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

lade-core platforms at Piedras Negras were at least lightly ground, the knappers must
have periodically prepared the platform of the core as well as specific areas with platform
overhang or irregularities 18 .
If an error was made, such as a step or hinge termination near the platform or
elsewhere on the face of the core, a potentially risky set of procedures were used to fix
the problem. At Piedras Negras there are six readily identifiable rejuvenation and
maintenance techniques with corresponding debitage types. The first four types can be
described as rejuvenation procedures and the last two are better characterized as core
maintenance procedures. First, irregularities and errors on or near the platform margin
were corrected by removing either a faceting flake (Figure 6.13.1), or a single tabular
flake that created an entirely new platform (Figure 6.13.2). The flakes were struck from
the core by direct percussion with a hammerstone, using the proximal end of a pressure-
blade scar as a platform. The greatest dangers in this technique are deep hinge
terminations, or overshot terminations that can destroy an entire side of the platform. A
second procedure removes a step or hinge termination, caused by a blade detachment
failure, by direct percussion at the proximal end of the core (Figure 6.14). The force of
the blow is meant to drive under the irregularity and the blade or flake removes the
termination failure. The downsides to this maneuver are that it can remove a relatively
large portion of the core and has a high probability of failing at the same termination it
was meant to ameliorate.
Third, if the termination was not too wide or deep, medial rejuvenation was
carried out with a pressure-flaking device (cf. Clark and Bryant 1997). The hinge or step
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