Some Microblade Cores from the Western Boreal Forest

Abstract

and southwestern Yukon Territory have been conducted under the auspices of the National Museum of Canada with support from the Institute of Arctic Biology. Two of these localities, Healy Lake and the Otter Falls site, produced a number of cores, core tablets, and microblades closely resembling specimens from the Campus site in central Alaska. A close analysis of some of these, along with the same categories of artifacts from several other northern sites, raises some serious questions relating to the functional categorization of this association of artifacts as a core -and -blade tool kit. On the basis of different, but convergent, lines of evidence, I will try to show that the Campus type of core is probably a kind of scraper or burin. Besides an analysis of the cores themselves, data from two other artifact groups, microblades and burins, are especially relevant and these latter will provide the introductory arguments.