Technology and Terminology of Knapped Stone - IRIT

- distinguish intentional from unintentional knapping, which is crucial;
- better understand technical physical actions and their chronology, as well as the
operative schemes brought into play; a burin that has been disfigured by a plunging spall need
not be entirely discarded : the distal end of the negative of the spall can be used as a surface on
which another burin blow will be applied to produce, for instance, a new dihedral burin;
- better appreciate techniques through a comparison with modern experiments;
- assess the knappers' degree of competence;
- apprehend a tradition with greater confidence when accidents are linked to specific
techniques.
The observation of knapping accidents by prehistoric people probably caused them to
master the phenomenon, thus converting it into something intentional: anyone trying to make a
backed edge on a blade will sooner or later break it, accidentally producing a microburin or a
"Krukowski" microburin. This technique was systematized long before the time of geometrical
microliths, in the early Upper Palaeolithic of North Africa : more than 20000 years ago, it was
applied in the Iberomaurusian to make La Mouillah points 41
.
Another example of the systematic use of accidents concerns the plunging Levallois
flakes necessary to the manufacture of Tabelbala type cleavers 42
: this ultimate technical action
in the knapping sequence is a particularly original feature in the production of those Acheulean
artefacts from the western Sahara and South Africa. Here, it would be disastrous not to achieve
a plunging flake!
41 Tixier, 1963 : 106.
42 Tixier, 1956.
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