The Organization of Chipped-Stone Economies at Piedras Negras ...

5.6.7: Resharpening, Rejuvenation, and Use Flakes
Resharpening and rejuvenation flakes have a readily identifiable morphology.
Resharpening percussion- and pressure-flakes feature a platform with use-wear on the
original biface margin. Remnant margins can be polished through use, and these wear
patterns usually extend to the dorsal side of the flake. Polished margins indicate that the
biface had been a ground celtiform axe. In most cases, resharpening flakes reveal what
type of biface was retouched for continued use. Pressure flakes retain similar
characteristics but on a smaller scale. The platforms can reveal other forms of use-wear,
such as hammering or pecking, cutting, scraping, and agricultural polish. Resharpening
pressure-flakes are more difficult to identify because the degree to which platforms were
prepared, before normal pressure-flake removal, cannot be known without a large sample
of flakes.
Rejuvenation flakes are a form of alternate flake that can reveal what kind of
break the original biface had suffered before it was repaired. Once a biface breaks, the
remaining fragments are left with a square margin that cannot easily be removed.
Alternate flaking removes the squared edge by alternately removing flakes from the ends
of the break. The platform angle usually is wide and retains the long flat or irregular
surface of the break on one side of the flake. Although these flakes are often thick, they
feature a finely flaked dorsal surface that marks the original biface surface.
Finally, what I term use flakes are those flakes that come off during the use of a
tool, usually during pecking, hammering, and chopping activities. The flakes are initiated
upon impact with a hard surface. The most common forms of this flake type are
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