Assessment of statistical agreement of three techniquesfor the study of cut marks: 3D digital microscope, laserscanning confocal microscopy and micro-photogrammetry

In the last few years, the study of cut marks on bone surfaceshas become fundamental for the interpretation of prehistoricbutchery practices. Due to the difficulties in the correct iden-tification of cut marks, many criteria for their description andclassification have been suggested. Different techniques, suchas three-dimensional digital microscope (3D DM), laser scan-ningconfocalmicroscopy(LSCM)andmicro-photogrammetry(M-PG) have been recently applied to the study of cut marks.Although the 3D DM and LSCM microscopic techniques arethe most commonly used for the 3D identification of cut marks,M-PG has also proved to be very efficient and a low-costmethod. M-PG is a noninvasive technique that allows thestudy of the cortical surface without any previous prepara-tion of the samples, and that generates high-resolution mod-els. Despite the current application of microscopic and micro-photogrammetric techniques to taphonomy, their reliabilityhas never been tested. In this paper, we compare 3D DM,LSCM and M-PG in order to assess their resolution and results.In this study, we analyse 26 experimental cut marks generatedwith a metal knife. The quantitative and qualitative informa-tion registered is analysed by means of standard multivariatestatistics and geometric morphometrics to assess the similari-ties and differences obtained with the different methodologies.