An Assessment of the Free Hand Pressure Flaking Technique of Precontact North America

Abstract

The “Don Crabtree” method of free-handpressure flaking has dominated research in the replication of prehistoric stone artifacts since the 1960s. It entails the use of relatively long pressure flakers, and is the one that has been employed by most researchers and contemporary knappers for replicating and interpreting various prehistoric pressure flaking reduction or production sequences or methods. An examination of the archaeological data, however, indicated that long pressure flakers occur relatively infrequently, and that the much more common technique that was practiced in time and space throughout North American prehistory was one based on the use ofcomparatively short pressure flakers. I propose that this latter technique be considered the “traditional” one.The primary objects of this paper are to present a critical evaluation of the archaeological and ethnographic data and to demonstrate that there has been a marked shift in pressure flaking technology since precontact times. This shift was from a technology based on short pressure flakers to the Crabtree pressure flaking method that entails the use of long flakers. In the concluding section of this paper, several avenues of research are suggested. These may aid in the accurate identification of pressure flakers of various sizes recovered from archaeological sites or in ethnographic collections. They may also aid in distinguishing such objects from those that might have been used for other tasks.