In archaeology a blade refers to a thin, straight stone tool that has been struck as a flake from a larger prepared core. Blades are usually made from flint but other materials such as chert are used as the technology existed all over the world and developed from local materials.

A traditional rule of thumb is that a blade must be at lease twice as long as it is broad. Blades served as tools and weapon points but were also fashioned into finer burins and scrapers to serve specialised purposes. Sometimes one edge is purposefully blunted by removal of a thin flake on one side to create a backed blade .