Chapter 10

Preform (aka blank)

A basic piece or blank form used to make a specific kind of finished product. Term is used in lithic studies to describe early stages in manufacture of certain kinds of tools like projectile points.

Chert

A cryptocrystalline quartz with large crystal size and impurities that give it color and cloudiness.

Burin

A distinctively edged stone tool combining a 90 degree edge and an oblique angled working edge.

Cortical Flake

A flake with some of some of the outer surface (cortex) of the stone nodule present.

Soft Hammer

A flintknapping technique that involves the use of a hammer or bone, antler, or wood, rather than stone.

Lithics

A generic term used for stone artifacts in archaeology and more specifically for flaked stone artifacts.

Hammer and Anvil

A hard hammer percussion technique which involves striking the core (hammer) against a large rock in the ground (anvil) to produce a flake.

Flint

A hard, siliceous stone that breaks in predictable ways to produce sharp flakes, common raw material for stone tools in prehistory.

Cortex

A heavily weathered rind on the outside of flint or chert nodules. The presence at this cortex is the criterion for a cortical flake.

Bulb of Percussion

A partial cone of fracture that is sen on the inner surface of flakes as a slightly rounded protrusion or bulb.

Hard Hammer

A percussion technique for making stone tools by striking one stone, or core, with another stone or hammer.

Punch

A piece of antler, bone, or wood used as a pointed object between the hammer and the core to assist the removal of the flake, a kind of chisel for flintknapping.

Blade

A special kind of elongated flake with two parallel sides and a length at least twice the width of the piece. The regular manufacture of blades characterized the Upper Paleolithic, with an efficient way of producing mass quantities of cutting edges.

Hammerstone

A stone used to knock flakes from cores part of the toolkit of a flintknapper.

Pressure Flaking

A technique for producing stone artifacts by removing flakes from a stone core by pressing with a pointed implement.

Percussion Flaking

A technique for producing stone artifacts by striking or knapping crystalline stone with a hard or soft hammer.

Refitting

A technique for reassembling the scattered pieces of stone, pottery, or bone at an archaeological site to study patterns of manufacture and disposal.

Bifacial

A term describing a flaked stone tool in which both faces or sides are retouched to make a thinner tool.

Unifacial

A term describing a flaked stone tool in which only one face or side is retouched to make a thinner tool.

Waste/Debitage

A term referring to all the pieces of shatter and flakes produced and not used when stone tools are made.

Flake

A type of stone artifact produced by removing a piece from a core by chipping or knapping. Flakes are made into a variety of different kinds of tools or used for their sharp edges (without further retouching).

Patination

A weathering process that gradually changes the surface appearance of lint from shiny to dull, and often from one color to another over time; the new surface is described as patina.

Tool

Any equipment, weapon, object intentionally modified by humans to change the environment around them.

Flintknapping

Chipping or flaking stone to make tools and other artifacts.

Projectile Point

Generic name for the range of shapes and materials used to make a sharp end on weapons such as spears, darts, javelins, arrows and the like.

Expedient Tools

Implements that are quickly made, used, and discarded. The technology is fairly simple, production fairly rapid, used for more general purposes, and discard immediate.

Knapping

Intentionally removing a series of flakes, working stone.

Microwear Analysis

Microscopic studies of damage and polish on the edges of stone artifacts to reveal the materials that were worked.

Hertzian Cone

Name for the bulb of force produced in fracture of cryptocrystalline materials.

Concoidal Fracture

Shell-like shape of the interior surface of a flake; the breakage pattern seen in flaking stone tools.

Microliths

Small blades and geometric forms of stone tools, usually associated with the Mesolithic Period in the Old World.

Curated Tools

Special-purpose implements that require specific raw materials and substantial time and labor in manufacture. Curated tools can often be repaired or recycled and are normally discarded only when exhausted.

Cryptocrystalline

Stone with microscopic crystals, formed from silica under pressure in marine deposits, such as quartz, cert, and flint.

Handaxe

The characteristic artifact of the Paleolithic; a large teardrop-shaped stone tool bi-facially flaked to a point at one end and a broader base at the other, for general-purpose use.

Lithic Assemblage

The complete set of stone artifacts found at an archaeological area.

Striking Platform

The flat surface of a core where a blow is struck to remove flakes, visible at the top of the flakes.

Bulbar Surface (aka ventral)

The inner, fresh surface of a flake.

Dorsal Surface

The outer surface of a flake.

Fracture Mechanics

The physics of how materials break.

Type List

The set of types of artifacts for a specific area.

Retouching

The shaping or sharpening of stone artifacts though percussion or pressure flaking; a technique called flintknapping.

Core

The stone from which other pieces or flakes are removed. Core tools are shaped by the removal of flakes.

Nodule

Unworked pieces of stone, raw material for making stone tools.

Microburin

(1) A technique for making segments of blades into small geometric pieces (microlith); (2) Waste products the microburin process are also called microburins.

Chaine Operatoire

(French for "sequence of production") The different stages of production from the acquisition of raw material to the final abandonment of the desired and/or used objects.