Found this on my ranch in Commanche County Texas. It is about 4 inches long by 2 inches wide. Fairly sharp on one end. Was it used for scraping or cutting by the Indians?
Found this on my ranch in Commanche County Texas. It is about 4 inches long by 2 inches wide. Fairly sharp on one end. Was it used for scraping or cutting by the Indians?
Found this on my ranch in Commanche County Texas. It is about 4 inches long by 2 inches wide. Fairly sharp on one end. Was it used for scraping or cutting by the Indians?
That last one is a discarded biface. We call them spoiled knives. The reason it was discarded is the steep angled edge at the bottom. With that edge angle it would not be possible to flake across the face and remove the remaining cortex. Making an arrowhead is a race between width and thickness. You lose width to make it thinner. This relationship is can be expressed as the width to thickness ratio. The goal is to end up with a biface that has a ratio of at least 5:1. Five times as wide at it is thick. This gives a thin edge angle but is thick enough overall for durability. Resharpened or “used up” points will have a ratio of 4:1 or 3:1. At those ratios the edge angle becomes to steep and it doesn’t cut as good. Some point types like midwestern turkey tails have ratios of 7:1 or even 9:1. Very low edge angles and can be made very sharp, but they are much more fragile at higher ratios.
