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The earliest "thick" bifaces are simple hand axes that have been found in Africa on Lower Paleolithic sites in large numbers. They date to many hundreds of thousands of years old. The earliest "thin" bifaces are found in France and Spain and date to the Solutrean Period sometime between 21,000 and 18,000 years ago. |
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Large thin bifaces, like the ones illustrated in this article, are rare. Late Stone Age cultures in the Americas produced some of the largest and most skillfully made bifaces in the world. For example, the two largest bifaces ever found in Egypt measure 19 7/16 inches (50 cm) long. They were found in a tomb at Helwan south of Cairo. Some of the largest bifaces found in the Americas have come from California where examples have been found that measure 30 inches or more. Late Mississippian sites in the southeastern United States have also produced very large bifaces. One of the "dance swords" from the Duck River cache, in Tennessee, measures 28 inches (71.1 cm) long. One of the Aztec bifaces in this article measures 24 1/4 inches (61.5 cm) long. |
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The largest Aztec bifaces were made out of a semi-translucent amber colored chert. This material was ideal for making large bifaces because of it's natural tabular form. Some bifaces still have small patches of the outer cortex on both sides, indicating that it was tabular chert. Tabular chert is found in limestone or chalk formations. |
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Aztec bifaces represent an important part of Aztec mythology. The images of Aztec bifaces were carved in stone in the form of glyphs and drawn as illustrations in manuscripts. In the Aztec ritual calendar, they represent a day called "flint knife". "Flint knife" day was also represented by an Aztec god. |
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Aztec culture used two different calendar systems: a 365 day solar year and a 260 day ritual calendar. The first days of both calendar systems aligned very 52 years. The "flint knife" glyph is used in both calendars. There are 20 different day names in the 260 day calendar such as vulture, serpent, motion, wind, jaguar, deaths head, etc. Each of these 20 named days lasted 13 full days. So a "flint knife" glyph will have an outline of a biface (knife) along with 1 to 13 dots to represent the specific day. |
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"REFERENCES"
1973,
Perino, Gregory, "Artifacts Made From Tabular Flint", Central
State Archaeological Journal, April #2, pp. 60-65. |
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