PowerG
Member
Something a little different.
Shown is a Native American quarry site in east central Mississippi. The material is called Tallahatta Quartzite (TQ), and is an orthoquartzite originally deposited as sand about 55 million years ago. The material outcrops in many places where that portion of the Tallahatta Formation is exposed; the material occurs in Mississippi and a large band across southwest Alabama. This is such an outcropping, exposed along a creek bank.
The small creek is loaded with debitage (knapping debris), "chips" in popular terminology. The material knaps better when saturated with water; the water fills the tiny voids and allows the energy the knapper applies to carry farther through the material, allowing the flakes to run farther, and make them more controllable.
Some of the resulting blades were used as projectile points, or as tips for thrusting spears, but a large percentage of them were knives. In the TQ occurence area, there is virtually unlimited access to good quality lithic material, so artifacts recovered there can be quite large. This one saw little use.
That would be the exception though, most artifacts recovered are well used, with a good percentage of them actually being discards. As the knife saw use and became dull, the user would use an antler tine or piece of wood to remove small flakes along the blade edge to resharpen via pressure flaking. Naturally, with each resharpening some size is lost. In areas rich in material, the blades would be discarded while still quite large sometimes...in areas of poor or reduced access to material they would be conserved as much as possible. The blade itself is actually the easy part to make of what is actually a compound tool, the handle and the haft that secures the blade to the handle/shaft were the time consuming part-the blades tend to have fairly standardized haft areas so that they would be as interchangable as possible when it came time to put a new one on. A good knapper can knock out a very servicable point in just a few minutes.
It's probably accurate to think of most "arrowheads" as the Swiss Army Knife of these peoples. (For most of the span of time Native Americans have occupied North America they didn't have bow and arrow technology. True arrow points are smaller, and are a much more specialized form.) Intensive cutting (such as butchering) was usually done with flakes. You have a large blade core at the kill/butcher site, and strike off a large flake, as sharp as a razor blade, and cut until it gets dull; then you knock off another one and continue the process.
Shown is a Native American quarry site in east central Mississippi. The material is called Tallahatta Quartzite (TQ), and is an orthoquartzite originally deposited as sand about 55 million years ago. The material outcrops in many places where that portion of the Tallahatta Formation is exposed; the material occurs in Mississippi and a large band across southwest Alabama. This is such an outcropping, exposed along a creek bank.
The small creek is loaded with debitage (knapping debris), "chips" in popular terminology. The material knaps better when saturated with water; the water fills the tiny voids and allows the energy the knapper applies to carry farther through the material, allowing the flakes to run farther, and make them more controllable.
Some of the resulting blades were used as projectile points, or as tips for thrusting spears, but a large percentage of them were knives. In the TQ occurence area, there is virtually unlimited access to good quality lithic material, so artifacts recovered there can be quite large. This one saw little use.
That would be the exception though, most artifacts recovered are well used, with a good percentage of them actually being discards. As the knife saw use and became dull, the user would use an antler tine or piece of wood to remove small flakes along the blade edge to resharpen via pressure flaking. Naturally, with each resharpening some size is lost. In areas rich in material, the blades would be discarded while still quite large sometimes...in areas of poor or reduced access to material they would be conserved as much as possible. The blade itself is actually the easy part to make of what is actually a compound tool, the handle and the haft that secures the blade to the handle/shaft were the time consuming part-the blades tend to have fairly standardized haft areas so that they would be as interchangable as possible when it came time to put a new one on. A good knapper can knock out a very servicable point in just a few minutes.
It's probably accurate to think of most "arrowheads" as the Swiss Army Knife of these peoples. (For most of the span of time Native Americans have occupied North America they didn't have bow and arrow technology. True arrow points are smaller, and are a much more specialized form.) Intensive cutting (such as butchering) was usually done with flakes. You have a large blade core at the kill/butcher site, and strike off a large flake, as sharp as a razor blade, and cut until it gets dull; then you knock off another one and continue the process.
