Interesting Knife -- ID ?

[uniface]

Red Jasper knife from somewhere in Tennessee. Heavy river scunge partly cleaned.

Basal thinning strikes made me suspect (hope ) Paleo time frame, but not so. The base being fire-popped off I could see from the pictures (ebay).

A big, unremoveable hump kept it from being a point ; pretty carefully re-sharpened as a knife. Resharpening (tip half) is distinctly right-beveled, which is probably the key to its age.

Since my (relative) familiarity with points stops with Early Archaic (left beveling), I'm hoping someone familiar with east-central artifacts can jump in here and narrow it down further than just not paleo and not early archaic either.

Thanks in Advance

 

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[uniface]

Option "B"

Plano-convex cross section might indicate having been a blade-like removal (the usual starting point for a lot of early points) with a twist in it that the maker decided to follow to save material once it was clear that the hump wasn't going to come off (?)

 

[jeff a]

nice blade uniface, where have you read that the difference in beveling is an age indicator,havent heard of that one

 

[Tnmountains]

Alot of things here have the basil thinning. A copena will have it and sometimes they will call a large Copena a paleo knife and other times its just a Copena its very confusing. I will be interested to here what everyone says about it. Nice ebay find. i have seen two diff guys on e-bay selling what seem to be authentic stuff from my area. I bought now my first two pieces so I could hold them. They fit the area I hunt..
TnMtns

 

[uniface]

where have you read that the difference in beveling is an age indicator

The Early Archaic peoples re-invented a lot of lithic wheels. (Or -- there's always at least one "or" -- the Hardaway people were as old as Clovis and spread out into the territory they died out in). Side notches, corner notches and even basal notches, for one thing. Making points from blade preforms for another (although apparently Illinois Clovis was doing that also).

One thing they figured out was that by re-sharpening only a dulled edge instead of that whole side of a point, their points/knives lasted a lot longer. The down side was the edge angles became steeper. This is what's called beveling. Always re-sharpening the same edge, time after time.

Usually it was the left edge on one side, then rotating it and sharpening the left edge on the opposite side. After a few re-sharpenings, you ended up with a cross-section that was a parallelogram. It could continue to the point where the working edges were almost perpendicular to the original blade.

Left-beveling is found on the Plevna Cluster (Dovetails and such) and the Kirk Cluster points like Thebes and Kirk Stemmed/serrated points. Kirk Corner-notches and some Pinetrees are Bi-beveled (all four edges). It's a time horizon marker that distinguished Early Archaic from what came before it.

Look at some with this in mind and it won't be long before you see it looking back up at you.

 

[jeff a]

beveling left or right isnt an age indicator,the side the bevel is on tells you if the owner was left or right hand dominate, if they were right handed they held the blade in their left hand and used the right hand to knapp, and the opposite for a lefty, that determines which side the bevel is on

 

[Th3rty7]

hmmm, interesting piece. It has early characteristics, but also some woodland features too. Thickness of the knife / preform / tool? is important here. Wish I could help more.

 

[uniface]

Good luck finding a right-bevelled dovetail or Thebes point ! They may exist, but I've never seen one that I can recall. On the other hand, you can find right-bevelled Bolens down south.

 

[creek astronaut]

beveling left or right isnt an age indicator,the side the bevel is on tells you if the owner was left or right hand dominate, if they were right handed they held the blade in their left hand and used the right hand to knapp, and the opposite for a lefty, that determines which side the bevel is on

i have to kind of agree with uni on this one based on my own experience,i have been collecting for 30 years and have never found any beveled piece or seen one that wasnt beveled on the left side,i have several thebes which maybe the most common type for opposite face beveling and all of them are left side bevels.dovetails and kirks arent as commonly beveled as thebes but the ones(doves and kirks) that i have found that are beveled were always on the left side.so either all early men were all right handed or it didnt make a difference whether they were right handed or left and they just always beveled thier blades on the left side.take a look at the early pieces in your collection or look in a reference guide and you will see that all decaturs,lost lakes,thebes,pinetrees,doves and kirks are all left side beveled.you may also see (although not very common)that late archaic/woodland types may have a right side bevels(i found a couple in a reference guide),which leads me to believe that left side beveling could be an indicator/marker of age.

 

[creek astronaut]

looks like an unfinished blade to me,a benton blade/preform is my guess.nice piece

 

[jeff a]

bob converse has some right side bevels in his collection ,when i asked him about them that is what he told me ,makes sense to me ,more rightys than leftys

 

[crow12c]

I just checked my collection, I have a few that bevel on left and a few that bevel on the right so I stoped checking, but I didnt get far before finding this, so I think Im about half half