#fotd1857

#1857: the flutes at the bottom of a Clovis point are interesting, because they're very carefully done. the flute is when you chop a flake of stone off the bottom of a point, narrowing it towards the base, where it becomes very thin (like a plate, i mean, not like a pencil).

it would've taken great skill and time and care and quite a lot of material and tools to shape the flakes off. you don't find these anywhere in the "Old World", yet they're all over North America (and later, South America). sometimes these points would be found hundreds of kilometres away from where the rock must've originally come from, and sometimes they vary wildly in shape, size, material and so on - but one thing is constant: the basal flute.

it's thought that 10-20% of the points were broken while trying to flute them - hardly surprising, given that points are usually less than a centimetre thick before narrowing them. a point would've taken a good half hour at least for the most experienced craftspeople to make, so fluting them was definitely quite an investment.