| knapping | Intentionally removing a series of flakes, working stone (a.k.a. flaking).
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| flake | A type of stone artifact produced by removing a piece from a core by chipping or knapping. Flakes are made into a variety of different kinds of tools or used for their sharp edges (without further retouching).
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| lithics | A generic term used for stone artifacts in archaeology and more specifically for flaked stone artifacts.
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| fracture mechanics | The physics of how materials break.
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| cryptocrystalline | Stone with microscopic crystals, formed from silica under pressure in marine deposits, such as quartz, chert, flint.
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| nodule | Unworked pieces of stone, raw material for making stone tools.
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| core | The stone from which other pieces or flakes are removed. Core tools are shaped by the removal of flakes.
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| flint | A hard, siliceous stone that breaks in predictable ways to produce sharp flakes, common raw material for stone tools in prehistory.
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| chert | A cryptocrystalline quartz with large crystal size and impurities that give it color and cloudiness.
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| conchoidal fracture | Shell-like shape of the interior surface of a flake; the breakage pattern seen in flaking stone tools.
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| Hertzian Cone | Name for the bulb of force produced in fracture of cryptocrystalline materials.
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| striking platform | The flat surface of a core where a blow is struck to remove flake, visible at the top of the flake.
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| dorsal surface | The outer surface of a flake.
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| bulbar surface | (a.k.a. ventral) The inner, fresh surface of a flake.
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| bulb of percussion | A partial cone of fracture that is seen on the inner surface of flakes as a slightly rounded protrusion or bulb.
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| percussion flaking | A technique for producing stone artifacts by striking or knapping crystalline stone with a hard or soft hammer. See also pressure flaking.
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| pressure flaking | A technique for producing stone artifacts by removing flakes from a stone core by pressing with a pointed implement. See also percussion flaking.
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| hard hammer | A percussion technique for making stone tools by striking one stone, or core, with another stone, or hammer. See also soft hammer technique.
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| hammerstone | A stone used to knock flakes from cores; part of the toolkit of a flintknapper.
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| hammer and anvil | A hard hammer percussion technique which involves striking the core (hammer) itself against a large rock in the ground (anvil) to produce a flake.
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| soft hammer | A flintknapping technique that involves the use of a hammer of bone, antler, or wood, rather than stone. See also hard hammer technique.
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| punch | A piece of antler, bone, or wood used as a pointed object between the hammer and the core to assist the removal of the flake, a kind of chisel for flintknapping.
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| flintknapping | Chipping or flaking stone to make tools and other artifacts.
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| tool | Any equipment, weapon, object intentionally modified by humans to change the environment around them.
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| waste | A term referring to all the pieces of shatter and flakes produced and not used when stone tools are made; also called débitage.
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| débitage | (French) A term referring to all the pieces of shatter and flakes produced and not used when stone tools are made; also called waste.
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| blade | A special kind of elongated flake with two parallel sides and a length at least twice the width of the piece. The regular manufacture of blades characterized the Upper Paleolithic, with an efficient way of producing mass quantities of cutting edges.
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| unifacial | A term describing a flaked stone tool in which only one face or side is retouched to make a sharp edge. See also bifacial.
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| bifacial | A term describing a flaked stone tool in which both faces or sides are retouched to make a thinner tool. See also unifacial.
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| projectile point | Generic name for the range of shapes and materials used to make a sharp end on weapons such as spears, darts, javelins, arrows, and the like (synonym: arrowhead, spearhead).
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| retouching | The shaping or sharpening of stone artifacts through percussion or pressure flaking; a technique of flintknapping.
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| preform (a.k.a. blank) | A basic piece or blank form used to make a specific kind of finished product. Term is used in lithic studies to describe early stages in manufacture of certain kinds of tools like projectile points.
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| microburin | (1) A technique for making segments of blades into small geometric pieces (microlith); (2) waste products of the microburin process are also called microburins.
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| microlith | Small blades and geometric forms of stone tools, usually associated with the Mesolithic period in the Old World.
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| chaîne opératoire | (French: sequence of production) The different stages of production from the acquisition of raw material to the final abandonment of the desired and/or used objects.
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| patination | A weathering process that gradually changes the surface appearance of flint from shiny to dull, and often from one color to another over time; the new surface is described as a patina.
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| cortex | A heavily weathered rind on the outside of flint or chert nodules. The presence of this cortex is the criterion for a cortical flake.
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| cortical flake | A flake with some of the outer surface (cortex ) of the stone nodule present.
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| type list | The set of types of artifacts for a specific area.
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| handaxe | The characteristic artifact of the Paleolithic: a large, teardrop-shaped stone tool bifacially flaked to a point at one end and a broader base at the other, for general-purpose use.
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| lithic assemblage | The complete set of stone artifacts found at an archaeological site.
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| burin | A distinctively edged stone tool combining a 90° edge and an oblique angled working edge.
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| expedient tools | Implements that are quickly made, used, and discarded. The technology is fairly simple, production fairly rapid, use more general purpose, and discard immediate. Contrast with curated tools.
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| curated tools | Special-purpose implements that require specific raw materials and substantial time and labor in manufacture. Curated tools can often be repaired or recycled and are normally discarded only when exhausted. Contrast with expedient tools.
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| refitting | A technique for reassembling the scattered pieces of stone, pottery, or bone at an archaeological site to study patterns of manufacture and disposal.
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| microwear analysis | Microscopic studies of damage and polish on the edges of stone artifacts to reveal the materials that were worked.
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