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83 CHAPTER 5 The bifaces and associated debitage recovered from Units 3a and 3b at Excavation Area 8 provide a unique opportunity to study Clovis biface technology at a single site where there is a large lithic assemblage and all stages of reduction are present. Five finished whole and fragmentary projectile points, one broken knife, and 54 other bifaces were recovered from this portion of the Gault site (Dickens 2005). Along with these bifaces, debitage related to biface production was identified. Bifaces Clovis projectile points and other bifacial tools were created by thinning and shaping pieces of Edwards chert, which was abundantly available at the site. Because the Clovis knapper started with a blocky piece of chert or nodule to make a biface, the same raw material form used to produce blade cores, some debitage from initial biface reduction (cortical normal flakes, cortical bladelike flakes, and cortical irregular blades) is similar to that produced during initial blade core shaping (chapter 4). After initial reduction, biface thinning and shaping dominate the reduction process. Thinning from the margins of the biface produced biface thinning flakes that are characteristically large, thin, and curved, with parallel (e.g., endthinning flakes) or expanding (e.g., lateral thinning flakes) margins. These flakes have small, multifaceted platforms that are often isolated and abraded. The platforms on biface thinning flakes are usually lipped, and they have diffuse bulbs of force (Bradley 1991; Collins 2003; Huckell 2007; Pevny 2009). The scars of these flake removals were observed on the bifaces recovered from the site. These flakes generally extend past the biface midline, often to the opposite side of the biface. A special type of bifacial thinning flake, known as an overshot or outré passé detachment (Inizan et al. 1992; Tixier 1963), is commonly observed on bifaces from Excavation Area 8. An overshot termination occurs when the biface is struck and the resulting fracture travels across the biface and removes a portion of the opposite biface edge. This type of flake removal leaves a distinctive flake scar that expands across the biface and rolls off the edge. Another type of biface thinning flake has a similar, but truncated, plunging fracture that is seen on thick, blocky cores. This creates what Dickens (2007) calls a partial overshot flake. In this case, the biface is struck and the fracture travels across the biface surface. However, the fracture is limited by core thickness and only the Clovis Biface Technology 84 CHAPTER 5 upper portion of the opposite edge is removed, rather than the entire opposite face of the biface. These flakes are predominately cortical, and this type of flaking was used to remove cortex and surface irregularities quickly, as well as to thin the biface. Although present in the debitage assemblage, the scars of these types of flake removals are not observed on the bifaces because partial overshot flakes were detached during initial reduction and continued reduction removed the evidence of this flake type. Clovis knappers also detached bladelike flakes from the end of a biface parallel to the long axis. This type of longitudinal thinning of the central portion of a biface produces endthinning flakes and fluting flakes that are relatively flat and elongated with parallel margins. The detachment of endthinning flakes was not restricted to the midline of the biface; endthinning flakes were also removed from the base of the biface near the lateral edges to thin these edges and remove irregularities. We noted a 45º–55º bevel on the proximal ends of many bifaces, a bevel created to prepare a platform for endthinning. We observed this bevel, or remnant bevel if an endthinning flake had already been removed, on both primary and secondary bifaces. The bevel is rare on the distal end of bifaces, although we noted it on a few specimens (e.g., AM332-P2-17). The percentage of bevels noted on bifaces is roughly the same for primary and secondary bifaces (39.4 and 38.9 percent, respectively ), but there are a disproportionate number of secondary biface distal fragments (n = 7) compared to primary biface distal fragments (n = 1), which creates a bias toward secondary bifaces. The absence of primary biface distal fragments is curious and may indicate that the distal ends of primary bifaces were being reworked into other tools. Clovis bifaces typically are separated into stages based on attributes such as the amount of cortex present, flake scar size and removal patterns, the degree of edge preparation, and metric data related to length, width, and thickness...

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