Flake

Flake

A small stone artefact made from an orange chalcedony, broken from a larger flake or tool. The fragment is roughly triangular in shape, with a pronounced circular ripple (caused by force moving through the rock to dislodge the flake), and intentional retouch to create sharp edges, perhaps for use as a scraper. The opposite side shows a neat pair of lateral flake scars, indicating where earlier flakes had been removed from the rock. Some small flakes on the stone’s margins are not intentional and have been made by the rock encountering other hard surfaces while it lay on the ground surface. The top of the stone (dorsal interior surface) shows a large negative flake scar, suggesting that the flake may have been from a prepared core.
The example is not particularly diagnostic, but appears to broadly match the stone technologies produced in the Levant between the Middle Paleolithic and Neolithic.
This flake is one of three collected by Lt Col Dr David Gifford Croll near Amman in October, 1918 and donated to the Queensland Museum in February 1943.

40000 BC - 6000 BC

C.006.002

QM E40139.2

© Queensland Museum, Peter Waddington.

Collected by Col. Dr David Gifford Croll CBE VD MID MB Amman, Jordan, 1918.
Donated by Col. Dr David Gifford Croll CBE VD MID MB to the Queensland Museum, February 1943.

Queensland Museum, Brisbane

Shea, J. (2013). Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Near East. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139026314

al-Nahar, M. (2013). The First Traces of Man. The Palaeolithic Period (<1.5 million – ca 20,000 years ago). In Ababsa, M. (Ed.), Atlas of Jordan: History, Territories and Society. Presses de l’Ifpo. doi:10.4000/books.ifpo.4877

P.006

Mr James Donaldson

Dr Brit Asmussen