For lack of an accepted term already in common use, a Cobble Core Cap Graver.
Step one in reducing a chert cobble is to knock one end of it off at more or less a right angle to the axis of the cobble.
Whatever the bigger piece ends up as, the cap that's removed has potential usefulness in its own right -- especially if it's prime quality stuff in an environment where good flint is scarce.
So often, rather than discarding it, it would become a flake core. The first round of punch-offs would remove the cortex ; depending on its size, there might be several rounds worth of increasingly smaller removals in it -- each one a little flake or mini-blade with three razor sharp edges.
When you look at this from the top view, the way the flaking around the perimeter converges toward the center shows you this is what was going on here.
Finally, when it's too small, stubby and thick to be of much further use, you can still get a couple of lateral removals off the base (picture two). (Plus, you may have run a few off as you've gone along to true your striking platform back up).
In this case, it ended up with a graver spur at one end which was not unlikely to have been used. More frequently, one or more edge areas would be trimmed into scraping edges and it would finish its lifespan as a cobble core cap scraper.
(Don't expect anybody with an archaeological education to accept such a home-made term as legitimate. That doesn't happen until they come up with it themselves).
Whether stuff like this is interesting & neat or just junk depends on how you approach it. To me, pieces like this are "the good stuff."
Dang, Uniface, that was one sweet detailed explanation of something I have found myself [quartz in my case] and wondered about. It's clear to me now what I couldn't imagine five minute ago.
It's obvious I need to learn to knapp to better appreciate some of these cool sharp whatsits I've been picking up. At first I had trouble believing some of these flakes were tools until I learned to see the work [from this forum].
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