Comparing antler drift flakers to basketmaker sheephorn punch points for GRIM REAPER

[BenjaminE]

For those who are interested in bonafide prehistoric flintknapping tools and practices, I spoke at the Society for American Archaeology annual conference about prehistoric flakers.

Here I am speaking about antler punches recovered from Colha.



Here is a prehistoric sheephorn punch showing silicate fragments embedded in the ends.



Here is an electronic scan of a biface that is believed to have been made with the sheephorn punch:



Here is an antler drift punch not unlike those in the collection of "Grim Reaper" that was used to experimentally flake the following biface, with a technology that was cited at least one time during the 19th century:



Notice the width of the flake scar initiations at the edge, and the width of the flake scars five millimeters from the edge. Compare to the preceding flake scars shown on the Basketmaker II biface.

Here is a photo that shows the relative thinness of the biface:



Here is a profile of a Basketmaker II biface with evidence of being made with a sheephorn punch (compare to the previous experimental photo):



The Basketmaker II people created thin bifaces with a tool of indirect percussion that shares basic morphological attributes with the antler drift punches, more commonly found in eastern North America.

If you want to see the best collection of such flakers on the net, be sure to look up Grim Reaper's antler drift collection.

Also, for those who are interested in ancient knapping technology, the tools shown here were in continuous use from the advent of the archaic era through the historic era.

 

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[benjamineble]

If those antler drifts were used for taking off large flakes, and the scars that you guys are discussing, where do the tine points come into this big picture? I only found a couple of antler drifts at my farm midden, but over a dozen of tine points. plus the antlers they were cut from. And they never made a drift, from the leftover piece of antler, that they cut the tine point from. Steve has some of my antler finds......

Catherine,

That is a great question!

I suspect that the cut antler tine flaker may be one of the most commonly overlooked flaking tools, in North America.

There is probably even some confusion between the cut antler tip projectile tips, and the cut antler tine flakers. My impression is that the cut antler tip projectile points are usually straight, with pointy tips, whereas the flakers are bent and show wear on the tips.

I believe that past archaeologists assumed that such tips were used as pressure flakers. But, I suspect that they were used in indirect percussion.

Here is a reference that makes me suspect indirect percussion. This reference was made in 1869, but actually comes from a person's living memory going back to the beginning of the 1800's.:

1872 - When a knife–or an arrowpoint–had been worked down quite thin, but had not yet received a satisfactory cutting edge, the piece was held in the left hand, between the thumb and forefinger, while a small stone punch was held between the fore and middle fingers. The punch was pressed against the edge of the blade, and was struck sharp downward blows with a hammer, each blow taking off a small flake, and this process was continued until the edge was finished.

A better cutting edge was finally given by the flaking off of small chips from near the margin. The flint was held in the palm protected by a wad of hair or piece of tanned hide and a small point of antler or bone suddenly applied with force against the stone at the required point. This pressure cracked off a small chip and the operation was repeated as needed. (The Cheyenne Indians: their history and lifeways : edited and illustrated, George Bird Grinnell)


The prior passage describes indirect percussion, while the latter passage describes pressure flaking.

Most grasp the pressure flaking part. Few grasp the indirect percussion flaking part.

Here is a video where I interpret Grinnell's description while using a common cut antler tine tip flaker.

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Here is a paleo style point that was made with the above shown process. The process was used for really aggressive thinning in raw stone, You can see the cut tine tip flaker that was used to flake the point:



Here is the edge profile. Note the thinness:








Here is another point that is NOT paleo style that was made with this tiny antler tool as a finger punch. This stone is very hard to flake. It is doubtful that it could be pressure flaked, while in a raw state. If I showed this to one hundred knappers I doubt that one of them would know that I made this point via indirect percussion by following the description followed by Grinnell.

 

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[benjamineble]

Having never seen knappers using such drift punches , it is interesting to see the punches.
Pressure flaking to finish by using a fine point of an antler tine ,or a heavy copper wire embedded in a tine is a common method here in modern fabrication...

