Bifacial Flake-Core Reduction Strategies and Related Aspects of Early Paleoindian Lithic Technology

This chapter focuses on lines of evidence to develop a broader understanding of bifacial flakecore use and its implications in Folsom culture. One of these lines of evidence is the substantial body of inferences that emerge from experiments in lithic technology based on practical stoneworking. The core technology persisted down through the Archaic, and perhaps into the Late Prehistoric as well. While the core was being reduced to flake blanks it became apparent that a wealth of simple cutting tools was represented in all of the broken flake blanks, edge-preparation flakes, platform-isolation flakes, and other technological forms of debitage produced as incidental byproducts of core reduction. Soil formation is minimal across much of the western United States, which permits the easy discovery of these ancient lithic scatters today. The experiment shows the incredible number of small tools that can result from careful use of debitage that results from reduction of bifacial flake cores.