Pointy Tools

[uniface]

Blades or flakes that were worked to have piecing tips (awls) at one end and generally multi-purpose. Various configurations.

Wish I could capture how neat this one is in-hand in a photo. Another black Buffalo River chert favorite.

 

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[uniface]

Awl, endscraper and incurvate edge section (spokeshave) of "Kentucky Blue" Hornstone. They don't often survive in this kind of condition.

 

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[uniface]

Not just the show, but the “tell” as well.
It’s a change up here.

In my area it seems there were primarily only a handful of lithics used for flaked tools.
Obsidian, red/brown chert (or jasper..not sure), agate, and basalt.

I’m not sure I could tell where any of it originated unless it was some sort of exotic material unique to a specific area. Interesting how out east everyone seems to know what county/state a particular material came from. Maybe there is more to it than I’m understanding at the moment.

The advantage of knowing where the lithics came from is that this tells you where the people were before they arrived at where you are. Maybe where their winter quarters were, or at least where they made side trips to re-stock. With Paleo folk, this can sometimes be hundreds of miles, which opens a window to seeing a little more of their lives "in the round." Again, by knowing what they went out of their way to get and what else was available that they ignored (like Delaware chert in Ohio), there's another window to understanding.

People have even noticed that there are bag dumps at lithics resource sites -- they dumped the old, used up stuff they had with them when they re-stocked. Which tells you, again, where the last stop before that had been. String these together into a circle, and you've got a lithic snapshot of their annual round.

 

[MAMucker]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge along with the photos. There’s a lot to retain here.

 

[uniface]

The edge work on those blades are something else! I like all the different materials and they do have their specific areas they come from. Ohio had several types and was easily identified.

Just caught the drift of your comment now. Do you mean Ohio has several materials types easily identified ? Or several similar artifact types ? If the latter, please elaborate/illustrate!