Finally ID'd a flint scraper that sat in my garage for 2 years

Found it in a box of rocks a neighbor gave me back in 2022. Just kept thinking it was a weird broken rock. Then last week I was watching a video on microliths from the British Museum and saw the exact same edge wear pattern. Grabbed a loupe and yep, clear use striations on one edge. My buddy still says it's just a chipped rock but I'm pretty sure now. Anyone else ever sit on something for years before realizing what it actually is?

2 comments

2 Comments

grace_perry443d agoMost Upvoted

Your buddy saying it's just a chipped rock makes me laugh because that's exactly what I told myself for like three years about this weird stone knife I found creek walking. Turned out to be a late archaic hafted knife, the discoloration on one end was from being mounted in a handle. The fact you actually saw the edge wear in a British Museum video is wild, that's the kind of stuff that makes you feel like a real detective. Once you start looking at those micro-flakes under a loupe it's hard to unsee them on everything, now I can't even look at a driveway without wondering if something's in the gravel.

avery_carr573d ago

Is it really that easy to confuse a worked piece with a natural fracture though? I've handled a lot of creek gravel and most of the time those "micro flakes" are just from stuff banging together in the water. Maybe you've got a sharper eye than me, but I'd need a lot more than some edge wear from a youtube video to call it an artifact.