Hey, here's an artifact I just picked up today!  We've had a lot of wind lately so the beaches have been churned up real good.  I found a small flake a day ago, then today I found this!  It looks to me like a preform that was either discarded or left behind.  It looks like a very tough stone and I haven't found anything made from it before, I kind of doubt it was thrown away as looking at it I can see how with about 5 strikes it could be turned into a nice knife/spearhead, so most likely it was just left behind for some reason.   It's actually the first time I have found a legitimate preform, I come across quite a lot of worked stone and flakes but never a nice preform like this.

  Hey, did a quick search of google and amygdala is part of your brain, I put amygdala stone tool in and got a few oldowan hand axes come up, I'm assuming that is what you mean?

  I don't really see any crack, I saw the hinge on the one side where he took two flakes and stepped them both which is obviously going to be very discouraging as he was attempting to take a big lump of the one side to thin it, all he needed to do was take a few short ones up to the edge of the steps and then blast that top down thinner.

Yes luke, that's what I meant - stone axe 
But I thought you was from good ol' Europe 
Bill's right, it's a preform then!
Greetings,
Mauro.

  I make a good part of my earnings from flintknapping and know what a rock that's been flaked looks like.  It's a knappable stone with multiple concoidal fractures, none of them pronounced though as you don't see any rings in the curved depressions of the flake scars which is the way it works with a tough grainy stone like this.  Rock does NOT fracture with a curve unless it is struck to produce the flake.  I make things that look just like this all the time, only I am usually able to thin them down from here into a point, this guy for many possible reasons didn't.  it's one of the reasons a trained eye finds a lot of these types of things like preforms, flakes and pecked and ground tools as most people are just looking for a textbook "arrowhead" and not looking at the stone and the signs of working and a lot of the recognizable "arrowheads" get picked up.
   
  I was out again today and found a nice little percussion flake busted in half, it is the percussed end as it has a percussion bulb on it, different material but a material I have found before as debitage, never found a point made from it though.

  Mauro, while I don't think it's a stone axe, you could still be right.  I found this big guy just down the beach from this one last year, it is a really tough conventionally un-knappable stone but could be worked into something crude if you were desperate, (same way a nice hand axe can be made from granite,) and looks like a really hard fine sandstone which would actually flake pretty well for percussion.  As you can see the flake scars don't have quite as much of a curve to them and that is due to the coarseness and softer stone than a flint or similar and it doesn't produce a conchoidal fracture but still flakes pretty predictably.  This one to me looks like a stone hand axe of SOME sort, as  the back side has obviously been left dull and just shaped down a little to grasp it where the other side has been flaked heavily to a sharp edge.





  I still think this one is some sort of digging tool or adze rather than a preform, he never took any long flakes just sharpened up the edge with shorties and blew a long flake off the back as if to remove the ridge for hafting, the step fractures at the base look intentional as well, as if it should be slotted into something.



And here's a little busted preform, forgot about this one till I looked through my artifacts.

  Clovis?  Not sure the name of the people that were here,  but the archeologists I showed it to who admittedly weren't the sharpest tools in the shed, said that most of what is found here is between 5-10 thousand years old, so that sounds right for Clovis as I know they were far back.  The broken "crescent" knife or leaf shaped blade has only had percussion work done to it, I have a lot break the same way as that when I either don't support the back when removing a flake or hit too far back from the edge, I would guess he did the second one. 
  They also were not supposed to have used bows, just atlatls, the points I have found do look like dart points. 
  I'm glad you agree on the digging tool theory, I have had a lot of people try and convince me it's a preform but you would have to be a moron to do that unintentionally and it makes perfect sense in hafting and use to do intentionally for digging, (ie. the short flakes on the edge obviously not attempting to thin and the deep step fractures at the flat base that could easily be blown away with a flake from the side.)

Topic added to the PW's Index.
Greetings,
Mauro.