I do see other references to the drifts though.
Pardon me if this one has been posted prior.


[1868 - "A mode of flaking by using a punch is mentioned by some travellers. Catlin thus describes the mode adopted by the Apachees in making flint arrow-heads :


"Like most of the tribes west of and in the Rocky Mountains, they manufacture the blades of their spears and points for their arrows of flints, and also of obsidian, which is scattered over those volcanic regions west of the mountains; and, like the other tribes, they guard as a profound secret the mode by which the flints and obsidian are broken into the shapes they require.

"Every tribe has its factory, in which these arrow-heads are made, and in those, only certain adepts are able or allowed to make them, for the use of the tribe. Erratic boulders of flint are collected (and sometimes brought an immense distance), and broken with a sort of sledge-hammer, made of a rounded pebble of horn-stone, set in a twisted withe, holding the stone, and forming a handle."

"The flint, at the indiscriminate blows of the sledge, is broken into a hundred pieces, and such flakes selected as, from the angles of their fracture and thickness, will answer as the basis of an arrow-head."

"The master workman, seated on the ground, lays one of these flakes on the palm of his left hand, holding it firmly down with two or more fingers of the same hand, and with his right hand, between the thumb and two fore-fingers, places his chisel (or punch) on the point that is to be broken off; and a cooperator (a striker) sitting in front of him, with a mallet of very hard wood, strikes the chisel (or punch) on the upper end, flaking the flint off on the under side, below each projecting point that is struck. The flint is then turned and chipped in the same manner from the opposite side, and so turned and chipped until the required shape and dimensions are obtained, all the fractures being made on the palm of the hand."

"In selecting a flake for the arrowhead, a nice judgment must be used, or the attempt will fail: a flake with two opposite parallel, or nearly parallel, planes is found, and of the thickness required for the centre of the arrow-point. The first chipping reaches near to the centre of these planes, but without quite breaking it away, and each chipping is shorter and shorter, until the shape and the edge of the arrow-head are formed."

"The yielding elasticity of the palm of the hand enables the chip to come off without breaking the body of the flint, which would be the case if they were broken on a hard substance. These people have no metallic instruments to work with, and the instrument (punch) which they use, I was told, was a piece of bone ; but on examining it, I found it to be a substance much harder, made of the tooth (incisor) of the sperm-whale, which cetaceans are often stranded on the coast of the Pacific. This punch is about six or seven inches in length, and one inch in diameter, with one rounded side and two plane sides ; therefore presenting one acute and two obtuse angles, to suit the points to be broken.

This operation is very curious, both the holder and the striker singing, and the strokes of the mallet given exactly in time with the music, and with a sharp and rebounding blow, in which, the Indians tell us, is the great medicine (or mystery) of the operation." (Last Rambles among the Indians, Catlin).]

You are not the only ones who have not seen modern knappers using drift punches. A prominent archaeologist who is probably near 80 years old noted the same thing. Shafer wrote:

2006 - "Few archeologists in Texas are aware of the Maya punches and the large thin bifaces made using them. If the Maya could make large thin bifaces using punches, then it is reasonable to assume the central Texas flintknappers could as well. Missing in bone assemblages across central Texas are antler billets and the bone debitage related to their manufacture; antler debitage from punch manufacture was present at Colha. If such tools and debitage do occur, they are not being reported. The most-common flintknapping tools recovered archeologically are antler punches (often misidentified), antler tine pressure flakers, and deer ulna pressure flakers. Examples of presumed antler flakers from Archaic sites are not convincingly shown to have been billets."

