Unprovenienced Chert Core, Florida, U.S.

This piece of chert stone was used as a “core,” a hunk of chert from which smaller flakes were chipped off. You can see where the flakes came off the core by the “flake scars,” those are the surfaces that create most of the lines and angles as you move the model. The flakes would have been used to make stone tools, like scrapers and projectile points, that we are used to seeing at archaeological sites. We can also see some “cortex,” that’s the rough part of the surface on a few points in the model. Usually the first step in making a raw piece of chert into a core is to get rid of all the cortex. The model even shows some mistakes! The “step fractures” are flakes that didn’t come off quite right, and instead of having a nice, thin, sharp end, they would have a thick bulky one- not so great for making something like a projectile point. Model: Kevin Gidusko, FPAN Text: Rachael Kangas, FPAN