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Bipointed Ultrathin Knife Forms

Figure One. 6.8-inch long bipointed knife form surface found in the 1950s on private
land near the town of Farson in the Eden Valley of Wyoming.
John Bradford Branney Collection.

My historical fiction book series titled the SHADOWS on the TRAIL Pentalogy is about the Folsom Paleoindian culture, a mysterious group of hunters and gatherers who lived over 12,000 years ago. In other articles, I have written about various components in the Folsom stone tool kit, but one tool I have not written about is the laurel leaf or bipointed knife form. That will be the focus of this article.  

What is a laurel leaf or bipointed knife form? In most cases, a descriptive name adds clarity to the description of something. In a few cases, a descriptive name causes confusion. In the case of laurel leaf or bipointed knife forms, the name adds clarity. Bipointed knife forms were named for prehistoric stone knives that have dual points, one on each end of the artifact. In the prehistoric record, bipointed knife forms have worldwide distribution and are currently the oldest continually made tool form in human prehistory. The oldest documented example of a bipointed knife form comes from Africa where investigators believe it is around 75,000 years old.

Figure Two. Cross-section of the bipointed ultrathin knife form in figure one.
John Bradford Branney Collection.

What does a bipointed knife form look like? Figure one is a photograph of an extremely rare bipointed knife form. This prehistoric knife form is not only a bipointed, it is an ultrathin bipointed knife form. This 6.8-inch-long, heavily patinated, bipointed knife form was found in the early 1950s on a private ranch near the town of Farson in the Eden Valley of Wyoming. The original material, before pedogenic carbonate took it over, appears to be a moderate brown jasper. You can barely see a touch of moderate brown jasper near the base of the knife form in the lower right-hand corner of the photograph. I told you; you can barely see it. 



How thin are ultrathin knife forms and how thin is the knife form in figure one? Very thin! Figure two is a photograph of the cross-section of the bipointed ultrathin knife form in Figure one.  The width of this bipointed ultrathin knife form is 58 millimeters and the thickness in the middle of the knife form is only 5 millimeters for a width to thickness ratio of 11.6, well within the ratio investigators use to define ultrathin knife forms.

Figure Three. CLICK for INFO

In my books from the SHADOWS on the TRAIL Pentalogy, the Folsom culture made some of the finest bipointed knife forms in existence. The ultrathin knife form in figure one exhibits another Paleoindian characteristic; thin, wide, and long flaking patterns resulting in overshot and over-the-face flaking patterns, I am confident that a Paleoindian made the knife form in figures one and since the Folsom culture specialized in ultrathin knife forms, it might have been a flintknapper from that culture who made the knife form sometime around 12,000 years ago. Since this bipointed ultrathin knife form was a surface find and not found in a dated and/or stratified archaeological context I will never know for sure who made it and when. 

What are some of the characteristics of bipointed knife forms? One of the best reference books on the subject of bipointed technology is titled Bipoints Before Clovis by William Jack Hranricky. This is the only book that I have found that explores bipointed technology in any detail. I encourage you to pick up this book if you are interested in A to Z on bipointed knife forms. I will be using the information from his book to go through the characteristics of bipointed knife forms below.  

Figure Four. CLICK to ORDER

   

Bipointed knife form technology has been in North America for a very long time and bipointed knife forms can be some of the oldest prehistoric tool forms in North America. A few investigators believe the technology arrived in North America via Europe around 20,000 years ago (evolved from Solutrean laurel leaf bifaces according to the book Across Atlantic Ice by Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley). That was a long time before the 13,000-year-old Clovis culture. The distribution of bipointed knife forms in North America appears to range from pre-Clovis sites to historical Indian sites. Therefore, it is virtually impossible to assign an age to a bipointed knife form with 100 percent assurance if the artifact was surface found and out of archaeological context.  