"The use of indirect percussion using an antler punch is foreign to most modern flintknappers, but it was a method widely used by prehistoric chipped stone artisans from North America to Central America. Punches made of deer antler bases have large contact areas that produce wide flake initiations consistent with the production of large biface-thinning flakes (Geib 2004). The rare finds of flintknappers’ kits provide a glimpse into the tool set used for chipped stone manufacture. Flintknapper kits from Horse Shoe Ranch Caves (Shafer 1986:105), Burial 119 at Morhiss (Dockall and Dockall 1999), Feature 9 at the Crestmont site (Hall 2002), Lemens Rockshelter (Smith 1994), and the San Dune Cave cache in Utah (Geib 2004) are cases in point. The Horse Shoe Ranch Caves tool kit clearly provisioned the man for the hunt. It contained not only biface blanks, spare flakes, antler punches, sinew, and an edge abrader but a scarifier, jackrabbit mandibles, and buckeye and mountain laurel seeds for hunting rituals, all components of the technological system supporting his technological style of hunting and associated ritual behavior.

Feature 9 at the Crestmont site (Hall 2002:14, 60—63) contained three antler punches, three
biface cores, an atlatl hook, and three socketed bone points. The burial is described as an adult female, but the sex-linked artifacts associated with the burial are reason to question the sexual identification. The burial most likely contained a flintknapper’s kit, and the punches are hardly deniable. In the American Southwest, the Sand Dune Cave cache (Geib 2004) found inside a white dog skin bag is an excellent view into a Basketmaker II flintknapper and hunter’s bag. This bag contained three smaller bags, two of which are prairie dog skin bags, and a bundle of six dart point fore shafts with hafted stone points and two large mammal tendons for sinew. One of these contained 16 dart point preforms, two notched points, and a lump of uranium ore. The other prairie dog skin bag contained eight rod-like punches fashioned of mountain sheep horn. The Lemens Rockshelter (Smith 1994) kit contained only nonperishable items, but here, too, the burial assemblage consisted of seven antler tools, two of which are clearly punches; possibly three others are punches as well, although Smith describes four as flakers. One (Smith 1994:Figure 7a) is identical to Postclassic antler punches from Colha, Belize. These antler base tools at Colha were originally described as billets (Shafer 1985) but were later examined microscopically by the author and John Dockall. We identified them as punches based on wear patterns; they were used in the manufacture of very large thin bifaces. One site that yielded punches, possibly in the time frame of the proposed Prairie Caddo assemblage, is Blum Rockshelter (Jelks 1953). Jelks mentions indirect percussion tools of antler being stratigraphically between Scallorn and Perdiz deposits; these same deposits yielded arrow points identified by Jelks as Alba.

Actually, there were modern knappers who had made a career out of saying that the drifts could not have been used in flintknapping. Here is a good example from the 1970's:

1979 - “Then there comes the subject of “antler drift.” What is an antler drift? I have been knapping for 23 years now, and though I have seen dozens of antler drifts illustrated in archaeological reports, and have made up some myself, I have to this day to find anything that I would use them for. Would the archaeologist who so cleverly informed us as to their use please stand up and verify? Or is it the term rather than the tool which is archaic?”…”Yet, the site reports come pouring forth with poorly drawn projectile points illustrated upside down , with bifaces being called “blades,” having been flaked with “antler drifts” in holding positions that would only produce gravel, broken tools, or a lot of blood on the hands of the maker.Yet, isn’t it a little bit our fault that we have let writers get away with this recycling of old myths? How many of us write in and complain to the publisher about the antiquated information relating to flintknapping found in their books? Sure, it is the duty of the writer to research this, to go to the knappers, and get their OK or advice on this or that aspect.” (Flintknappers Exchange, 1979)

I hope my experiments, and research, provide a better interpretation than what past knappers provided.

 

[catherine1]

Thank you for taking the time to explain the antler tines Ben. You are a great asset to the artifact community. Hope to see more of your thoughts and observations on here......

 

[BenjaminE]

So people don't have to go look for these, here are a few pictures of my Antler Drifts.

Steve, I know that many would assume that the long shaft with the point are "pressure flakers". But, I believe I have seen notes regarding Hopewell bladelet/micro-core technologies that reference 6 inch antler rod-like punches. And, the Lacandon blade core punches are pretty thin as well, though they might be four inches long and not six inches long.

