It is a curious fact that Early Southwestern Man most often made his tools of very finely textured stone. Perhaps this custom was induced by the exacting, finely controlled technologies of stone flaking practiced and the kinds of tools made. Indeed, workmanship on many projectile points, knives, and scrapers is so well achieved that one is led to believe that Early Man strove to express some degree of esthetic idealism in his tools.
Demands in technology often led to the widespread trading of choice materials. The best known of these is from the alibates quarries near Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle. Fine quality flint from this locality has been found at Early Man sites as far west as Arizona and as far north as Wyoming and Montana.
Early man prepared point “blanks” by the striking of suitable primary flakes by direct percussion from a block of stone, the core. The striker consisted either of a hard subround hammerstone, or a cylinder-hammer of soft stone, bone, antler, or hard wood. Flakes driven off by the former were usually thicker at one end. Those produced in the second instance were relatively thin throughout their length. Long flakes or “blades” were also often used as blanks, especially in the making of long projectile points. They could be detached from cores with either of the above strikers, or by holding a bone or stone “punch” on an edge of a core and striking the top of the punch with a hammerstone. This is a form of indirect percussion. Blades were also produced by what has been called impulsive pressure. A bone, antler, or stone-tipped crutch was applied to an edge of a core, and pressed downwards with the chest, driving off a blade.
Often cores were pre-shaped before the striking or pressing off of flakes or blades by what is termed the “Levallois technique.” A block of stone was initially trimmed on both faces into a round, oval, or triangular shape. Either one or a series of flakes or blades were then driven off one or both faces of the core, using any of the above percussion or pressure instruments. A distinct advantage to the technique was that the upper face of the detached flake or blade blanks had already been trimmed in the process of initial preparation of the core. This same preparation also predetermined to a large extent the shape of blanks produced in the Levallois technique.
The processes by which appropriate blanks were turned into finished projectile points involved several manufacturing stages and one or a combination of flaking techniques. The techniques employed consisted of direct or indirect percussion, using a hammerstone, cylinder-hammer, or punch, and direct or indirect pressure, using a crutch, an animal claw or tooth, the edge of a length of bone, antler, or stone.
The principal manufacturing stages include: 1) over-all initial shaping by the careful thinning of both faces of the blank; 2) secondary trimming of lateral and basal edges, including eventual fluting; and 3) smoothing by grinding of lateral and basal edges.
As will later be seen in the descriptions, special kinds of initial flaking, or facial thinning, are often characteristically associated with certain Early Man points. On some, flaking may conform to traditional patterns, while on others it may be irregular. The following kinds of initial flake scars are distinguished:
Irregular: flake scars are of irregular shape, and they are in no particular alignment to one another or the point long-axis.
Transverse: long, parallel flake scars are horizontal, or nearly so, to the point long-axis; opposite flake scars end smoothly near the point center line, appearing to form a continuous flake scar across the point face.
Collateral: similar to transverse flaking, except that opposite flake scars end abruptly near the point center line, forming in some cases a central ridge.