At its most basic level, lithic analyses involve an analysis of the artifact's morphology, the measurement of various physical attributes, and examining other visible features (such as noting the presence or absence of cortex, for example).
Among the tool types analyzed are projectile points, bifaces, unifaces, ground stone artifacts, and lithic reduction by-products (debitage) such as flakes and cores.
The best known lithic typology is the series established by François Bordes (1950) for the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic of France, where sixty three types of stone tools were defined on the basis of manufacturing techniques and morphological characteristics.
For instance, the use of typologies as indicators of chronological and/or cultural affiliations is rarely disputed and is acknowledged as an invaluable analytical tool for this purpose.
The ability of a microwear analyst has been tested in the past by presenting them with a set of experimentally produced and utilised tool in a blind experiment.
A research of the Wola society in Papua New Guinea shows that stone tools have a wide range of uses, but a short lifespan.
[7] One such method of experimentation is to use steel balls dropped by an electromagnet onto a glass prism to test relationships such as platform thickness and flake length.
[9] A very wide range of attributes may be used to characterize and compare assemblages to isolate (and interpret) differences across time and space in the production of stone tools.
[10] There have been efforts to identify variables to predict original size of discarded tool artifact but the results yielded from these studies have not been uniform and research continues.
[11] Kuhn (1990) [12] presents his Geometric Index of Unifacial Reduction, an equation for estimating the mass loss of retouched stone artefacts.
Discovering the amount a particular flake has been reduced can help archaeologists answer questions of tool maintainability, optimal resources, and knapping practices.
The premise is that archaeologists presume a blueprint of the end-product of stone tool, or say a mental map with step-by-step processes of prehistoric people in mind.
The technological diversity decreases when the mobility frequency and magnitude become greater, which is consistent with theoretically derived expectations from 14 ethnographic groups.
One example of this application is Yellin (1996) in which neutron activation analysis was used to trace the source of obsidian artifacts found at the Gilat site in Israel.
Lithic reduction itself can be studied to help illuminate the settlement and movement patterns of hunter-gatherer groups by following the idea of Central Place Foraging Models.