What do you think?

Ben

 

[BenjaminE]

Thank you for taking the time to explain the antler tines Ben. You are a great asset to the artifact community. Hope to see more of your thoughts and observations on here......

Thanks for the kind words.

 

[BenjaminE]

Having never seen knappers using such drift punches , it is interesting to see the punches.
Pressure flaking to finish by using a fine point of an antler tine ,or a heavy copper wire embedded in a tine is a common method here in modern fabrication...

I do see other references to the drifts though.
Pardon me if this one has been posted prior.


[1868 - "A mode of flaking by using a punch is mentioned by some travellers. Catlin thus describes the mode adopted by the Apachees in making flint arrow-heads :


"Like most of the tribes west of and in the Rocky Mountains, they manufacture the blades of their spears and points for their arrows of flints, and also of obsidian, which is scattered over those volcanic regions west of the mountains; and, like the other tribes, they guard as a profound secret the mode by which the flints and obsidian are broken into the shapes they require.

"Every tribe has its factory, in which these arrow-heads are made, and in those, only certain adepts are able or allowed to make them, for the use of the tribe. Erratic boulders of flint are collected (and sometimes brought an immense distance), and broken with a sort of sledge-hammer, made of a rounded pebble of horn-stone, set in a twisted withe, holding the stone, and forming a handle."

"The flint, at the indiscriminate blows of the sledge, is broken into a hundred pieces, and such flakes selected as, from the angles of their fracture and thickness, will answer as the basis of an arrow-head."

"The master workman, seated on the ground, lays one of these flakes on the palm of his left hand, holding it firmly down with two or more fingers of the same hand, and with his right hand, between the thumb and two fore-fingers, places his chisel (or punch) on the point that is to be broken off; and a cooperator (a striker) sitting in front of him, with a mallet of very hard wood, strikes the chisel (or punch) on the upper end, flaking the flint off on the under side, below each projecting point that is struck. The flint is then turned and chipped in the same manner from the opposite side, and so turned and chipped until the required shape and dimensions are obtained, all the fractures being made on the palm of the hand."

"In selecting a flake for the arrowhead, a nice judgment must be used, or the attempt will fail: a flake with two opposite parallel, or nearly parallel, planes is found, and of the thickness required for the centre of the arrow-point. The first chipping reaches near to the centre of these planes, but without quite breaking it away, and each chipping is shorter and shorter, until the shape and the edge of the arrow-head are formed."

"The yielding elasticity of the palm of the hand enables the chip to come off without breaking the body of the flint, which would be the case if they were broken on a hard substance. These people have no metallic instruments to work with, and the instrument (punch) which they use, I was told, was a piece of bone ; but on examining it, I found it to be a substance much harder, made of the tooth (incisor) of the sperm-whale, which cetaceans are often stranded on the coast of the Pacific. This punch is about six or seven inches in length, and one inch in diameter, with one rounded side and two plane sides ; therefore presenting one acute and two obtuse angles, to suit the points to be broken.

This operation is very curious, both the holder and the striker singing, and the strokes of the mallet given exactly in time with the music, and with a sharp and rebounding blow, in which, the Indians tell us, is the great medicine (or mystery) of the operation." (Last Rambles among the Indians, Catlin).]

Revelantchair,

It is not by accident that you have not seen knappers using antler drifts.

Between the 1960's and the 1970's modern knappers thought that they had "debunked" the proposed use of antler cylinders in indirect percussion styled flintknapping.

During the 1980's, and 1990's, the subject appears to have been more or less forgotten by modern flintknappers. During that time, "billet styled" knapping became very popular. But, by the 1980's, many archaeologists were noticing the lack of billets in archaeological sites, as culturally predictable traits.

In other words, archaeologists finally began to see that the predictable manufacture, use, and final disposal, of antler billets could not be documented as a cultural trait pertaining to any culture. Flintknappers wrote this off by saying things like, "The soil acids ate all of the billets".

