just an annexe to traditional lithic analysis, so that from my point of view this development does not suggest a great future for functional analysis.