What Were Flakes For?

Some flakes were not removed from prepared cores - instead, they were removed as waste flakes during the production of a bifacial core tool such as a flint axehead. In this case, they are rather like the shavings in a carpentry shop. They tend to include bulky flakes, lumps, chips, primary flakes - the subsequent flakes do not have such clearly defined striking butts, are often hit hard.

In other cases (and I suspect the majority of the cases), the flakes were struck from flint cores that were prepared with the intention of creating usable flakes themselves. The knapper would prepare a core that she or he could use as a supply of flakes - they were not waste, but in this case, the product. This is why when I describe flake scatters, I try and avoid using the term waste flakes in a generalised manner. So what were they for? Ask any modern day survivalist - a prerequisite of life is a sharp edged tool - with that you can butcher meat, scrape skins, chop vegetables, peel fruit, make cooking devices, cut rope, trim hair, make shelters, traps, hunting weapons, prepare clothing, harvest grain, etc.

Phil Harding has suggested that in the pre-metal world, everyone would be capable of some level of knapping - man, woman, boy and girl. It was a prerequisite of life. In the absence of metals, flint ruled. People would carry small prepared cores with them, and a hammer, maybe a punch or tine. When they needed a fresh sharp edge - they would strike off a few flakes until they had one that suited the job.

Flakes were also the source of the majority of more formal tools - arrowheads, awls, scrapers, piercers, flake-knives, spoke-shaves, etc. A knapper would strike flakes from his or her core until they had one suitable for the job, and then finely retouch it into shape - often by pressing a punch hard along the edges and surface shearing off tiny flakes from the intended tool - a technique called pressure flaking. When no more flakes could be economically extracted from the core, it was discarded as a waste core - rather like the core of an apple.