Thanks to Alice la Porta we now have the best part of a tonne of flint nodules in the Teaching Lab. Thank you Alice! Earlier this afternoon I went to a talk by Julian Thomas about excavations at the early Neolithic site of Dorstone Hill in Herefordshire. Of particular interest was the pattern of rock crystal deposition. Whilst flint was found across the site, rock crystal was almost exclusively associated with cremated remains.
And whilst present in the form of very small pieces of debitage, no rock crystal tools were recovered, and the small size of the debitage suggests none were produced. The process of reduction seems to have been the thing. This is in stark contrast to the typological focus of modern archaeology discussed in Grace’s previous post.
Anyway, at about 5.30pm I found myself in the lab with a large hammer stone reducing a large nodule into manageable flakes. I have posted some pics of one of the handaxes made, but to reiterate, the process is the thing. I like the handaxe but I stole the 50 minutes or so of the day when I could be alone in the lab making something. Why is this process so precious?
Figure 1: Contents of a bag of worked flint given to me by John to draw
While reflecting on my first attempt at flint knapping at the hand-axe making workshop I was struck by how unintuitive the process of flint knapping is. For a novice like myself, the act of knapping flint with the objective of producing a recognisable tool was not only difficult to physically do, but almost impossible to conceptualise. I assumed that because I had some understanding of the theory of flint fracture mechanics it would come naturally to me. It is also likely that, on some level, I had assumed that because flint-working is perceived as so simple and such a fundamental part of the ‘natural’ behaviour of hominins, that the leap from theory to action would be small. But, as became obvious to me after attending the workshop, it is not just the development of physical knapping techniques that requires practice, but the very ability to understand the material.
It is easy to underappreciate the challenge of flint knapping before trying it out for yourself, particularly as the material itself feels unfamiliar. But nonetheless, just as Laura wrote about in the previous blog post, being surrounded by others – being able to watch what they are doing, mimic them or ask them questions – was also how I was able to take the very first steps in learning what to do. The social aspect of flint knapping led me to reflect on an essay I wrote during my Master’s course on the utility of typologies based on the chaîne opératoire (typologies are methods used to classify artefacts and the chaîne opératoire refers to the method of understanding artefacts based on how they are made, rather than what they look like).
Figure 2: The relationships inherent in lithic tool manufacture (Geneste and Maury, 1997)
The chaîne opératoire appealed to me as it moves away from thinking of artefact types as static and provides room to think about why and how artefacts change over time. Proponents of typologies based on the chaîne opératoire argue that the methods by which people make things – their learned physical habits – are a more accurate indicator of cultural identity than artefact form or design, which can be replicated with different techniques (Kuijpers, 2018; Manclossi and Rosen, 2019; Roux, 2019; Tostevin, 2011). Crucially, physical habits are learned from an early age from skilled members of the community and, therefore, are a product of social relationships. Taking part in the flint knapping workshop allowed me to better understand knapping as a social activity, and thereby the relevance of the chaîne opératoire in artefact analysis. This was especially the case once I realised that ‘skill’ refers not only to the physical process of doing something, but the very way we understand it.
The principles of the chaîne opératoire have been used to inform lithic typologies for decades. Harold Dibble’s (1987) study of scraper morphology is the quintessential example of this in demonstrating the importance of understanding knapping as a process, as opposed to simply being able to identify the end-product (Figure 3). Vital for studies of lithic chaîne opératoires is the analysis of debitage, which provides valuable information on the techniques used to work a core. However, the typologies currently used in British scholarship on lithics are designed to describe the exact form and shape of clearly identifiable tools (see Figure 4). There remains no coherent vocabulary to describe the debitage produced in the knapping process, and we continue to rely on the vague terms, ‘blade’, ‘flake’, ‘chip’, ‘chunk’, ‘spall’, which tell us very little about the techniques used in their production. Through the process of experimental knapping, and watching how much debitage was produced (versus how many typologically clear ‘end-products’ were produced) I began to reflect again on how much more detailed and meaningful the archaeological record could be if we moved away from ‘morphological types’ and focused instead on the processes by which things are made. For, if this were the case, there would be a much greater incentive to describe debitage in detail.
