My Clock

[ToddsPoint]

I started knapping in ‘85. I was self taught for the first few yrs. No teachers or books. I figured out how to pressure flake and started making Cahokia points. These were probably made around ‘87. By then I had found a source of Burlington flint near the IL River. My stash of points quickly grew and I thought I’d use them for something. My dad worked the oak wood into shape and I epoxied the points on. It’s been hanging in our kitchen for 30+ yrs.

 

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[pepperj]

That's a really unique looking kitchen clock, liking it.
I tip my hat at your talents, your certainly gifted in many ways.

 

[tamrock]

Pretty nice work. I've had thoughts that some individuals of the ancient past did flint knapping as a full-time occupation for trade, rather than doing other grunt work to survive, just because they were so good at it, others would've rather swapped the food they gathered for the fine points made by these experts. It just seems that would have been a more efficient way to operate in a hunter-gatherer society.

 

[ToddsPoint]

Pretty nice work. I've had thoughts that some individuals of the ancient past did flint knapping as a full-time occupation for trade, rather than doing other grunt work to survive, just because they were so good at it, others would've rather swapped the food they gathered for the fine points made by these experts. It just seems that would have been a more efficient way to operate in a hunter-gatherer society.

You are exactly right. A good example is the Hardin point. Early archaic. IL examples usually made from bone white Burlington flint with nothing less than expert flaking. There is no such thing as a “Hardin site”. No sites have ever been found with a layer of purely Hardin material. These points were made by an early lithic “factory”, centered somewhere around Hardin IL, which is on the IL River and an area with Burlington flint outcrops. They were traded far and wide and pop up as single finds on older sites. So many examples found around Hardin, that’s where the name comes from. Because of the totally expert chipping, Hardins are one of the most difficult points to reproduce and look correct in all the details. I would guess other point types were made by experts and traded for their needs as well.

 

[tamrock]

You are exactly right. A good example is the Hardin point. Early archaic. IL examples usually made from bone white Burlington flint with nothing less than expert flaking. There is no such thing as a “Hardin site”. No sites have ever been found with a layer of purely Hardin material. These points were made by an early lithic “factory”, centered somewhere around Hardin IL, which is on the IL River and an area with Burlington flint outcrops. They were traded far and wide and pop up as single finds on older sites. So many examples found around Hardin, that’s where the name comes from. Because of the totally expert chipping, Hardins are one of the most difficult points to reproduce and look correct in all the details. I would guess other point types were made by experts and traded for their needs as well.

It's so interesting to think about how things really operated with people thousands of years ago. There's so many ways they connected with each other that we today can only speculate how it was really like.