From several sites within the John H. Kerr (Buggs Island) Reservoir area of Mecklenburg County, southern Virginia, a number of stone artifacts have been identified as burins or gravers. (The term “burin” will be used rather than “graver” as the latter term implies a limited use for such tools as engraving implements rather than for other purposes as well.) Associated with these burins are various types of projectile points, scrapers, borers or perforators, choppers, and a few cleavers or “coups-de-poing” comparable in chipping traditions to Old World examples. These burins occur not only on lamellar but on rough percussion flakes of chert.

While in Europe such tools occur chiefly in upper Paleolithic industries, Burkitt (1933: 59) considers: “For a tool to be classed as a graver it is necessary that it should have at least one graver facet… . When secondary work is done on a blade or flake as, for example, when an edge is trimmed, vertical blows are dealt on the edge, the flake or blade itself being held horizontally.