This paper is addressed to the nature and relevance of the study of wear traces on stone tools to artifact typology. I suggest that typology ought to be relieved of the burden it has had to carry in the name of style and function and that it is a ready-made sampling technique for wear studies. At this stage in the development of microwear analysis there are several schools of thought, and there are several methods of research. The method I use is that developed by LAWRENCE KEELEY at Oxford (see 1977a). Its accuracy has been supported by two sorts of tests: a blind test (KEELEY Et NEWCOMER, 1977) and measurement of the light intensity of different kinds of polish (KEELEY, 1977b), and, further, by its duplication by other workers (papers given at conference on microwear, Sheffield, England, 1979). The method is sometimes called the high magnification method (e.g., SEITZER, 1978) even though it employs a whole range from about 30x to 560x.