Figure3: The different phases in the reduction of a scraper, which were originally described as separate ‘types’ (Dibble, 1987: 112)
The problem with British typologies is felt especially in commercial archaeology, where the description of artefacts by type is often the only information recorded about them. Commercial archaeology works on the premise that the destruction of archaeology can be mitigated by the production of archives, or “preservation by record” (Andrews et al, 2000: 527). This means that the archaeological report produced at the end of each excavation is the only way in which archaeological knowledge produced can be kept and disseminated. It is therefore especially important that such reports use accurate and meaningful typologies. Moreover, given that commercial companies are often under strict time and financial pressure to complete report writing (Davies, 2017: 185), the use of typologies to describe lithics (typically in an Excel spreadsheet) is generally preferred to the time-consuming methods of measuring and drawing.
Figure 4: Clark’s (1934) typology of PTD arrowheads, reproduced by Ballin (2021: 28)
As someone who is interested in questioning the typologies we currently use in lithic scholarship, but is also keenly aware of their practical necessity, especially in the world of commercial archaeology, attending John’s hand-axe making workshop was fascinating and thought-provoking. My goal in learning to knap flint is not to make impressive flint artefacts. Instead, I am most interested in understanding how flint works, and the choices a knapper makes in order to shape their material. I hope that the result of this will be an ability to better read those choices from flint assemblages, with a view to learning about how patterns of craft production have changed throughout prehistory.
References:
Andrews, G., Barrett, J.C. and Lewis, J.S., 2000. Interpretation not record: the practice of archaeology. Antiquity, 74(285), pp.525-530.
Ballin, T. 2021. Classification of Lithic Artefacts from the British Late Glacial and Holocene Periods. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Davies, D. 2017. The Development of Archaeological Post-Excavation within British Professional Archaeology. BAJR Guide Series.
Dibble, H. 1987. The interpretation of Middle Palaeolithic scraper morphology. American Antiquity. 52: 1. 109-117
Geneste, S. and Maury, J. 1997. Contributions of Multidisciplinary Experimentation to the Study of Upper Palaeolithic Projectile Points. In Knecht, H. (ed.) Projectile technology. New York; London: Plenum Press 165-189
Kuijpers, M. 2018. A sensory update to the Chaîne Opératoire in order to study skill: perceptive categories for copper-compositions in archaeometallurgy. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 25(3): 863-891.
Manclossi, F, and Rosen, S. 2019. Dynamics of Change in Flint Sickles of the Age of Metals: New Insights from a Technological Approach. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies. 7. 6-22
Roux, V. 2019. Ceramics and Society: A Technological Approach to Archaeological Assemblages. Cham, Switzerland: Springer
Tostevin, G. 2011. Levels of Theory and Social Practice in the Reduction Sequence and Chaîne Opératoire Methods of Lithic Analysis. PaleoAnthropology. 351-375
Flint working was an entirely new experience for me but getting to approach the material in a group environment made it a far less daunting task. I have knapped before, but only with glass bottles – easy to acquire as a student and much cheaper than flint! Glass behaves itself generally and you can predict where and when it will facture (mostly) making it a great starting material for knappers. I have no right to claim any decent knowledge of knapping or the skills that come with it, but I have managed, after many (many!) breakages, to form a neat little collection of glass arrowheads for myself.
I felt somewhat confident going into the flint knapping workshop John was hosting. I had seen the flint before, but I had never worked with it. We were given a detailed run through of how the flint reacts and how we should react to the flint, thinking of it as working together rather than just working on a material. Alice la Porta showd a video of a professional American knapper who created a beautiful flint axehead in just 25 strikes – a rather impressive and somewhat intimidating display of skill.
We started trying to make our own scrappers after a demonstration from John, and it’s fair to say mine did not turn out so well. I began with a decent palm-sized piece of flint which ended up about the size of my thumb with no real clear edge that could be used as a scraper. I tried again and again with flint flakes I found on the floor (I didn’t want to waste any good bits with my terrible practice blows) but didn’t have much luck. Flint was far harder to work with than I had anticipated and certainly much harder to knap than glass. I spent a good hour or so working on scraps trying to make a scraper before we moved onto looking at handaxes. Oddly, working towards a handaxe with the flint was much easier for me – I could visualise what I wanted a lot better and working with a larger piece of flint made me much more confident in my hits with the soft and hard hammers. Perhaps it was because I was used to working towards a similar goal that I set myself when making glass arrowheads, getting full surface removal of cortex and shaping the material, that I found making the flint handaxe easier to understand. This does not mean, however, that I had any clue what I was truly doing and was solely relying on the flint to help me and suggest areas to work on next. I did, in the end, leave with a beautiful handaxe I am very proud of (after some help from John).
