Thursday, August 20, 2009

Stone Tools and the Desert Surface Outside of Phoenix

[not rock pile related and out of context].
This is the way some of the desert looks northeast of Scottsdale:
Anything that got dropped remains where it fell and many of the rocks you see loosely scattered around have been worked and used for something. You can tell, in some cases, because of the similarly formed flake scars, that can only have been produced by a coordinated sequence of sharp percussive blows.In other cases you can tell it is manipulated because the outer husk of the rock is weathered.
Pretty place:Look at this dirt. I want to say: it is all debitage going back into the ice age and before:Please click on the pictures; you get a different impression in the magnified view.
A beautiful little graver:
A colorful chopper (note the right edge has wear damage or sharpening):It is mostly monofacial flaking - all flakes removed from one side of the piece of rock.
Lives lived here, one life after another.Update: I mean, it is just a mess. The party is over and now look at the place! But it has been going on for quite a while.

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