But, if an honest person went through fifty years worth of site reports, he would have to admit that archaeologists have been digging up antler artifacts in all of these sites, going back to the turn of the 20th century, and in some cases, even earlier.

But, something else happened within the flintknapping community, that threw a wrench in the works. The best flintknappers ended up using copper percussion, and not antler percussion. These were people who were true forgers. These were people who were making big bucks off of flintknapping. As one late world class knapper told me, they just could not get the right flake scars with antler percussion. But, they could with copper percussion.

So, if we see the flintkapping community as having both "black hat" knappers, and "white hat" knappers, the black hat knappers proved that antler billet flaking was inferior to methods that could not possibly have been used, since the advent of the Ice Age. In other words, one wing of the flintknapping community, to some degree, undermined the claims made by the other wing, at least in the minds of honest people. Also, the "white hat" knappers were used to using heavy moose and elk club billets - something that is hardly a culturally predictable trait, anywhere.

So, what happened to the original evidence? It was conveniently being overlooked by people who did not have the means to explain it.

Between 2005 and 2010, I frequented flintknapping forums, more out of my interest in ancient knapping, then anything else. And, between looking at what modern knappers were doing, and what I saw in artifacts, I arrived at the conclusion that what is seen in artifacts cannot always be explained by billet knapping. For example, who could a flute be removed from inside an indentation, when the percussor cannot fit inside the indentation, or the base, of an artifact? Back in the 1930's archaeologists looked at Folsom points, and wondered the very same thing. And, they concluded - as I concluded - that maybe indirect percussion was involved, at least in removing a channel flake.

So, before 2010, I found myself suspecting that something else was going on, in some instances. But, what I did not know. And, when I wrote to modern replicators like Bob Patten, I was not satisfied by some of the answers...

Then, in 2010, I found out about an obscure Lacandon blade core technology that I had never heard about, before. So, I set out to find further information, which was very hard to come by.

Surprisingly, this quest for information led me to stumble upon a class of artifacts, known from North America, as "antler drift". This term, I believe, was coined around 1940 by Webb. But, the actual tools were described under various names going back to, possibly, the 1880's or 1890's, which early references pertaining to the Madisonville cemetery site, in Ohio.

Now, here is what I can say, from 2005 until 2010, I never heard one knapper bring up the subject of antler drift on any flintknapping site, forum, or thread. But, I found them in archaeological reports, from every decade, spanning from around 1900 all the way through the 1970's. And, what became clear is that the more archaeologists actually dug sites, the more they found these tools, and wrote about them. And, later archaeologists who do not do so much digging, and much more theorizing, seemed to know less about them. In other words, archaeologists did not know about the tool on account of any theory. They knew about the tool because they found it over and over again.

In fact, a greater presence of such tools was correlated with a greater presence of chipped stone industry. A lack of such tools was negatively correlated with a lack of chipped stone tool production. The tools were frequently found in prehistoric workshops. By the 1960's the presence of an antler drift in a grave was recognized as a predictable sign that the burial was that of a prehistoric flintknapper. Some researchers noticed the cellular compaction of cells from pounding. Still, other researchers noted the signs of silicate materials being embedded in the ends. The list of observations made by many independent researchers, spans for over a half a century.

But, modern flintknappers said that the tools were of no use. And, it was really a handful of modern knappers who used to hold a great deal of sway, before the advent of the internet. So, we basically were stuck with the opinions of a relatively small cabal of both white hat, and black hat knappers.

Anyway, between 2005 and 2010, I was well liked on various flintknapping forums. I was given gifts, and invited to go to knapins. Better knappers were kind enough to share their pointers with me, etc.

Also, during that time, I had a very overly-generalized view about prehistoric flintknapping. I envisioned the opposite of what actually had taken place. I thought that knappers figured out how to make up special technologies "on the fly", McGyver style.

