I have been collecting glass from the bottle tip for our melting experiment, and along the way found some nice thick pieces.
I was in the lab Saturday working on flint, and so today (Monday) I had an hour or so working on this brown glass base.
It took a while to get into it, and once in I had to sacrifice size in order to get rid of some horrible step fractures.
I used stone, antler and finally a copper pressure flaker to finish it off. It flaked really well and I am happy with it. I also have a nice green piece so let’s see if I can find the time tomorrow as well.
Second Saturday in the lab. I made some more large flakes from an older nodule of different flint. This was harder and chalkier than the new material. Consequently, it took me a while to get it right, hence the small size. However, I like it. I should also say at this point I had about five goes, destroying three flakes before coming away with two handaxes. The others would have worked as tools but they weren’t ‘right’, so I carried on with consequences.
This is the second handaxe, and last go I had. It is of the same flint as the large handaxe last week, and this is slightly larger. It is mainly flake, with thinning going on at the proximal or bulbar end. Karl Lee told me that handaxe edges were worked so that they didn’t break and leave bits of flint in the meat.
Approximately two thirds of the cutting edge is worked, and the final third simply the feathered edge of the original flake. I think this would have worked fine as each edge type would have had different qualities.
Anyway, the inadvertent soundtrack is ‘Senorita’ by James.
Yesterday we did some filming. Howard (film maker) and Jex (sound person) at the bottle tip. I had brought some props with me to explain the overall idea. Enter, my current favourite large handaxe (above) to illustrate where I want to go with things.
Next up was my best glass handaxe made from the base of a vase. This was to illustrate the limitation of size of materials, with this being exceptional, but still not very big.
Third up was this (presumably) 1950s Vicks bottle of amazing blue glass. This was to illustrate the rare blue material I wanted to collect in order to then work with Nacho to produce a blue glass block.
Anyway, after the above introduction and some bottle tip footage Howard wanted some live action blue glass finding moments. This was going to be difficult as over many visits I had picked the area clean, or so I thought. I found quite a lot, mainly a pale or lighter blue, but nevertheless illustrating the material gathering process authentically, which is what we both wanted. Let’s see what Howard makes of phase one.
I destroyed two of the large flakes produced last week before I got to this with the third. It is a Neanderthal Bout Coupe, or flat based handaxe, and I like it.
I have a new project in mind inspired by a number of factors. The first one is the fragments of blue glass that I find at the bottle tip. Blue glass is pretty rare I have realised.
The second was seeing the melted glass bottle in Spain last year and realising I could produce a glass block, with the help of Nacho and his kiln. Talking to a friend Howard, he thought it would make an interesting three part film: gathering materials; making the glass block; knapping the handaxe.
That is how I ended up at Nacho’s this afternoon smashing the glass fragments I had previously collected and sorted, and making them into easily meltable pieces. Nacho, for his part has produced some clay moulds to get the shape, but as clay is porous the glass would bind to the clay. The aluminium food trays are to line the clay mould and stop the glass sticking.
This is obviously all theoretical at this stage, anyway, after putting the glass into a carrier bag and hitting it repeatedly with a lump hammer we managed to get one blue glass container filled.
After that we did a milk glass, and then clear glass container. And after that we went back to the bottle tip to get some materials for brown and green handaxes as well. There is a lot that can go wrong with this project, so let’s see how it goes!
I have had a bit of a ‘John day’ today. First thing I took Bella for a walk to the bottle dump. I found some blue glass fragments and a couple of interesting bottles, but no nice thick pieces.
After a late breakfast of left over veggie Shepherds Pie I went into uni. As you can see, we have some very big nodules, inherited from Alice la Porta. When she was buying them I told her to specify big nodules, as our previous delivery had been largely small ones. I should have said medium size.
Anyway, today I wanted to try breaking one up to see how it would go. I chose what looked like the easiest nodule, with flat sections as ways in. I then proceeded to produce a series of large flakes, and a lot of small debris.
For the breaking up process I used these two hammer stones, and as you can see, I didn’t get off scott free. However, they did their job and I then wanted to make a handaxe from one of the flakes.
All together I had three goes and made two handaxes, and I really like the one made from this flake. I learned from the glass handaxe I made last week, and this time stayed focused on preparing platforms and getting long thin flakes off.
One of the transverse flakes came off nicely but stepped in the centre of the handaxe (see left hand side with brown stripes).
So I did one of my special techniques that I learned from a Bronze Age knapper, and fitted the flake back in. I then whacked it again and successfully removed the step.
If you look at the flake scar on the right hand side you can see the negative bulb of percussion in the centre of the handaxe illustrating the process.
I am very pleased with this one, it is large with nice long flat removals. I don’t know if a Homo heidelbergensis knapper would have been concerned about the step fracture, however that process was immensely satisfying for me and gives the handaxe some personality. Happy days.
