Variation in the Form of Bipolar Cores
Gary R. Leaf · Plains Anthropologist · 1979
Bipolar flint-knapping, a distinctive technological process once used by some prehistoric groups to produce flake blanks and/ or core tools, generates the same characteristic set of products and by-products when applied to small tabular raw materials. A core reduction model is hypothesized to account for the variation in the form (type) of bipolar cores. The hypothesized core reduction model states that small tabular pieces of raw material entered the bipolarknapping system by being selected at their source. Then when processed by the bipolar technique, they systematically moved through a series of successive reduction stages until they were lost or discarded as wasted nuclei. The model is tested statistically with the t test. It is not rejected.