But, in 2010, I saw a discrepancy between all of these generalized ideas about knapping, and the issue of "antler drift". or "antler cylinders". So, I carefully started going through dozens - maybe hundreds - of archaeological reports. And, the more I looked, the more evidence I found. Only, it was nothing that I had ever heard flintknappers speak about.

So, finally, one day in 2010, I wrote the following words on the Paleoplanet flintknapping forum: "It seems to me that Native American knappers had been using some sort of indirect percussion that has never been understood."

This statement was immediately rebuffed by a nationally known replicator, and author, named Bob Patten. He responded by saying that "there is no evidence", and the idea is a "pipedream", and indirect percussion was only used in blade core work, but not bifacial reduction.

Well, to the charge of "no evidence", I new that he was wrong. But, his pronouncements were followed by a sort of "public pile on", with flintkappers demanding to see such evidence.

So, I started posting archaeological evidence, as I have done here . This eventually led to a division between factions of flintknappers. Some refused to address or acknowledge the evidence that was posted, while others demanded that I "prove it".

Now, to the latter charge, they were demanding something that not even Don Crabtree had been able to do, and that they had not been able to do.

So, I began to carry out experiments, and post the results, which were mostly ridiculed or disparaged. But, I saw that the "black hat" and "white hat" flintknappers were actually quite divided. And, so I realized that even though one faction wanted the subject dismissed, the other faction wanted to contest everything that was said or shown.

I also saw that their weakness was that no one could give an honest accounting for why they were not doing better with antler billet flaking. It was something that no one wanted to talk about, while almost all of them quietly jumped ship, for copper percussion. And, I reasoned that they had to have more honest people in the mix, especially new people.

So, while I saw that the archaeological data was never going to get a fair trial, I realized that I would be able to get the data out there by driving a permanent wedge into the flintknapping community, until the people could never reunite, as they had previously done under a small "cabal" of nationally known leaders.

So, after six months of patiently showing evidence from archaeology, I changed tactics and began to vigorously respond to everyone who contested the evidence.

 

[releventchair]

Revelantchair,

It is not by accident that you have not seen knappers using antler drifts.

Between the 1960's and the 1970's modern knappers thought that they had "debunked" the proposed use of antler cylinders in indirect percussion styled flintknapping.

During the 1980's, and 1990's, the subject appears to have been more or less forgotten by modern flintknappers. During that time, "billet styled" knapping became very popular. But, by the 1980's, many archaeologists were noticing the lack of billets in archaeological sites, as culturally predictable traits.

In other words, archaeologists finally began to see that the predictable manufacture, use, and final disposal, of antler billets could not be documented as a cultural trait pertaining to any culture. Flintknappers wrote this off by saying things like, "The soil acids ate all of the billets".

But, if an honest person went through fifty years worth of site reports, he would have to admit that archaeologists have been digging up antler artifacts in all of these sites, going back to the turn of the 20th century, and in some cases, even earlier.

But, something else happened within the flintknapping community, that threw a wrench in the works. The best flintknappers ended up using copper percussion, and not antler percussion. These were people who were true forgers. These were people who were making big bucks off of flintknapping. As one late world class knapper told me, they just could not get the right flake scars with antler percussion. But, they could with copper percussion.

So, if we see the flintkapping community as having both "black hat" knappers, and "white hat" knappers, the black hat knappers proved that antler billet flaking was inferior to methods that could not possibly have been used, since the advent of the Ice Age. In other words, one wing of the flintknapping community, to some degree, undermined the claims made by the other wing, at least in the minds of honest people. Also, the "white hat" knappers were used to using heavy moose and elk club billets - something that is hardly a culturally predictable trait, anywhere.

So, what happened to the original evidence? It was conveniently being overlooked by people who did not have the means to explain it.

