The above is a portion of a figure I used in my thesis. The arrows point to the lateral edge knees. Most of the time these knees cause the projectile to be asymmetrical, but occasionally, a projectile was refurbished with symmetrical knees as #2. These symmetrical knees are the reason I created this separate characteristic category of resharpening. Otherwise the rest of the knees would have fit nicely in the section on Symmetry About The Longitudinal Axis.
I wrote in my thesis "on an original projectile, the lateral edge can
be expressed by one continuous mathematical function. The edges do not
have abrupt changes in outline (knees). A resharpened
projectile can have abrupt changes in the lateral edges (Bradley 1982:196;
Frison et al. 1976:43; Wheat 1975:13)." In this image of a corner
notch, the knee that is delineated by the two straight lines was created
by refurbishing the distal end (tip). The refurbisher could have made the
refurbished edge connect to the original edge without creating a knee, but
that was not done. This image is also a good example of a knee created by
a edge that is not concave as implied as necessary in the figure above.
The first image in the section under Symmetry in
Workmanship is another example of knees created by non-concave
edges.
This is a complete refurbished Bajada. It is rare to find a Bajada of
this size; usually they have been refurbished to a much smaller point. It
is even more rare to find them in a material other than basalt. Note the
knee that is indicated by the white mark. There are actually a couple
more knees on each side of this point that are not marked. In addition,
this point has all the other characteristics of refurbishing. It is not
symmetrical about the longitudinal axis, in cross-section or in
workmanship.
This is a midsection of a unidentifiable basalt point. It
has an excellent example of a lateral edge knee which is marked by the
white line.
Reverse Stems
The remaining two images are examples of knees created by refurbishing the distal end and lateral edges all the way to haft. The result is the creation of a "reverse stem" or a proximal end (base) that is wider than the blade or distal end. The reader may not classify this refurbishling as knees, but they were made in the same manner as the above knees.
This is the proximal fragment of a Clovis. The lateral edges have
been reduced in width by refurbishing causing the base to be wider than
the rest of the point. The white marks indicate the termination of the
distal end refurbishing and therefore the knees. The grinding on the base
of the point also stops at these knees. This is example of symmetrical
knees.
This is the proximal fragment of a Bajada??? Bajadas were originally
stemmed points with strong shoulders. The shoulders on this example have
been completely obliterated by the refurbishing and done so in an
asymmetrical manner. This demonstrates how severely a point can be altered
by refurbishing. Finally, this point is another rare example of a
non-basalt Bajada. Believe me, basalt was selected and used by the makers
of the Bajada point greater than 95% of the time. I have used examples of
these non-basalt points for the quality of the images.
Return to Information About Projectile Refurbishing or Tony's Homepage