152 



STONE IMPLEMENTS 



[RTH. ASS. 15 



Intliesccoud lij;ure the llakiiiy prof^ressed eiicouragiiigly on both .sides, 

 but neither was reduced to the requisite flatness. A blade of this 

 degree of convexity was usually rejected. A satisfactoiy ])n)lilc was 



produced in the third case illus- 

 trated, and as indicated in the 

 fourth fif^nire a hu'ky sjilittingof 

 till' bowlder made it possible to 

 produce two successful blades. 

 I found that very often before 

 I had obtained the desired jiro- 

 file some unfortunate blow shat- 

 tered the stone, but I got very 

 near the desired result in nu- 

 merous cases, duplicating the 

 best of the rejected forms, but 

 falling a little short of the blade 

 as perfected by the ancient work- 

 men and carried away for use 

 and elaboration. 



In plate cm someof the results 

 of my efforts at blade making are 

 presented. I observed that the 

 rejectage of my work, where fall- 

 ing among the freshly uncovered 

 rejectage of the site, was not to 

 be distinguished from it in any 

 way — not even in many cases by 

 the freshness of the fracture. 

 As to the work of specializing the perfected blade into keen-edged 

 knives, slender drills, and stemmed and notched projectile jioints, it 

 does not seem to compare in difficulty with the making of the thin 

 blades themselves from the bowlders. 



Fig. 29a— Cross st'ctiona illustrating successive re- 

 moval of flakes from bowlders. The dotted space 

 is the section of form produced, a and & being fail- 

 ures and c aud d successes. 



