Arizona - The Desert Culture

Occasionally in the fall, I go out to Arizona on business, and spend a little time exploring the desert north east of Scottsdale. Artifacts and debris from stone tool making litter the ground as far as the eye can see. Most people probably do not see anything, because these artifacts are large and crude. One finds artifacts on nearly every exposed dirt surface, from the empty lots in town (where the stone tools are mixed in with the beer cans and broken glass) to the wilder sides of washes and dry ridges along the rivers. There are so many beautiful volcanic materials for tool making, and so much exposed land surface, and such a great depth of time, that it is bewildering for this Easterner. As an only occasional visitor I cannot make much sense of it, however I did learn that these stone tools are from a period called the "Desert Culture" that corresponds (they say) with the Archaic period of 3-7K years ago. There are some reasons for thinking the Desert Culture may be older than that.

Here is a lovely red stone knife, made of what I call "jasper", which is just a guess. It is possible that the bump at the upper end is for hafting in the same style as Stark points. This is one of the few examples I could find where the rock is flaked on both sides or "bifacial".

Here is another example of a bifacial flaking. This is a little hand axe or 'chopper', as lovely an example as one could hope to find. This is made of from a basalt cobble, with a bit of the original outer surface left intact.

        

Unifacial Tools

With the exception of the red knife and hand axe, which are bifacially flaked, most of the artifacts are unifacially flaked: a single piece of rock was knocked off the side of a rounded cobble, then flakes were removed from only one surface of the piece. These tools are mostly made from basalt. Here is a classic small unifacial chopper.

       

It takes a moment to see the progression of flakes and find the symmetries. After several years I have begun to appreciate that these tools have their own beauty, very different from arrowheads. Here is another classic example.

           

This is a large axe head. In the second picture, showing the original outer surface of the rock, one large flake at the upper edge, presumably, is to accommodate the hafting of the axe head to the handle. These tools are very thick front-to-back. Here is a side view of the same axe head. Isn't the flaking magnificent?










The following is a simple thin piece from a cobble with only a delicate tracing of flakes along one edge. At the top, two opposing flakes might have helped haft this tool.

Was the Desert Culture the Archaic?

By the "Archaic" I mean the time period from 3-7K years ago when hunter gathers had become more sedentary than the Paleo hunters that preceeded them, but before pottery was in use. There are several reasons why this description does not fit the Arizona "Desert Culture" very well.

All of these observations were made by George Carter in Earlier Than You Think, where he argued that the "Desert Culture" must have existed during the middle of the last glaciation, namely 15K or more years ago. He also commented that unifacial tools are found associated with that time period and with much greater antiquity in many other parts of the world, outside of the America.

Arguing on the other side, that these tools are 'recent', one observes that there is little patination on the flake surfaces - the flakes look fresh. Also there may have been a non-hunting culture, isolated in the desert. Also there may have been a wet period more recently than the last glaciation. Some people argue that these are just rocks anyway and not even stone tools, a view that thankfully we can ignore. The rocks may be a bit dull, it may be hard to recognize the deliberate flaking, but they have design.

                        

For example these three similarly designed "blades" or this little scraping edge made from 5 alternating flakes on one end of an elongated pebble.
 
 

                      

Other unifacial style tools include a pebble chopper (which might actually have been hafted) on the left, a scraper on the right, and below, two hatchets, each with large flakes taken off of the upper surface. Compare this to the flake on the upper surface of the large axehead above also presumably for hafting. (Click on the second one to see a slight enlargement).

               





When I first visited a site filled with example like those above, I was focused on fine lithics and was particulary pleased with these crude blades. Although they are "unifacial" they have a bit of flaking on both sides. The reddish surfaces are the outer surface of the original rock.






Are these really stone tools? - A discussion
I have a friend from Spain who does not agree that this hatchet is a stone tool. I think a small demonstration makes the point more clearly: We notice first of all that the hatchet, this axe, and the hatchet next to the first one all have a characteristic large flake removed from the more rounded side, and that the presumption is that this large flake made it possible to haft the stone to a handle. This kind of design similarity distinguishes these from random rocks or just debris. Take a careful look at these other examples of unifacial tools (click on images to see magnification). The first image is of the back side of three items. The second image shows the front.
                 

At the upper left is a simple knife with pressure flakes along the lower edge, on the lower left is a small scraper, and on the lower right is a larger reddish flake labelled so that you can see four features. At (A) appears the large flake that is characteristic of hafted blades; at (B) opposite from (A) we see where the blade would have been inserted into a split wooden handle; and then at (C) and (D) two symmetrically opposed notches would have served for cross-ties. If this reconstruction is correct we should find the working edge along the left and right edges of the rock.This is the case. Originally I brought this home as a sample of a nice material. Now, after observing the hatchets and axes above I recognize (A) as the large flake and with that the seemingly random features of the rock fall into place as signs of another small hatchet. Luckily for the cause of protecting these artifacts, they are not very beautiful, and are hidden by their own obscurity.
 
 


In the Southwest, professional and amateur archeology is focused on pottery and the decorative arts of the more recent native populations. There seems to be less popular and commercial interest in arrowheads, and almost no interest in these ancient unifacial stone tools. Yet someone might object to my picking them up and bringing them home to Massachusetts. If so, I hope they will leave a comment in the Guestbook.