What I took away from this experience was that knapping does not have to be a lone effort. Beginner knappers, such as myself, need help and guidance from the more experienced, and even other beginners who might be catching on to some of the tricks faster. Though it is a personal creation does not mean a community effort cannot go into its manufacturing. I personally believe the experience would not have been as enjoyable had I been left alone in a room with an instructional video to watch and learn from. People help people when it comes to these kinds of workshops, whether that’s the teacher or other learners, community is an important part of the learning and creation process.
It took a long time for me to get used to working with the characteristics of flint as I was so used to glass. I had to relearn a lot of what I knew about knapping, but it was an eye-opening experience as it just goes to show how skills can always be developed and adapted to new (and more difficult) materials. This workshop was an excellent chance for me to make something I could be proud of, but also learn through others: there was such a variety of people at the workshop, professors, other students, commercial archaeologists, and we all had different ways of approaching the task. Getting to watch others learn and practice is, for me, one of the best ways to develop new skills and enjoying doing so.
Last Saturday I took part in a session at the Whitaker Museum in Rossendale. My friend, Stephen Poole, had been invited to talk about the Pioneers of Rossendale: the Late Upper Palaeolithic and Early Mesolithic populations that left behind in the Pennines their calling cards, in the form of flint tools.
However, the pioneers in question were also the late nineteenth and early twentieth century researchers whose stone tool collections ended up in local museums like the Whitaker. Whilst working through these collections Stephen had identified half a Mesolithic shale bead, and because of that bead fragment asked if I wanted to run a Mesolithic bead and pendant making workshop after his talk.
I was happy to help but I couldn’t do the cordage aspect of the process, so I organised the workshop logistics with Jane from the museum, and two of our super competent third year undergraduate students, Jordan and Laura, ran the whole session! This meant that I could sit back and get some cordage making practice in, and in doing so I got a little carried away.
Anyway, I had made this (not Mesolithic) knife a good while ago and at the time noted the small chalk filled hollow. I poked out the chalk and thought it would be good to thread some cordage through at some point so It could be worn around the neck. That is what I had in mind whilst making cordage at the Whitaker.
So today I pulled out the knife and used the cordage to produce my lithic necklace. The cordage is too long and I don’t wear necklaces, but I love the aesthetic of bringing the two technologies together. Anyway, thanks to Jordan (cordage), Laura (pendant) and Stephen (lecture) for doing the heavy lifting.
And also to Jane from the Whitaker for organising the microphone, stickers for name badges, and most importantly, lunch!
We had an excellent handaxe making workshop in the labs yesterday, and I will do a separate post about it when I get some feedback from participants. This post is about one small part of the session. Before the handaxe making started in earnest we watched a ten minute video of an American knapper produce a large handaxe from a flat tablet of Texas chert.
The American knapper was highly skilled and produced a long symmetrical handaxe within something like 25 removals. Impressive. However, I lost interest early on. We had looked at the handaxes in the teaching collection and these real examples were much less refined. In our session we were also using knobbly flint nodules from Norfolk with fossils, holes and differential texture throughout.
The video was a performance of control by a highly skilled knapper using high quality material of an optimum shape and size. The factors being controlled, size, shape, material quality, were exactly those we were negotiating. To me the video was a sales pitch to archaeologists looking for machine like knappers to take part in ‘scientific’ experiments.
However, our exploratory negotiations with less than ideal materials resulted in artefacts much closer to the examples in the teaching collection. The handaxe in the photos was made before the workshop from a large flake with a big hole, small fossil, and course grained sections. My perspective is perhaps related to a current obsession with this brilliant track by the band James, describing the messiness of life and how we engage, make mistakes, change tack, and that we are ultimately, just getting away with it.
