Gravette Archæol.
(grəˈvɛt)
[f. La Gravette, name of a site in the Dordogne.]
Name of a long, narrow knife-like flint of Upper Palæolithic date, having a sharp cutting-edge and blunted back. Usually Gravette point.
| 1911 W. J. Sollas Ancient Hunters viii. 218 A new form of implement came into use. This is a pointed flake, carefully retouched all along the cutting edge; it..is known as the type of La Gravette. Ibid., (caption) The La Gravette Point. 1920 Quiggin & Haddon Keane's Man Past & Pr. 12 Finely worked knife-like blades (Châtelperron point, Gravette point). 1921 R. A. S. Macalister Text-bk. Europ. Archaeol. I. 368 The Gravette point..is a flake having one edge treated with secondary chipping and the other left sharp and untouched. Ibid. 369 In some Gravette knives the chipped edge is not straight, but has a kind of hump. 1932 Antiquity VI. 364 A number of points of gravette character..combine with the burins to suggest an upper Palaeolithic facies. 1959 Chambers's Encycl. V. 448 Straight knife-blades with blunted back (La Gravette blade), steep scrapers, end-of-blade scrapers, burins or chisels, usually with straight working-end, have been found. 1963 R. Carrington Million Years of Man xii. 147 One of the uses of their gravettes was to decorate the ivory of the slaughtered mammoths. |