I was out litter picking a few days ago and spied a piece of Chert sticking out of the mud. I was quite surprised to find it was what appears to me to be a broken/unfinished blade. I showed it to a friend of mine who has studied archaeology and she said that for every finished blade there were many broken/failed blades that ended up discarded, which I suspect this one was. The area where I found it was a vacant lot that fill material had been brought in for grading, so I imagine it came from some other place. Must've been super disappointing to work so hard at something just to have a big unintended chunk chip out of it!
I never thought about factory defects and unfinished tools. I wonder how many unfinished tools I have thrown back.
Yep, I hadn't either till my friend clued me. Somewhere I read that some Indians just roughed out blades for trade and then the buyer had to finish them. Another article mentioned finding a buried basket of roughed out blades. Like anything else, there's always that one guy that finds his niche and has a gift for making some product.
I'm not an artifact hunter, but I am always looking at the ground looking for good sparking stones for flint and steel. I almost mistook this for a leaf and didn't pick it up,
Thanks! It was a real surprise. Second artifact I have ever found. the first was a Core - the stone that's left after they knocked all the blades off of a spall that they can get. Sometimes they are re-purposed as a scraper. Steve Watts at the Schiele Museum very kindly verified that one for me. I sure would've liked to have met that gentleman. Such a loss for the primitive skills community.
