Call for papers: quantitative approaches to lithic analysis

I am delighted to announce that I am co-editing a new Collection in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, together with Dr Tanner Kovach (University of Michigan): Toward an Integration of Quantitative Approaches to Lithic Analysis.

What the Collection is about

Lithic analysts have been building quantitative methods since the 1960s, and the toolkit has grown enormously: multivariate treatments of technological attributes, 2D and 3D geometric morphometrics, reduction and retouch intensity indices, automated segmentation of CT-scanned assemblages, machine learning, simulation and spatial modelling, and experimental work on production and learning. Alongside these, R and Python have reshaped how reproducible our analyses can be, and open, FAIR datasets are becoming a normal part of how lithic research is shared.

What remains underexplored is how these methods relate to one another. How should their results be read alongside more traditional analyses? And how can the field accumulate knowledge across the very different regions, periods, and theoretical traditions in which stone tools are studied? Those are the questions this Collection sets out to address.

What we are looking for

We welcome contributions that develop, apply, critique, or extend quantitative approaches to lithic analysis — any region, any period. Methodological, theoretical, and applied papers are all in scope, and we are particularly keen to see work that reflects critically on reproducibility, accessibility, and the interpretive frameworks that underpin quantitative lithic research.

Critical and cautionary contributions are as welcome as enthusiastic ones. A Collection on integration would be poorer without papers that ask what these methods cannot do.

How to submit

Manuscripts go through the participating journal, JAMT, following its usual submission guidelines. The Collection is open for submissions now, with a deadline of 24 June 2028 — a deliberately long window, so there is room for projects that are still taking shape.

If you are considering a contribution and would like to discuss whether it fits, please get in touch.

→ View the Collection