text: Artifact replication plays an important role in comparing artifact use. Often objects are made not just to prove a manufacturing process or to sit in a display case, but to show that a given object will show signs of wear that are similar to those present in the archaeological record. Roberts and Ottaway conducted such experimental reconstructions by casting bronze axes using them in a preconceived manner and then comparing the results against known archaeological remains. Results gathered from such experimentation have found that objects have comparable wear patterns and there are European socketed axes that were deposited used as well as unused.  Tool mark identification can also go the opposite ways using experimental reconstruction to show the difference between various material media and the wear patterns they leave.  Greenfield gives one such experiment where steel, bronze, and stone tool marks on bone are all researched and examples are given for how they might be seen in the archaeological record.
  Energy consumption and efficiency is another topic of interest in archaeometallurgy. Tree felling and land clearing experiments involving comparison of stone, bronze, and steel axes are popular with a number of archaeologists  In these types of experiments, factors such as time spent and oxygen intake of the researchers are taken into account to try to find similarities in past life ways use of energy.