Technology and Terminology of Knapped Stone - IRIT

3a 3b
Fig. 27 — Debitage of a Kombewa flake.
However, the tranformation of a flake into a bifacial piece, or even a core, can bring
about the "chance" removal of a flake from the bulb. This is then referred to as a "Kombewa
waste product".
Finally, some fair-sized "flakes", which originate from the splintering of a large bulb,
can be open to misinterpretation; however, they have no butt, and can thus be identified as bulbar
splinters, a variety of "parasitical" flakes.
2.3. Blade debitag e
Blade debitage is a pre-planned debitage, organized in such a way as to repeatedly
produce blades or bladelets from a single core 69
(fig. 9 and 10).
Of standardized form owing to their (almost) parallel arrises, blades and bladelets are
flakes whose length is at least equal to twice their width, according to a widely adopted
convention. They can be removed by any type of technique (direct percussion, using a hammer
of stone, wood, antler or metal; indirect percussion; pressure).
The mere presence of a few "laminar" products is not sufficient to vindicate the diagnosis
of blade debitage; for the diagnosis to be borne out, the presence of characteristic scars and
systematic blade blank production is necessary.
Long assimilated with Upper Palaeolithic blade debitage by percussion, the so-called
"classical" blade debitage has a very different volumetric conception from Levallois blade
debitage : the products are stereotyped and the entire volume of the core can be used, with a wide
choice of debitage volumes and striking platforms.
69 Economie du debitage laminaire, 1984.
71
A