Lithics

thumb|upright=1.5|alt=Large knife with polished wooden handle, close to a leather sheath|A Bowie knife of [[pattern-welded steel]]

300px|thumb|Traditional target arrow (top) and replica medieval arrow (bottom) thumb|Modern arrow with plastic fletchings and nock

right|thumb|A piece of flint long, weighing 171 grams

thumb|upright=1.35|Single-horn anvil thumb|A blacksmith working [[iron with a hammer and anvil]] thumb|A blacksmith working with a [[sledgehammer, assistant (striker) and Lokomo anvil in Finland]]

thumb|Adze

Chalcedony ( or ) is a cryptocrystalline form of silica, composed of very fine intergrowths of quartz and moganite. These are both silica minerals, but they differ in that quartz has a trigonal crystal structure, while moganite is monoclinic. Chalcedony's standard chemical structure (based on the chemical composition of quartz) is (silicon dioxide).

stone tool

A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically several centimeters in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from at least the Upper Paleolithic, across Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia. The microliths were used in spear points and arrowheads.

distinctive type of stone knapping technique used by ancient humans

commune in Indre-et-Loire, France

thumb|Disc quern made of basalt stone thumb|Nepali women using quern-stones to grind grains

any tool, partially or entirely, made out of stone

Bolas or bolases (: bola; from Spanish and Portuguese bola, "ball", also known as a boleadora or boleadeira) is a type of throwing weapon made of weights on the ends of interconnected cords, used to capture animals by entangling their legs. Bolas were most famously used by the gauchos, but have been found in excavations of Pre-Columbian settlements, especially in Patagonia, where indigenous peoples (particularly the Tehuelche) used them to catch 200-pound guanacos and rheas. The Mapuche and the Inca army used them in battle. Mapuche warriors used bolas in their confrontations with the Chilean

art of carving and engraving of stones or gems

small tablet of dark stone used for assaying precious metal alloys

Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a chemical precipitate or a diagenetic replacement, as in petrified wood. Where chert occurs in chalk or marl, it is usually called flint.

thumb|Metate, mano and corn, all circa 12th century AD, from Chaco Canyon, USA thumb|Mano, metate and bowl of corn. Museum display of Ancestral Pueblo artifacts at [[Mesa Verde National Park.]] A metate (or mealing stone) is a type or variety of quern, a ground stone tool used for processing grain and seeds. In traditional Mesoamerican cultures, metates are typically used by women who would grind nixtamalized maize and other organic materials during food preparation (e.g., making tortillas). Similar artifacts have been found in other regions, such as the sil-batta in Bihar and Jharkhand, India

stone hand-tool

portion of rock removed from an objective piece by percussion or pressure

prehistoric stone tool

mesolithic hunter-gatherer culture in southern Scandinavia

flint arrowheads and axes, turned up by farmer's plows, considered to have fallen from the sky and worshiped as gods

in archaeology, a stone artifact left over from toolmaking

type of Stone Age tool

prehistoric process of reducing and cutting a stone by removing shards or flakes in order to make a pointed, sharp or blunt tool

type of crude stone tool

type of stone tool; a long narrow flake produced by laminar debitage

Lomekwi is an archaeological site located on the west bank of Lake Turkana in Kenya. It is an important milestone in the history of human archaeology. An archaeological team from Stony Brook University in the United States discovered traces of Lomekwi by chance in July 2011, and made substantial progress with four years of in-depth excavations.

thumb|"Hammerstone" eolith, recognized to be of natural origin by Boule in 1905 An eolith (from Ancient Greek ἠώς (ēṓs), meaning "dawn", and λίθος (líthos), meaning "stone") is a flint nodule that appears to have been crudely knapped. Eoliths were once thought to have been artifacts, the earliest stone tools, but are now believed to be geofacts (stone fragments produced by fully natural geological processes such as glaciation).

