Compter ou peser... ? Valeurs absolues ou relatives... ? À propos d'amas coquilliers anthropiques sur la côte ouest de la péninsule d'Oman.

摘要

The study of archaeological artefacts collected in samples on the surface of sites, as well as those coming from excavations, raises several problems of evaluation of their actual amount (in number or by weight, as relative or absolute values) ; this has been rarely considered from a general and pragmatic or, even less, theorical point of view. The experimental survey conducted at Hamriyah she in the Sharjah Emirate gave us an opportunity to tackle problems of validity of some descriptive parameters of the population of the collected shell remains (percentage in number or by weight in all or part of the sample, law of division of shells, average weight of fragments according to the species...). Moreover, an attempt was made for establishing some empirical formulas which could allow to deduce, from some of these easily obtainable parameters, other types of data such as the total number of fragments, or even the number of fragments and the weight of shells of each species in a given sample.