At the time Hranricky published Bipoints Before Clovis, there were no documented associations between bipointed technology and Clovis technology. Let me repeat that because I think it is an important observation. At the time Hranricky published his book, there were no known examples of bipointed technology found with Clovis cultural material. It appears that Clovis people preferred other knife forms, such as ovate or fluted knife forms. The Folsom culture was a different story. Investigators have tied some of the finest bipointed knife form examples in North America to the Folsom culture.

Figure Five. 4.6 inch long bipointed ultrathin knife form found by Keith Glasscock 
in Tom Green County, Texas in 1956. Ex Glasscock and Parrish Collections. 
John Bradford Branney Collection.     

How are bipointed knife forms made? They can start out as either a biface or a blade. 

What is a blade? A blade is a rock flake struck off the core rock. A blade is several times longer than its width. Prehistoric knappers produced bipointed knife forms from blades and finished them off as dual-pointed knife forms. Prehistoric people rarely used them as projectile points.   

Figure Six. 4.2-inch-long bipointed ultrathin knife form found by Bob Knowlton with
a grouping of other artifacts and bone material on a possible kill site in western Colorado. John Bradford Branney Collection 



Figure six is an example of how difficult it is to determine the age of a bipointed ultrathin knife form found on the surface of the ground and out of archaeological context. When I first saw this knife form my first opinion was that it was Paleoindian all the way. It has the wide, thin, and long flaking patterns that Paleoindians preferred, and the knife form was uber thin like an ultrathin knife form should be. I would have bet Paleoindian. 

Robert Knowlton surface found the bipointed ultrathin knife form in figure six on a private ranch in western Colorado near Grand Junction. Mr. Knowlton found this knife form with several other similar knife forms, two diagnostic projectile points, a pottery rim, and scattered and weathered deer bones. The finder believed he discovered a prehistoric deer kill site. As mentioned, Mr. Knowlton discovered a non-diagnostic pottery rim and two heavily serrated San Pedro dart points with the bipointed knife forms. He had no reason to believe they were unassociated. San Pedro projectile points were Late Archaic with an age somewhere between 2,500 and 1,800 years old, well after Paleoindian time. So much for my opinion that a Paleoindian made it.  

Unfortunately, Mr. Knowlton broke up the entire artifact suite and sold it piecemeal, artifact by artifact. It would have been much better if he had left all the artifacts together and sold them as the result of a single archaeological event.     

Bipointed knife forms have similar morphological characteristics (shape and form) that were consistent across a long span of prehistory. Therefore, unless the bipointed knife form is found within a dated context on an archaeological site or in a single cultural event such as figure six, it is difficult to tie a bipointed knife form with 100 percent certainty to any specific culture or chronology.

Figure Seven. CLICK to ORDER

One more example of a bipointed ultrathin knife form is shown in figure eight. This 7-inch long bipointed knife form was found on private land in Weston County, Wyoming. The knife form exhibits the wide, shallow percussion flakes favored by the Paleoindians, as well as fine pressure flaking along the edges. I would love to say this knife form was from the Folsom Paleoindian culture, but I cannot. It was not found with other Folsom materials and it was a surface find. Based on the prehistoric evidence of bipointed ultrathin knife forms, this bipointed knife form could have been made at any time during our country's prehistoric past.

Figure Eight. 7-inch long bipointed knife form was found on private land
in Weston County, Wyoming. John Bradford Branney Collection. 

    

I hope you enjoyed this article and learned something about bipointed knife form technology like I did when I researched the topic. If you get a chance please check out my SHADOWS on the TRAIL Pentalogy book series and join me on the adventure! Once you have read the series, please let me know what you think. 

John Bradford Branney holds a geology degree from the University of Wyoming and an MBA from the University of Colorado. He held various duties in the oil and gas industry for thirty-four years before taking up his writing. John has published eleven books and many magazine articles on prehistoric America and life in general. John lives in the Colorado mountains with his wife, Theresa, three German Shepherds, and a feral cat.