Skillman

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​The Skillman site (15Ha34) is a small, periodically occupied, ancient Indigenous campsite on a floodplain terrace of the Ohio River. Researchers with Corn Island Archaeology documented it in 2012 and carried out limited investigations there in 2013.  These investigations took place before a construction project began at the Domtar Paper Mill. 

Archaeologists identified deeply buried Indigenous cultural deposits at the site. At three feet below the surface, they encountered a Late Archaic (3500-10​00 BC) deposit and within it, a hearth and an associated Merom Cluster spearpoint. Below the Late Archaic deposit, at a depth of five feet below the surface, they documented a Middle Archaic (6000-3500 BC) deposit. Within it, they recovered Raddatz spearpoints and a bannerstone (a stone that would have been attached to a spearthrower or atlatl to function as a counterweight). Clearly this locale was a favored camping place for Native peoples over millennia.

Making Chipped Stone Tools

The process of making chipped stone tools is a subtractive one. This means that after selecting a large piece of raw chert material, a flintknapper methodically followed a step-by-step process, shaping the raw chert stone by removing flakes (hitting or knapping the raw chert) in a controlled way. A knapper used hard stones and softer antlers to remove flakes to make a blank (or preform or biface), then later finished the final, and much smaller, complete tool.

The first step is to find the right kind of material. In Kentucky, the right material is chert, which occurs naturally as cobbles or layers in limestone bedrock.

The first flakes that are removed are large and still have areas of the cortex on their surfaces. Early-stage bifaces are crudely shaped. They have unworked edges and traces of cortex, too.

Flakes removed later in the knapping process are smaller, thinner, and lack cortex. Middle-stage bifaces are not as crude, although they have not been thinned and their edges have not been straightened. 

Late-stage bifaces are nearly completely formed, finished tools, but no haft element (the part of a spearpoint at its base that enables the toolmaker to attach it to the spear shaft) is present. The edges of late-stage bifaces, which tend to be straighter, have been completely worked. Depending on how finished the biface is, cortex may or may not be present. Native peoples often took preforms/late-stage bifaces to another site, where they then completely finished the spearpoint or other tool - just like the residents did at Skillman.

Through use, a finished tool will become dull. It may need to be resharpened many times before it is thrown away. Flakes produced during this step are very tiny.