Stone tool

Stone tools have been used throughout human history but are most closely associated with prehistoric cultures and in particular those of the Stone Age. Stone tools may be made of either ground stone or knapped stone, the latter fashioned by a craftsman called a flintknapper. Stone has been used to make a wide variety of tools throughout history, including arrowheads, spearheads, hand axes, and querns. Knapped stone tools are nearly ubiquitous in pre-metal-using societies because they are easy to manufacture, the tool stone raw material is usually plentiful, and they are easy to transport and sharpen. The study of stone tools is a cornerstone of prehistoric archaeology because stone tools are very resistant to natural degradation and therefore ubiquitous components of the archaeological record. Ethnoarchaeology is used to deepen understanding of, and to explore the cultural implications of, stone tool use and manufacture. Knapped stone tools are made from cryptocrystalline materials such as chert, flint, radiolarite, chalcedony, obsidian, basalt, and quartzite via a splitting process known as lithic reduction. One simple form of reduction is to strike stone flakes from a lithic core of material using a hammerstone or similar hard hammer fabricator. If the goal is to produce flakes, the remnant core may be discarded once it is too small to continue producing flakes. In some strategies, however, a flintknapper makes a tool from the core by reducing it to a rough unifacial or bifacial preform, which is further reduced by using soft hammer flaking or by pressure flaking the edges. More complex forms of reduction may produce highly standardized blades, which can then be fashioned into a variety of tools such as scrapers, knives, sickles, and microliths.