microlithn.

1879 F. Rutley Study of Rocks x. 107 Microliths of hornblende are comparatively rare.

1889 Q. Jrnl. Geol. Soc. 45 250 The milk-white fragments of felstone..are, at places, spherulitized, and contain abundant microliths.

1910 Encycl. Brit. VII. 568/2 Microliths, as distinguished from crystallites, have crystalline properties, and evidently belong to definite minerals or salts.

1978 Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 75 6233/1 Such components may affect nucleation or provide a mechanism for microlith retention over many cycles of gallbladder function.

1990 Jrnl. Geol. (Chicago) 98 160/1 These fine-grained microliths have metamorphic textures and appear to have been derived from the same source as the fragmental garnet grains.

1999 European Radiol. 9 940 In three cases microliths were distributed throughout the testis.

1908 H. G. O. Kendall in Man 8 103 Palæolithic Microliths... By microliths I mean tiny flakes or other pieces of flint which have been trimmed or used by man at some part of the edge.

1932 G. Clark Mesolithic Age in Brit. p. xx By a ‘microlith’ we understand a narrow flake blunted on one or both edges by steep secondary chipping, but devoid of secondary work on either face.

1960 New Scientist 11 Aug. 418/3 Finds included 52 microliths (tiny points which must have been hafted as arrow-heads and other weapons).

1989 J. P. Mallory In Search of Indo-Europeans vii. 187 For much of the Pontic-Caspian the stone industries are characterized by the production of geometric microliths or tiny flint blades.

1992 Current Anthropol. 33 330 It appears that these associations of small hearths and micro-debitage are locations of microlith manufacture and replacement.