The best way to decide is to haft the piece and try to kill a bear with it. If the result is successful, then it is a point; if not, then it should be considered a convergent scraper. One of the problems with this approach is that it can quickly exhaust the available supply of bears or typologists
Debénath & Dibble on the sheer scale of what lies beneath:
Imagine … that during the time of the Acheulian in Europe, which lasted for at least 500,000 years, there was a constant population of 5,000 active tool makers. Imagine also that each of these flintknappers made only ten bifaces per year and perhaps 100 flake tools. Even with such conservative parameters…, this would have resulted in the production of 25,000,000,000 bifaces and 250,000,000,000 flake tools, of which only a minuscule proportion has been collected during the history of Paleolithic research.
I’ve begun narrowing my reading down from works about the Paleolithic as a whole to the Middle Paleolithic in particular.
While it’s been fascinating to see perspectives on Neanderthals evolve in popular non-fiction over the last 30 years, immersing myself in stratigraphy, typology, palynology, faunal assemblages, taphonomy, and (most exciting!) spatial organization has proved deeply rewarding. To that end, my reading has incorporated more and more site reports by the likes of Bordes (Combe Grenal and Peche de l’Aze); Lévêque, et al (Saint-Cesaire); Bar-Yosef, et al (Kebara); and Akazawa & Muhesan (Dederiya).
With my lithic technology reading list nearly out of the way, I continue to (pardon the pun) go deep on the Paleolithic. I’m particularly fascinated by the Middle Paleolithic, dominated in Europe by the Mousterian lithic industry created by our Neanderthal cousins.
Nevertheless, my Paleolithic reading list remains fairly diverse.
I’m especially enjoying the first book in my list, a copy from 1878 that I spotted by chance and picked up for $4.00 at a used bookstore 25 years ago in Union Springs, NY. It’s a fascinating view into the state of paleoanthropology in the era when Darwin, Lyell, and Huxley were all still alive.
More paleolithic archaeology and paleoanthropology reading lists:
(1994)
by François Bordes (1972)
by Paul Mellars (1995)
edited by Takeru Akazawa & Sultan Muhesan (2003)
edited by Harold Dibble & Paul Mellars (2003)
by Mary Leakey (1984)
edited by Eric Delson, Ian Tattersall, John A. Van Couvering, and Alison S. Brooks (2000)
by Barry Cunliffe (2001)
by Ian Tattersall (2013)
by Chris Stringer (2013)
by Rob Dinnis and Chris Stringer (2014)
Andrew-Becraft.com 