14/09/2013 Caught Knapping - Flints
Saturday 14th saw about a dozen members bashing rocks ! No, we hadn't been given hard labour but were trying our hand at flint knapping. Antony Whitlock from ExeterUniversity demonstrated the manufacture of a range of tools from flint cores and flakes. This followed on neatly from Robert's lecture of a fortnight earlier.
He began by breaking a pebble to make a chopping tool such as would probably have been made on the spot for immediate use by early man. Later humans made more sophisticated hand axes in advance by chipping away flakes until they had made the core into a pre-determined shape. The flakes had useful sharp edges and some would be used for making other tools.
Our tutor talked us through the knapper's thought process, showing us how he would search for or form edges with angles of less than 90 degrees and then strike a blow of just the right weight onto a convex surface where it's energy would most easily remove a long flake, such as at the end of a ridge. This he demonstrated with aplomb. He showed us some he'd made earlier and like a magic trick, lifted a flake from what had appeared to be a solid rock, then another from beneath it.
In later Palaeolithic times, cores were prepared especially to get more of the suitable flakes with less waste and Antony showed us a Levallois core he had made and the several layers of long flakes he had removed from it, all good blades, fitting them back like reconstructing an onion. We saw how smaller flakes were made and used during the Mesolithic. Some of his bifacial hand axes were passed around, one being so slender as to be translucent. By then we could see how much thought and work had gone into its production. We also saw some examples cast in porcelain which were used as teaching aids and to study impact fractures.
Using smaller hammerstones and a soft hammer of deer antler Antony demonstrated more gentle flaking techniques, abruptly retouching an edge to form a scraper. Still one of the most common tool types during the Bronze Age, we have found some on our Drift Road excavation. He also demonstrated pressure flaking, for which by then bronze tipped ‘awls’ were probably used. With its serrated edge, the hafted knife he had made would not look too out of place in a modern cutlery drawer.
Responding to questions he showed how flakes were turned into tranchet, leaf-shaped and tanged arrowheads. We admired some complete arrows and discussed methods of extracting resin from birch bark to glue the arrowheads onto shafts, usually after lashing them on with sinews.
By then we were eager to have a go at producing a flake, so donned our goggles and each tried to remove useful pieces from a flint nodule but we needed reminding how to begin. It is not as easy as Anthony had made it look but he helped us decide how to proceed. If this was a skill most people would have attempted they must have been clever folk back then.