Prismatic Blade

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According to Kentucky Archaeology by Dr. R. Barry Lewis (p. 31) :

By comparison with the preceding period [Clovis], the Middle Paleoindian [Gainey, Barnes] tool kit exhibits a number of differences. For example, prismatic blades and polyhedral cores are absent. The core and blade technology was replaced by the technique called bipolar lithic reduction. (Notes in brackets are mine).

Since Paleo technology was more or less continental in breadth (certainly, regionally uniform), this is an example of a large Clovis Prismatic (triangular in cross section) Blade. It was found at Coffee Slough, Alabama, is 4 11/16" in length, and made of river-stained Fort Payne chert.

It's a recent score from our own Jerry Sherman (Paleoworld), who I recommend highly as an honest and knowledgeable source of stuff you have no hope of finding yourself.

 

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Oct. 5, 2020 UPDATE

May as well keep it in one thread.

We continue to find blades in the early Holocene levels. This is significant because archaeologists disagree on whether true prismatic blades were purposefully made during the Early Archaic. We have recovered perhaps two dozen at Rock Creek but only a couple of blade core fragments. Our lithic flake debris analyses are ongoing, but we believe most of the cores were repurposed for the manufacture of bifaces.

Late Paleolithic blade tool production was a very specific type of production that involved very precise preparation of cores and the production of long, straight blades with regular lateral edges. We see some of this at Rock Creek. However, we also see a shift in the production. Long flakes were still selected, but the manufacturing process changed. Cores were no longer intricately prepared. Flakes are long and flat but without the regular lateral margins. Widely available raw materials may have allowed early inhabitants of the plateau the luxury of spending much less time preparing their cores for stone tool manufacture in favor of more expedient methods for essentially the same end products.

https://tennesseearchaeologycouncil.wordpress.com/tag/lithics/

IOW, blade production did continue into the Early Archaic.

 

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