Between 2005 and 2010, I frequented flintknapping forums, more out of my interest in ancient knapping, then anything else. And, between looking at what modern knappers were doing, and what I saw in artifacts, I arrived at the conclusion that what is seen in artifacts cannot always be explained by billet knapping. For example, who could a flute be removed from inside an indentation, when the percussor cannot fit inside the indentation, or the base, of an artifact? Back in the 1930's archaeologists looked at Folsom points, and wondered the very same thing. And, they concluded - as I concluded - that maybe indirect percussion was involved, at least in removing a channel flake.

So, before 2010, I found myself suspecting that something else was going on, in some instances. But, what I did not know. And, when I wrote to modern replicators like Bob Patten, I was not satisfied by some of the answers...

Then, in 2010, I found out about an obscure Lacandon blade core technology that I had never heard about, before. So, I set out to find further information, which was very hard to come by.

Surprisingly, this quest for information led me to stumble upon a class of artifacts, known from North America, as "antler drift". This term, I believe, was coined around 1940 by Webb. But, the actual tools were described under various names going back to, possibly, the 1880's or 1890's, which early references pertaining to the Madisonville cemetery site, in Ohio.

Now, here is what I can say, from 2005 until 2010, I never heard one knapper bring up the subject of antler drift on any flintknapping site, forum, or thread. But, I found them in archaeological reports, from every decade, spanning from around 1900 all the way through the 1970's. And, what became clear is that the more archaeologists actually dug sites, the more they found these tools, and wrote about them. And, later archaeologists who do not do so much digging, and much more theorizing, seemed to know less about them. In other words, archaeologists did not know about the tool on account of any theory. They knew about the tool because they found it over and over again.

In fact, a greater presence of such tools was correlated with a greater presence of chipped stone industry. A lack of such tools was negatively correlated with a lack of chipped stone tool production. The tools were frequently found in prehistoric workshops. By the 1960's the presence of an antler drift in a grave was recognized as a predictable sign that the burial was that of a prehistoric flintknapper. Some researchers noticed the cellular compaction of cells from pounding. Still, other researchers noted the signs of silicate materials being embedded in the ends. The list of observations made by many independent researchers, spans for over a half a century.

But, modern flintknappers said that the tools were of no use. And, it was really a handful of modern knappers who used to hold a great deal of sway, before the advent of the internet. So, we basically were stuck with the opinions of a relatively small cabal of both white hat, and black hat knappers.

Anyway, between 2005 and 2010, I was well liked on various flintknapping forums. I was given gifts, and invited to go to knapins. Better knappers were kind enough to share their pointers with me, etc.

Also, during that time, I had a very overly-generalized view about prehistoric flintknapping. I envisioned the opposite of what actually had taken place. I thought that knappers figured out how to make up special technologies "on the fly", McGyver style.

But, in 2010, I saw a discrepancy between all of these generalized ideas about knapping, and the issue of "antler drift". or "antler cylinders". So, I carefully started going through dozens - maybe hundreds - of archaeological reports. And, the more I looked, the more evidence I found. Only, it was nothing that I had ever heard flintknappers speak about.

So, finally, one day in 2010, I wrote the following words on the Paleoplanet flintknapping forum: "It seems to me that Native American knappers had been using some sort of indirect percussion that has never been understood."

This statement was immediately rebuffed by a nationally known replicator, and author, named Bob Patten. He responded by saying that "there is no evidence", and the idea is a "pipedream", and indirect percussion was only used in blade core work, but not bifacial reduction.

Well, to the charge of "no evidence", I new that he was wrong. But, his pronouncements were followed by a sort of "public pile on", with flintkappers demanding to see such evidence.

So, I started posting archaeological evidence, as I have done here . This eventually led to a division between factions of flintknappers. Some refused to address or acknowledge the evidence that was posted, while others demanded that I "prove it".

Now, to the latter charge, they were demanding something that not even Don Crabtree had been able to do, and that they had not been able to do.

So, I began to carry out experiments, and post the results, which were mostly ridiculed or disparaged. But, I saw that the "black hat" and "white hat" flintknappers were actually quite divided. And, so I realized that even though one faction wanted the subject dismissed, the other faction wanted to contest everything that was said or shown.