Whilst I felt the American knapper’s video was a performance of control, our knapping session was more like the performance of being human, and I loved it.
I have a number of projects on the go, all of which need people and dates to coincide. I find this kind of scheduling activity stressful at the best of times, and I have three immediate ones to deal with and a lecture to produce.
So after doing a significant chunk of lecture producing I treated myself to some time in the lab. This was a big flake and I reduced it down systematically. I need some new hammer stones and antler hammers as all of mine are worn.
The handaxe is asymmetrical, but in a way I can live with. The edges are all sharp, but best of all, it is a double A side. Both faces are equally interesting. The first picture shows two good thinning flakes meeting in the middle, and coincidently delineating a colour and flint consistency change.
The other face has this interesting fossil in it. I didn’t plan it like that but the texture of the flint around the fossil made me work around it and so it was a negotiated settlement. The rust colour is usually where water has penetrated the flint through flaws in the nodule.
Hammer stone and worn antler problems made me realise how I normally unconsciously choose the right tool for the job at hand. I struggled a bit trying to use a stone that was too large but unworn. This made me think about handaxe reduction.
This handaxe is…hand size! perhaps a lot of the handaxe reduction process was to transform an already useful flake into a good fit with the hand. None of the above handaxe characteristics were planned above and beyond thinking about bifacial reduction. And on that note, back to scheduling
Shakeel has serviced and repaired the combi-boiler so the house is now warm, but at night it still loses pressure. This suggests a significant water leak somewhere, however there is no indication of damp on the ceilings or in the cellar, so today I went under the floorboards.
Our house was built around 1900 and used to be a corner shop. The cellar underlies less than half the ground floor, whilst the corner shop bit and the wood burner room have only a crawl space. The corner shop crawl space has an access hatch and that’s where I was today. As you can see from the above picture there is plenty of crap down there.
Including some complete 1970s beer bottles and an undamaged jazzy cup. I brought three bottles and the cup out and left a nest of the rest for some future explorer. No obvious leak, but I did clad all the hot water pipes with insulation which I am happy about.
More relevant to this blog topic I also pulled out around 8ft of discarded copper pipe. This equates to 16 medium pressure flakers which are really useful for workshops, and coincidentally, I have a knapping workshop on Friday.
In relation to the leak we are going to try a central heating version of ‘radweld’ tomorrow, to see if that blocks the hole. If not the floorboards in the wood burner room are going to have to come up…
This story has two main characters. The above small handaxe is one, made in the lab last week from an unpromising large flake. I actually really like it although it is asymmetrical, and the cutting edges on each side are both sharp but of different character. It is almost as if each side was made by a different artisan.
The second character in this story is our kaput combi-boiler. It stopped working last week and we have not been able to get an engineer out who could solve the problem yet. In Manchester currently it is below zero degrees most nights, so apart from the wood burner room the house is pretty cold all the time. The secret of good comedy is timing 😐.
Anyway, back to the handaxe. As usual I handle these things a lot after I have made them. In getting to know the artefact haptically it occurs to me what I may want to change, and ways in to making those changes.
Picking up the handaxe first thing yesterday morning I was struck by how cold it was to the touch. It seemed to have absorbed the coldness that had pervaded the house overnight, and through the past week. It was in fact ‘stone cold’, and that was my overriding and surprising response to the object.
I was experiencing a different and unrealised capacity of the object, however, as I continued to hold and handle it I could feel its ‘body temperature’ changing, blending with that of my hand which enclosed it, and harmonising with my body temperature in general.
It made me think about how the human hand creates a haptic relationship with the object, finding a way of holding that seems to fit. However, it also alerted me to the fact that the object also responds to the human touch by warming to the person.
Whilst I grasp the science behind an inert piece of stone absorbing heat from my body and changing temperature, I was surprised by the process and think in pre-Enlightenment periods this experience may have been understood and explained in different ways, perhaps in terms of an object becoming part of the human body.
It is also interesting to think about in terms of the occult skills necessary to use the handaxe in for example a butchery process. Would the tool and the process be separated as a noun and a verb?
This is the start of an idea, however, it is Saturday, Shakeel has possibly fixed the boiler and the house is warm. A story with a happy ending!
