Microlith
Microlith production generally declined following the introduction of agriculture (8000 BCE) but continued later in cultures with a deeply rooted hunting tradition.
Regardless of type, microliths were used to form the points of hunting weapons, such as spears and (in later periods) arrows, and other artifacts and are found throughout Africa, Asia and Europe.
[2] This style of flint working flourished during the Magdalenian period and persisted in numerous Epipaleolithic traditions all around the Mediterranean basin.
[4] Dufour bladelets are up to three centimeters in length, finely shaped with a curved profile whose retouches are semi-abrupt and which characterize a particular phase of the Aurignacian period.
Ouchtata bladelets are similar to the others, except that the retouched back is not uniform but irregular; this type of microlith characterizes certain periods of the Epipaleolithic Saharans.
There are a huge number of regional varieties of these microliths, nearly all of which are very hard to distinguish (especially those from the western area) without knowing the archaeological context in which they appear.
They were all made from blades or from microblades (nearly always of flint), using the microburin technique (which implies that it is not possible to conserve the remains of the heel or the conchoidal flakes from the blank).
For example, in order to make a triangle, two adjacent notches were retouched, leaving free the third edge or base[4] (using the terminology of Fortea).
Microliths found at Hengistbury Head in Dorset, England, show features that can be confused with chisel marks, but which might also have been produced when the tip hit a hard object and splintered.
Despite this, there is unanimity amongst researchers that these items were used to increase the penetrating potential of light projectiles such as harpoons, assegais, javelins and arrows.
The earliest backed artefacts have been dated to the terminal Pleistocene, however they become increasingly common in Aboriginal Australian societies in the mid-Holocene, before declining in use and disappearing from the archaeological record approximately 1000 years before the British invasion of the continent in 1788.
Historically, backed artefacts were divided into asymmetrical Bondi points and symmetrical geometric microliths, however there appears to be no geographic or temporal pattern in the distribution of these shapes.
[21][22] Backed artefact manufacturing workshops have been identified at Ngungara show significant variation in shape, which has been linked to the need to replace components of composite tools.
[23] Several studies in the production of backed artefacts have linked identified heat treatment as a key component as well as the use of large flank blanks.
[24][25] Functional studies of backed artefacts from south-eastern Australia show that they were multipurpose and multifunctional tools with a similar range of uses as unretouched flakes found at the same sites.
[26][27] There is one unambiguous example of them being used as part of composite weapon, either a spear or a club, as 17 backed artefacts were found embedded into the skeleton of an adult male dated to approximately 4000 years BP in the Sydney suburb of Narrabeen.
These finds, which have been preserved practically intact due to the special conditions of the peat bogs, have included wooden arrows with microliths attached to the tip by resinous substances and cords.
Archeologists at the Risby Warren V site in Lincolnshire have uncovered a row of eight triangular microliths that are equidistantly aligned along a dark stain indicating organic remains (possibly the wood from an arrow shaft).
In Urra Moor, North Yorkshire, 25 microliths give the appearance of being related to one another, due to the extreme regularity and symmetry of their arrangement in the ground.
A further excavation in 1988 yielded microlith stone tools, remnants of prehistoric fireplaces and organic material, such as floral and human remains.
Human remains of the several sediment deposits were analyzed at Cornell University and studied by Kenneth A. R. Kennedy and graduate student Joanne L. Zahorsky.
[36] Laminar microliths are common artifacts from the Upper Paleolithic and the Epipaleolithic, to such a degree that numerous studies have used them as markers to date different phases of prehistoric cultures.
During the Epipaleolithic and the Mesolithic, the presence of laminar or geometric microliths serves to date the deposits of different cultural traditions.
