Green Clovis quartz crystal point. Credit: Briggs Buchanan

Quartz crystals are difficult to knap due to size, hardness, and crystalline structure, making them a "low-quality" raw material. However, the Clovis people of North America sometimes made points and other tools from this material despite its drawbacks. To determine whether the quartz crystal points of the Clovis were functionally comparable to those made from higher-quality toolstones, Dr. Briggs Buchanan and his colleagues conducted scaling and geometric morphometric analyses on Clovis crystal points. The study is published in Lithic Technology .

The properties of quartz

The Clovis are the best-documented late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer group of northern America.…