Obsidian Flake to Broken Rough Biface

Dublin Core

Title

Description

The following pictures go through a slight progression from a flake to a rough biface that was broken. The flake was from a polyhedral core I was shaping, and I started to work on it bifacially bringing up the center line with direct percussion. In this process I used a soft small hammerstone and a medium sized anter billet. Process was going alright until a strike with the hammerstone close to the center of the piece split it in half. This means I was hitting too far above the centerline, with too much force, or even there was some inclusion/previous fracture that broke the piece. In flintknapping, this will happen quite frequently especially when starting out. Think of a piece as a metal bar. If you were to hit the bar, it would vibrate. In this case, the rough biface was hit and it could not absorb the shock so it broke instead, most likely due to improper placement and force.