Type:  Single Platform Core

Location: Barkly Tableland, Northern Territory

Age: 

Material: 

MoST ID: 5535

Pedestal Link: https://une.pedestal3d.com/r/-cWf3zJzJZ

Model Author:  Teagan Yavion

This single platform core is from the Barkly Tableland in the Northern Territory.  The Barkly Tableland has extensive beds of chert pebbles and cobbles that were made into tools for thousands of years.



This core was reduced by hard-hammer direct percussion using a strategic approach common in many other parts of the world.  One end of the nodule was struck off first, creating a large flake scar.  The perimeter of much of the flake scar was oriented at slightly less than 90 degrees to the faces of the cobble—the ideal platform angle for percussion flaking.  Reduction then proceeded by removing flakes down the faces of the cobble from the flake scar striking platform.  The platform edge is technically bifacial—flakes were removed to two adjacent faces of the cobble from the one platform edge—but archaeologists conventionally refer to this as a ‘single platform core’.  This is because, after that first removal to create the platform, subsequent reduction involved striking flakes unifacially from this single platform.

See the annotations for technological details about this stone tool.