way that brittle materials break or fracture when they do not follow any natural planes of separation

thumb|Type of Mousterian Racloir thumb|Racloir from Galería (TG11) of Archaeological Site of Atapuerca|Atapuerca

object that was hafted to weapon that was capable of being thrown or projected

biface stone tool

The Tayacian is a Palaeolithic stone tool industry that is a variant of the Mousterian. It was first identified as distinct by Abbé Breuil from the site of La Micoque in Les-Eyzies-de-Tayac although since then the cave at Fontéchevade has become the "reference site for this industry".

thumb|350px|Molcajete and tejolote with peppers to be ground A molcajete (; Mexican Spanish, from Nahuatl molcaxitl) and tejolote (from Nahuatl texolotl) are stone tools, the traditional Central American and especially, the Mexican version of the mortar and pestle used for grinding various food products.

thumb|250px|various hammerstones thumb|right|An example of a cobble used as a hammerstone

Cryptocrystalline is a rock texture made up of such minute crystals that its crystalline nature is only vaguely revealed even microscopically in thin section by transmitted polarized light. Among the sedimentary rocks, chert and flint are cryptocrystalline. Carbonado, a form of diamond, is also cryptocrystalline. Volcanic rocks, especially of the felsic type such as felsites and rhyolites, may have a cryptocrystalline groundmass as distinguished from pure obsidian (felsic) or tachylyte (mafic), which are natural rock glasses. Agate and onyx are examples of cryptocrystalline silica (chalcedony)

thumb|upright=1.2|Expansion of European early modern humans|early modern humans from Africa through the [[Levant.]]

thumb|Flintknapping a stone tool

stone

in archaeology, reworking or refining a stone tool by trimming or flaking

prehistoric tool, similar to adze, ax, or hoe

spherical man-made object of any size that is composed of stone

thumb|240px|Spongolite texture, click to enlarge (2MB)

type of stone tool

methodological tool for analysing technical processes and social acts involved in the step-by-step production, use, and eventual disposal of artifacts

flint mine in Norfolk, England, UK

Khormusan industry was a Paleolithic archeological industry in Nubia dated at 42,000 to 18,000 BP.

analysis of traces of use in Archeology

type of stone tool

thumb| A microburin is a characteristic waste product from manufacture of lithic tools — sometimes confused with an authentic burin — which is characteristic of the Mesolithic, but which has been recorded from the end of the Upper Paleolithic until the Chalcolithic. This type of lithic artifact was first named by Henri Breuil who defined it as "a type of angular, smooth, with a terminal retouch in the form of a small notch". Breuil initially thought that the microburins had a functional use as a type of microlithic burin. However, he later came to realize that the manufacturing technique was d

The Elmenteitan culture was a prehistoric lithic industry and pottery tradition with a distinct pattern of land use, hunting and pastoralism that appeared and developed on the western plains of Kenya, East Africa during the Pastoral Neolithic c.3300-1200 BP. It was named by archaeologist Louis Leakey after Lake Elmenteita (also Elementaita), a soda lake located in the Great Rift Valley, about northwest of Nairobi.

type of edged stone tool

special technique to make microblades

prehistoric stone tool

thumb|380x380px|An example of a variscite "callaïs" necklace of Neolithic origin, dated 4500 - 4000 BC, found in Arzon. The necklace now located in the Musée d'Histoire et d'Archéologie de Vannes. Callaïs is the generic name for ancient green-blue precious stones used for making pendants and beads by western European cultures of the later Neolithic and early Bronze Age. The term includes turquoise and variscite but not jade. "Callaïs" was described by Pliny the Elder as being paler than lapis lazuli. Callaïs objects have been found in Neolithic tombs from the mid-5th millennium BC in the Carna

hand-held stone tool used with a metate or quern to process or grind food by hand

thumb|Example of lithic refitting thumb|Series of refitted debris

mayan archaeological artifact

thumb|Eolith from France. Once believed to be an early [[hammerstone, in 1905 Marcellin Boule debunked its man-made status]] A geofact (a portmanteau of geology and artifact) is a natural stone formation that is difficult to distinguish from a man-made artifact. Geofacts could be fluvially reworked and be misinterpreted as an artifact, especially when compared to Paleolithic artifacts.