Microblade Cores from the Northwestern Plains at High River, Alberta, Canada

Abstract

In the late 1950s, some 69 microblades and microblade fragments were collected from a small prairie blowout east of High River, Alberta (EdPk-1). In 1968, David Sanger analyzed these specimens, including distinctive ridge flakes, and attempted to reconstruct their manufacturing process without the benefit of any cores. The first microblade core recognized from the High River area was found in 1981 at site EdPk-3, approximately 2 km southeast of the original microblade discovery site. A second core was recovered at EdPk-3 in 1982 and two more cores from the High River area were subsequently recognized in existing collections. All four cores represent the same microblade technology and their morphology is essentially consistent with Sanger’s earlier interpretation, though they reveal new details. This technology is characterized by the use of ridge flakes to initiate blade detachment and by platform preparation with burin-like blows against a transversely flaked, upward curving platform ridge. The EdPk-3 cores were in surface association with artifacts primarily belonging to the Cody complex. The distinctive High River microblade cores appear most closely related to cores of the American Paleo-Arctic tradition, but probably represent a previously undescribed microblade technology that may have spread southward onto the Northwestern Plains.