I also saw that their weakness was that no one could give an honest accounting for why they were not doing better with antler billet flaking. It was something that no one wanted to talk about, while almost all of them quietly jumped ship, for copper percussion. And, I reasoned that they had to have more honest people in the mix, especially new people.

So, while I saw that the archaeological data was never going to get a fair trial, I realized that I would be able to get the data out there by driving a permanent wedge into the flintknapping community, until the people could never reunite, as they had previously done under a small "cabal" of nationally known leaders.

So, after six months of patiently showing evidence from archaeology, I changed tactics and began to vigorously respond to everyone who contested the evidence.

Wow. My blissful ignorance missed all that debate...

Still , those I watched busting stone before taking it to a higher level of scrap/shards myself (and no , sadly ; knapping is no forte of mine) folks were not mentioning any factions.
I understood they were not using the same tools and process the people were here thousands of years ago.
Nor were they actually representing any guild. Though guilds may exist .

If we could have watched Ishi bust stone , we would have a snapshot of a brief time. And of a process.

Same with Otzi.
A snapshot following an evolution that was to him ,simply how it was currently.

Were knappers assembled from different nations and different eras ....(and they can be with patient artifact research as in your own) nuance would/does need to be considered.
We don't know what we don't know....That does not mean a marshmallow stick has to have a long sharp point , or a short sharp point because the stick we made has one or the other.
Out of context yes. But how a relic was made can be questioned. Even when we can hold it and look close at the finished results. Or attempted duplication.

Thanks for sharing. You must be a very patient breaker of stone....(!) And a patient researcher.

 

[BenjaminE]

Wow. My blissful ignorance missed all that debate...

Still , those I watched busting stone before taking it to a higher level of scrap/shards myself (and no , sadly ; knapping is no forte of mine) folks were not mentioning any factions.
I understood they were not using the same tools and process the people were here thousands of years ago.
Nor were they actually representing any guild. Though guilds may exist .

If we could have watched Ishi bust stone , we would have a snapshot of a brief time. And of a process.

Same with Otzi.
A snapshot following an evolution that was to him ,simply how it was currently.

Were knappers assembled from different nations and different eras ....(and they can be with patient artifact research as in your own) nuance would/does need to be considered.
We don't know what we don't know....That does not mean a marshmallow stick has to have a long sharp point , or a short sharp point because the stick we made has one or the other.
Out of context yes. But how a relic was made can be questioned. Even when we can hold it and look close at the finished results. Or attempted duplication.

Thanks for sharing. You must be a very patient breaker of stone....(!) And a patient researcher.

I thought I had deleted the post. It must have been fate. Lol!

The short story is that indirect percussion has become mainstream among flintknappers. And, I am no longer ridiculed as Mr. Indirect Percussion.

The irony is that I understood the hammerstone/pressure flaking part since the 80's, mainly from Time-Life books. I just did not know about the record of indirect percussion, in the American archaeological record, until 2010.

Here is a website that I put together for flintknappers to show that there is evidence of indirect percussion that was used during prehistoric times in the Americas.

This website is by no means complete. If you read through in chronological order, ideas and concepts will began to emerge.

Antler Drift - Indirect Percussion Quotes

 

[uniface]

***** +

 

[releventchair]

Great read on your site Ben.
Lengthy , but worth it. And data to back dialog with for sure.

Always wondered about Clovis type with a groove on the center of widest point end.
Reduction methods that were familiar to me did not seem to apply.

 

[BenjaminE]

Great read on your site Ben.
Lengthy , but worth it. And data to back dialog with for sure.

Always wondered about Clovis type with a groove on the center of widest point end.
Reduction methods that were familiar to me did not seem to apply.

This groove was made with a flaking process that a hundred years ago a few researchers would have referred to as "flaker aided by blow". What is your take on this groove? It was made with the point of a simple deer tine.