archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

, a uniface is a specific type of stone tool that has been flaked on one surface only. There are two general classes of uniface tools: modified flakes—and formalized tools, which display deliberate, systematic modification of the marginal edges, evidently formed for a specific purpose.

Modified flakes

While many worked stone tools can be technically designated as "modified flakes," for

lithic analysis In archaeology, lithic analysis is the analysis of stone tools and other chipped stone artifacts using basic scientific techniques. At its most basic level, lithic analyses involve an analysis of the artifact’s morphology, the measurement of ...

purposes a modified flake is usually defined as a

lithic flake In archaeology, a lithic flake is a "portion of rock removed from an objective piece by percussion or pressure,"Andrefsky, W. (2005) ''Lithics: Macroscopic Approaches to Analysis''. 2d Ed. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press and may also be refe ...

with one or more edges that were altered either through opportunistic use or through nonsystematic retouching; it is often difficult to identify the process that produced the observed edge. Opportunistic use occurs when a sharp flake is used as-is, without edge-modification. Nonsystematic retouching occurs when

pressure flaking In archaeology, in particular of the Stone Age, lithic reduction is the process of fashioning stones or rocks from their natural state into tools or weapons by removing some parts. It has been intensely studied and many archaeological industrie ...

is used to remove a few trimming flakes from the edge, in no discernible or extensive pattern.

Formalized uniface tools

Some unifaces are characterized by systematic edge retouch, which was used to thin, straighten, sharpen, and smooth an artifact's edge, and were usually created with a specific purpose in mind. These formalized unifaces were often intended for woodworking, cutting, chopping, or hide-working purposes, and generally fall into easily classifiable types. While the following discussion does not cover some specialized types of unifaces, it does include the most common types. Scrapers are unifacial tools that were used either for hideworking or woodworking. Whereas this term is often used for any unifacially flaked tool that defies classification, most lithic analysts maintain that the only true scrapers are defined on the base of use-wear, and are usually worked at their distal ends—i.e., "

end scraper End, END, Ending, or variation, may refer to: End *In mathematics: ** End (category theory) ** End (topology) **End (graph theory) ** End (group theory) (a subcase of the previous) **End (endomorphism) *In sports and games **End (gridiron footbal ...

s." Other scrapers include the so-called "

side scraper Side or Sides may refer to: Geometry * Edge (geometry) of a polygon (two-dimensional shape) * Face (geometry) of a polyhedron (three-dimensional shape) Places * Side (Ainis), a town of Ainis, ancient Thessaly, Greece * Side (Caria), a town of an ...

s." Most scrapers are either oval or blade-like in shape. The working edges of scrapers tend to be convex, and many have trimmed and dulled lateral edges to facilitate hafting. One important variety of scraper is the

thumbnail scraper Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image-o ...

, a scraper shaped much like its namesake. This scraper type is common at Paleo-Indian sites. Gouges (or

adze An adze (; alternative spelling: adz) is an ancient and versatile cutting tool similar to an axe but with the cutting edge perpendicular to the handle rather than parallel. Adzes have been used since the Stone Age. They are used for smoothing ...

s) may be either bifacial or unifacial, and are defined as tools with chisel-like working edges that were used for woodworking purposes; they may also have been used to remove marrow from bones. Gouges are generally triangular in shape, with the working edge—characteristically steep-angled—appearing at the wide base of the triangle. The opposite edge, at the point of the triangle, was the hafted end; the tool itself was generally hafted at right angles to the handle.

Denticulate tool In archaeology, a denticulate tool is a stone tool containing one or more edges that are worked into multiple notched shapes (or teeth), much like the toothed edge of a saw. Such tools have been used as saws for woodworking, processing meat and ...

s display edges that are worked into a multiply notched shape, much like the toothed edge of a saw. Indeed, these tools might have been used as saws, more likely for meat processing than for wood. It is possible, however, that some or all of these notches were used for smoothing wooden shafts or for similar purposes. {{Prehistoric technology, state=expanded Lithics