Flintknapping: Making and Understanding Stone Tools.
Akerman, Kim
Flintknapping is an ambitious work. Its 11 chapters contain much
information on a wide range of topics concerned with flaked stone tools.
First principles, a brief history of knapping, raw materials, techniques
- hard hammer, soft hammer, pressure flaking, etc.; are all handled with
varying degrees of competence. An important chapter on safety is also
included. The emphasis throughout the book is really on the technical,
the making; the 'understanding', the difficult aspect, is
dealt with far less satisfactorily in two chapters, 'Using stone
tools' and 'Archaeological analysis of stone tools'. The
appendix - 'Resources for knappers' - details some commercial
sources of raw materials, newsletters and journals and events of
interest to the knapping world of the United States of America.
Whittaker has drawn together a wealth of data (30 pages of
references), again mainly derived from North American sources and, after
reading the book several times, nagging doubts crept in - not so much
about the book per se but more about the North American perspective on
stone tools generally which the book reflects.
First and foremost, it appears 'stone tools' means
'points' - of various dimensions, bilaterally symmetrical and
invariably bifacially worked with aesthetically pleasing pressure
flaking and provided with variety of hafting mechanisms. From the
antipodean perspective, stone tools apart from in northwestern and
northern Australia, and the eastern half of the arid zone of central
Australia, means everything except symmetrically worked bifacially or
(more commonly) unifacially pressure-flaked points. Ethnographically,
stone-tipped spears were restricted to the northern half of the Northern
Territory and to the Kimberley region of Western Australia. In those
areas of the latter region where the stone-tipped spears were made and
used, two other spear forms, one a plain pointed wooden shaft, the other
a small composite spear of reed tipped with pointed hardwood, were used
for fishing and fighting respectively. In the Northern Territory the
stone-headed spear was but one spear form additional to a wide range of
wooden spears, with a great deal of variation in such attributes as
number of prongs, location and orientation of barbs and barb form
itself. All these spears, ranging in length between 150 and 300+ cm, are
thrown with a spear-thrower (atlatl) and, like all Australian spears,
are unfletched. Spear-throwers across the continent show a marked degree
of variation in form and dimension (see Davidson 1934; 1936). In the
Kimberley and on the Coburg Peninsula of the Arnhem Land they may exceed
140 cm in length. With a prehistory in excess of 50,000 years of
occupation for the Australian landscape, stone points (and indeed most
formal stone tool types with the exception of certain unifacially
trimmed pebble and core tool forms and ground-edge axes) only appear in
the archaeological record between 3000 and 6000 years BP. There is in
Australia considerable debate not only as to when this technological
jump occurred but also to the how and the why. Stone points appear in
the archaeological record after the extinctions of the Pleistocene
Australian megafauna and consequently, unlike the situation in the
northern hemisphere. are not associated with big-game hunting.
Stone-tool forms generally unassociated with projectiles except in terms
of manufacture of wooden spears therefore dominate the archaeological
record.
The plethora of point forms in North American which may or may not be
diagnostic of particular cultural groups and/or specific types of
economics seems, unfortunately, to divert the attention of those
interested in the study of lithic technology away from the less
aesthetically pleasing but equally important other stone tools and
implements used by prehistoric peoples - the burins, scrapers,
flaked-adzes, blades, choppers, knife flakes, saws etc. and the various
techniques whereby different peoples often create the same end product.
Whittaker in Flintknapping has attempted to include information on
aspects of stone tool manufacture and use, other than those associated
with points, but with little attention to detail. Perhaps a series of
reduction sequences for a wider variety of tools drawn from around the
world would have enhanced the value of this work. A glossary of terms
used would also have been useful. Such criticism aside, Flintknapping
does provide a most useful broad introduction to the study of the
manufacture and use of stone tools. Readers, particularly students,
should be encouraged to manufacture and handle lithic materials, if only
to gain an appreciation of kenesic requirements; motor patterns and
physical constraints called into play when making and using tools of
stone are not necessarily those operating when metals are the medium.
A final note of caution. There can be an intense satisfaction gained
from acquiring the skills necessary to make either replicas of ancient
masterpieces, create new flaked sculptural forms or test the limits to
which stone can be pushed, in ways never conceived by prehistoric
people. To place ethno-centrically derived values on such skills,
particularly when interpreting the past, is, however, another matter.
KIM AKERMAN Museum of the Northern Territory, Darwin (NT)
References
DAVIDSON, D.S. 1934. Australian spear-traits and their derivatives,
Journal of the Polynesian Society 43: 41-72, 143-62.
1936. The spear thrower in Australia, Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society 76: 445-83.
