Mystery fluted paleo piece?

[Th3rty7]

I found this piece in a rock shelter in wv on private land. I think it could be a possible paleo preform, because it's fairly thick, but has a 3 inch flute on one side. Material is highly patinated local flint. If you have any comments or ideas on possible type I'd love to hear them. I wish I had an insitu of this piece(didn't have the camera on me) the other pic is some of the limestone outcroppings and formations in front of the shelter. There is a couple of petroglyphes in the area as well.

 

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[SoIll]

I dont think it's a preform because flutes are the last thing that would be put on one. Looks good though.

 

[badandy]

Agreed! Fluting was the last thing they did to a point to finish it. About 50% of the time they broke the point during the fluting process as well, but it's worked no doubt about that!

badandy

 

[unitas]

Nice artifact, looks like a really neat place to look around as well.

 

[Carolina Points]

Nice artifact
Clint

 

[seger98]

Nice point & that outcropping looks like a neat place to hangout for the day lurking around!

 

[pickaway]

nice find i would definately br poking round that area...

 

[Miami-valley-artifacts]

thats a finished piece, its just not really refined. but it is however what I would call a find of a lifetime considering that it's fluted and large. great find and I would take another look in that rock shelter

 

[Th3rty7]

thanks for all the comments folks, I really spent about 6 hours in that shelter, worked it over pretty thoroughly with the landowner and a hunting buddy. This piece was found about a foot deep, we also found 2 crude hammerstones, and a uniface knife, and an obsidian awl, which is kind of rare for my neck of the woods. I'd really like to get back there and dig deeper, but the property has changed hands.

 

[uniface]

FWIW, what Tony Baker called "end thinning" was sometimes employed several times during the reduction sequence, depending on the morphology of the preform. Before he got to examine Carl Yanig's Littler River assemblage he thought it distinguished western Clovis from eastern Clovis, but it turned out to be a common feature in both. It's in his blog somewhere, if it's still up (or accessible via the wayback machine).

 

[Quartzite Keith]

Could be They did sometimes flute in the preform stage and then sort of build the point around the flutes. In Juliet Morrow's paper on the Ready Site in Jersey County, Illinois she notes that Clovis knappers there did this, mostly using Burlington chert. Finished points there were about what you would expect for Clovis: "Unresharpened or minimally resharpened points in this group average 71 mm in length, 27 mm in width, and 7.8 mm in thickness." But fluting started in the preform stage, "At the timing of first flute removal, stage 4 bifaces made of Burlington chert average 103 mm in length, 43 mm in width, and 10.7 mm in thickness."

On the other hand, all knappers at all times occasionally made flute like flakes during the thinning process, especially when trying to clear out defects in the stone they couldn't otherwise get a good shot at. It looks like there is some bad material in there on the right side above the flute. Two flakes coming in from the left "stepped out" and were unable to cut through it. That may have led to a couple of "hail mary" attempts from the base.

 

[uniface]

URL from memory was www.ele.net (via wayback machine -- no longer a current site)

 

[monsterrack]

I'm not trying say folks are wrong on when they fluted them because who knows for sure. In my years of knapping I would flute the preform then thin it down with indirect flaking. It just doesn't make since to me that you would spend all that time on a point and then do the thing that mostly cause it to snap. You can snap one in half just by doing indirect percussion flaking. JMO

 

[uniface]

FWIW, whether it makes sense in the context of your procedure/technique or not, study of many failed points in progress established their procedure.

Oftentimes failures preserve more information that the successes.

 

[joshuaream]

I would agree with Uniface (twice this week, starting to feel like old times. )

I've found and studied a lot of broken fluted point bifaces and preforms from my site and a couple of others, and when near a quarry the method was flute early flute often.

 

[Always_Seek_The_Treasure]

More pics please

 

[Tnmountains]

More pics please

The post is very old and the original poster has not been seen here in some time.

 

[gilmerman]

That is one to be proud of. Display it.