That volunteer at the dig site who pointed out a flake I overlooked

I was sifting through some dirt at a local field school outside Santa Fe about 2 years ago, nothing fancy just a weekend thing. An older guy, probably in his 70s, came over and grabbed a tiny piece of rock from my screen, said 'look closer, that's a pressure flake, not a random chip.' He showed me the bulb of percussion on it under a hand lens, and I couldn't unsee it after that. Has anyone else had a random stranger totally shift how you see something ordinary out in the field?

3 comments

3 Comments

samk777d agoProlific Poster

Look closer, that's a pressure flake" - same thing happened to me with an arrowhead in a creek bed.

blairc905h ago

Yes exactly @samk77, once you spot one of those pressure flakes you start seeing them everywhere... it's like a hidden language in the stone. Found a broken point in a dried-up wash last spring that had a textbook flake scar, totally changed how I look at every sharp-edged rock now. That little detail makes all the difference between a random chip and something someone actually worked on.

the_jamie7d ago

Ngl that tiny shockwave scar is impossible to miss once you know what you're looking for.