 Thank you Natasha. Thank you all for being here. Yeah I'd like to thank Natasha and White for co-organizing this this session and so today I'm here on behalf of the of our team in in Mont repos and my talk today is a little bit to to to explain you and to take you over the research agenda of this project that we start two years two years ago in Mont repos in this laboratory for physiology and control experiments so it was a quite interesting it was interesting for me as a user person when I took this this job and this this project which kind of forced me a little bit to look at physiology in an upper level and so today I was I want to to I organize my talk in two main topics so first of all want to take you over the challenges that we faced and it was still facing in the lab and the main research questions are we want to tackle those issues we know we want to address those research questions and the second part of the talk will be I'll try to show our initial results and also some ongoing projects in the in the laboratory at the moment so I mean we all know it just to contextualize us so we all know that to use where analysis is a fundamental tool when we try to fundamental method when we try to for human behavior so use where basically is dedicated to try to understand human behavior through the analyze of human technologies from the past so use where basically means that we try to assess tool function and from there just try to reconstruct human behavior and see all these behavior change through time and in different in different spaces so we all know we're familiar with the work developed by Samilov in the early 60s which is kind of a starting point for the user methods since the early 60s a lot it's been done on use whereas as you know and despite the the very promising in the state of the yard nowadays there are few few issues or few limitations let's call it like is that have been pointed out to to just see how I would we would summarize them yes you see as a lack of a quantitative approach on on news where so lack of standardization which is all in repeatability and reproducibility which I'll address in a minute I'm talking for example about experiments and what concerning experiments that people have been saying that experiments include too many factor at once that means when you're testing many variables at the same time it's a bit tricky try to understand how they affect the final results in which fact variables affect the final results I'll also talk a little bit about this in detail in the in a few minutes and also the issue related to Rome at you so we all know that most of the reference collection that I use as a proxy to interpret the archaeological record and to interpret also the user the different types of user traces they rely on reference collection made on flint so that's limitation when we try to to analyze at the wrong till such as quartzite or obsidian or basalt which we know are significantly differently and we also came across of this recent idea which has been explored by some researchers recently that use where it's been used to inform on stone tools but there's a lack of knowledge about the tool utility I would call a tool utility for the sake of a better word and by tool to I mean I mean suitability of a tool to perform a given task the efficiency of the tool and also the durability of that of that tool so when we were asked to start this project and we were basically asked to come up with new ideas and try to tackle these these issues that were present in the in the field we come up with with some some some some main research avenues in our in our research agenda so our main goal our main scope is basically to build a model to use where formation in different types of raw materials but also to come up with some methodological developments and not concerned the methodological developments we mainly focus on control experiments quantitative approach on use where analyzes which is basically which basically aims to produce objective quantitative and interpretation free data can discuss a little bit about this but also the main goal is people not use were person or as known non-user specialist would say which the idea is to transform user analyzing to the natural sciences so that that's also accepting an archaeology community me maybe here 90% of you work on user but I'm pretty sure all of you were already asked about these all these limitations and now we can rely on use on user data so we basically were driven by these main questions are we can show how we can show others that use where is a very reliable discipline and of course I mean as a big part of our or as a as a big aim in our research questions we want to use this data and this approach to infer on Pleistocene and Arcogeology so the main research workflow in our in our lab is is basically includes three main steps so one is the material properties so we try to address the material properties try to investigate when characterized a different from materials I'll mention that in a second as well also includes variable control so it's which is a main topic in our experiments and then use work notification and it's it's a workflow that doesn't go in only in one direction but it's a circular argument okay so that means that sometimes we address raw material properties we go to the experiments and we do the user identification and in the data that we're getting from the user identification is basically driving us to come back to the initial so why should we measure material properties so as I just said I mean when you look at archaeological record we all know and we don't need to do user just need to nap some tools we know that different materials if they have different properties so I mean if those properties are are have a major have a major impact on the way we nap those those stone tools so certainly they have major impact on the formation of user so in other words we shouldn't expect to find the same type of user and different raw materials so but we still don't know clearly how our user forms in this different from it is on in a way it's fundamental to include the the properties in the in our experiments in measure the properties in order to see how these affect the user but also the work material so different stage for example not only different works material so I mean you can say that antler it's harder than then but you meet for example or for I'd working but also the stage of one of these different work materials it's also important in this they should also be considered