It has been my experience, so far, that the older cultures produced better artifacts on average than the latest cultures did. There is also the variation in different individual's abilities to make stone tools. In areas that were inhabited just prior to European colonization I seem to find a lot of what I refer to as single use tools. Points that have minimum flaking or are made out of waste flakes with very little secondary flaking and crude axes/choppers that are bi-facial but only worked on one end seem much more common on the latest sites. It seems that the makers were unskilled or in a hurry to get back to the tent. It's also possible that some groups had more knowledge about how to work stone than other groups. In some areas with poor stone the tools are poor as well. Some groups may have relied almost entirely on bone as a tool material. I've often thought that for every stone tool found there were probably dozens of bone tools that rotted away. Some rivers, especially in Florida, and caves have produced large numbers of bone points, needles, awls, knives, and fishooks. Bone was probably much more widely used than stone. Grooved axes are early and tend to be finely fashioned, on the other hand, many of the crudely chipped and unpolished celt types are very late. There is regional variation as well. Some areas seem to have very poor tools even though there is good tool stone available while contemporary groups a few valleys over had the same material and superior tools. The more I learn about artifacts and early cultures the more I realise how little I truely know. There will always be more questions than answers.

Thanks for all the info Meg. I agree that there must have been an enormous amount of bone tools made. It's a shame that they are gone.