Uniface blades... are these common?

[Eastern]

I have found many, many of similar artifacts that are uniface with a flat top and sharpened bottom. Some are barely flaked, others are definitely worked on. All these are examples of the knive types I find, and they are many. Disposable quick knives? Found these from an inch to up to 5” in a Jackson Co, Mo creek.

Please, in this forum some are quick to state an opinion about everything I place on here to not being an artifact. I have found way too many similar stones shaped like these in this area and nowhere else in many other creeks I hunted. My questions are: are these intermediate knives common, in what era if any ideas and any idea as to what they were used for? Thanks so much for all input!

[Broken Arrow]

Those are flake tools and some nice ones in my opinion. Quick in the sense that they are just removed from the bi-face or core and ready to use. They weren't disposeable though. Lithic conservation was one of the keys to survival and tools like this were used until there was nothing left and sometimes smaller flakes were removed from items like that. Although flake tools can appear in all periods, ones like what you are showing were a very important part of paleo and archaic toolkits and they served a variety of purposes, scraping, cutting, some may have been turned in to points larger ones would have been used as biface cores which were also multipurpose.

[Eastern]

Thank you so much for your input! This was right where a Paleo community was that I found on the Internet after doing research. It’s by a man-made lake & the creek runs right into it here in the county. I seen an article or two about what they found and I find all kinds of these! I appreciate you!

[Ron Kelley]

Debitage from the flint knapping process. Yes they are very common. When I knap a large knife I could get dozens of those from a single rock.

[Ron Kelley]

The nicks that I see on the edge do not look like pressure flaking. These flakes are in fact ancient artifacts. To determine if any of the flakes was used as a tool we would have to look for use wear and that can be tough to see especially in a photo.

[Eastern]

Thank you! I have so many questions & icees! Mind if I send a pic here and there if I find some items I wonder about? Sounds like you know what you are doing!

[Ron Kelley]

I am happy to give my opinion Eastern. I will add that some of my favorite ancient artifacts are flake knives with secondary flaking.

[Ron Kelley]

Hey Eastern, I hope you don't mind me showing a couple of my favorite flake knives: This is the kind of secondary flaking that I would be looking for and I hope this helps.

[Eastern]

Definitely helps, thank you! Those look well more defined than many I have.

[Eastern]

Don’t know if this is a flake knife or not, as it is thicker than many of my others.

[Broken Arrow]

Imo, interpreting artifacts by comparing them to something from modern flintknapping practices, that may be visually similar, is not a viable method for determining the nature of an artifact or how and why the artifact came to be. That type of comparison assumes that the finished product model existed and was being used, simultaneously yet independently of the core model, it assumes that flakes were not purposefully created with the intent to utilize them, but that they were merely a byproduct that got secondary consideration after the primary task was complete. Modern flintknappers don't utilize lithics for the same reasons or in the same manner as ancient man. A modern knapper sees a core and thinks about the endgame of replicating points or knives. An ancient knapper would have seen a core and thought carefully about how to get the most out of it and made his strikes accordingly. What is left at the end of each of those processes is there as a result of different circumstances and neither should be used to interpret the other. One mans trash is another mans treasure. One mans debitage was another mans way of life.

[OnewiththewilD]

I kinda disagree,their finished model products were what they were going for when bopping into a core, yes they had their particular style blade/point in mind when making said item and yes they put aside what was still usable that resulted from making their particular tool. And I do feel that modern knapping is a viable way to interpret what we find today. There’s only so many ways to do this stuff and if we use the same kind of tools and make things the same way they did it doesnt matter if we utilize the flakes we produce or not. The process is still the same. And I think whatever time period when a ancient knapper looked at a core he was trying to find his particular blade/point style within that stone and was trying to figure out how to get it out of it.

[BoilerMike]

I’ve seen places where most of the larger (quarter-sized and up) flakes had edge work - I know it must be a common enough occurrence because I’ve seen it more than once, and I know other people talk about sites like that too. Based on what I hear some people say from other parts of the country or just with different experiences, that probably isn’t always the case and might even be the exception to the rule. One thing to consider might be that, like the history of the past 20k years on other continents, there were probably countless geographically-overlapping cultures and traditions that each had their own way of doing things, rather than one approach to something like lithic conservation.

Reasons for deciding to optimize waste flakes or not probably depended on a lot of factors like how mobile or isolated someone was, if the ground was frozen, their trade network connections, whether prior generations picked up all the best material from the local gravel bar, the types of tools they needed to support their specific way of life, etc.

[Ron Kelley]

When Ancient man percussed a spall with a hammerstone he created a lot of waste flakes which were used for nothing.

[Ron Kelley]

Some of those flakes were altered to become many different kinds of tools. Some of those flakes were used as knives as is. The majority of those flakes were just waste flakes.

[Tam]

Agree with you both because I see tons of those .

[CTex]

My first impression was the same as Ron's. They all appear to be artifacts, but likely debitage. On the quarry site I hunt, pieces similar to that are quite common.

[SDhunter]

Look for the secondary flaking as Ron explained, and then you know for sure it was utilized as a flake. Otherwise, with no secondary flaking, it may or may not have been used. I’m assuming the best edges for doing the labors needed were worked. Some of these may have been worked later, given the chance, as Broken Arrow suggested. I have lots of little flake tools and have picked up lots of flakes with no extra work done on them. I don’t know why some were worked and others weren’t. They may have been lost in production or not suitable to finish, or just not needed at the time. It’s fun to try and think about all the possibilities. Thanks for sharing

[OnewiththewilD]

My take on it is like Ron said, when you make a stone tool you make ALOT of flakes depending on how big of a chunk you start off with. And no not every flake was a precious source of a tool. If you happened to knock off a good spall or flake yeah that one goes into the good material pile, but when your working with common readily available material there’s no reason to hold onto every piece. Primitive life was hard and demanding, but not quite the struggle day to day that we should assume, after all they had many thousands of years to refine their life habits.

[Eastern]

I appreciate all the info! I’m drastically looking forward to a really nice find here somewhere! I realize what you guys are saying and this 1 5/6 “ blade I believe is a good example that I found.

[OnewiththewilD]

It sure is , great find

[Jethro355]

Ron is right about this. On a site I visit a lot, I found the place where I believe the knappers went to do their business. Tens of thousands of chips and broken rock pieces scattered over a half acre, and every now and again you’ll find a broken point in all the dibitage, but Man they made a lot of gravel in the process.