when we're doing our experiments so at the moment I mean raw materials property properties as you might know I'm pretty sure you know and we can discuss about it is this is a very tricky topic so if when if you want to talk about harness which I'll address in a minute it's very very complicated and involves many different experts we try we try to start with the bigger approach and then go into more details so for example just including things such as density you know sometimes you're dealing with flint even within flint we have a huge variability so trying to include some measurements on density might help us also to see if different types of flint result in different types of use work also some composition of these raw materials use some examples of some techniques that we do that we're involving in our material properties measurements but also surface roughness so I mean use where especially when you're talking about quantification is measuring surface roughness so if we're running experiments on materials or in raw materials or rocks that have different surface roughness to begin with it's important to measure the original surface and for that one we can use the confocal microscopy and there are different techniques that can be used and for example I mentioned the harness so we use at our lab we have access to Librebound harness so we try to include harness when measuring the materials that we that we use in our stone tools but also the materials that we are working as I said in the beginning another important topic is ecological experiments so we all know that use where we rely heavily on experiments I mean our reference collections are based on experiments so I mean our argument goes in a way that our interpretations are based on experiments so we have to make sure that our experiments are valid in the first place they can they are and and everyone can can can can run the same experiment and try to get the same the same answer this is a bit tricky because when I try when we try to introduce this topic especially because we in our lab we mainly focus on this so-called second generation experiments and control experiments people always say that we're trying to neglect the basic experiments quite the opposite let me just go back the way we see it we try to organize experiments in different levels different levels you should be seen as they are less important than the others no they just address different topics so we're recently working in a paper that and we're suggesting that we can organize our experiments in three different levels so the first generation experiment which is basically actualistic in pilot experiments which is the main goal is to identify the factors it's for example is to test the suitability of a tool to perform a given task okay and we want to understand all the activity words and want to understand what variables seem to have a fact in final results and then we pick up those variables and we test what we call the second experiment oh really okay so this is one of the experimental setups that we use in our lab for the for the control for the control experiments which allow us to to control record and decide on many many different variables another important aspect that we considering is combining scales so we know that use where appears in different scales so it's important when you do analyze make that we combine different skills not just look at the use where itself in the polish but also consider the morphology and the edge damage and so on and so on and also quantification so this is a technique and the method that it's been established for many years and then the micro just a question of borrow the method to our to our field which is allows us to to to address and to measure and to quantify many different aspects that's like last night so let me just take you very quickly to some of our recent our initial case studies since we're very keen on quantification and quantification is important but it's also important to establish how we quantify you know I mean we can't quantify but if you quantify different many different ways when you try to compare I mean things get tricky so recently just come up with the idea of trying to measure all the different settings and the different characteristics of the of the objectives that we're using for for user studies and for quantification what's the what how they affect the final results and it's quite clear that they affect so although it's important that we don't I mean I know that I know we know that not all not all of us have access to the same equipment it's important that we report all settings when we bring quantification so that at the end data can be compared another important step is also what we call the sequential experiments so we come up with this idea of having coordinate system so that we can scan exactly the same exact spot after the experiment so that's that's very reproducible and we can not working with averages but also action but actually measuring the same exact spot over the experiment so that's allows us allow us to see how they use where it's formed through through the experiments that the result basically it's I mean it's it's an issue so we want we'd like to improve this but nevertheless although it's only 14% of repeatability in the field of view the software now now it's looking at the features on those field of view and combine the images and allows us to process the data here are also some ongoing experiments I mean one of them here on the right on your right yeah exactly it's one of the posts that Antonella is presenting here and these two case studies here clearly illustrate the idea that we want to combine different scales in our use where analysis which also includes address topics such as edge angle such as edge durability such as efficiency of the of the tool and so for example here on the left we're addressing one of the PhDs PhD students is working on bifacial stone tools for the middle polity so which are meant to be standardized and we want to test how the different edge angles influence the final results of the way the work the work material is processed and here on the right side of the poster you can check on Antonella's project that poster died is that we're testing two different raw materials so in this case flint and obsidian and we're trying to reproduce the same action the same movement and try to see which edge less longer so when trying to relate that with the properties of each of these of these raw materials and thank you for your attention