Bifacial blades
Bifacial blades were tools to process an animal after it had been killed. Like knives, they cut meat and were used to scrape and prepare animal skins for tanning. They are called bifacial because both edges of the blade were made for cutting flesh, sawing bone, or scraping hide. The top blade shown here has a modern haft or handle, however, the blades were not always handled because their width and shape made them easy to hold by hand. Although these examples date to the Late Archaic Period, Native Americans continued to use bifacial blades after contact with Europeans in the 1600s.
Date: circa 6000 BCE - 3700 BCE
Topic: Tools
Materials: Argillite
Dimensions: currently unavailable
Accession #: 1985.0116