![]() John Goff is the president of Salem Preservation, Inc., a nonprofit organization. If knap we must, most likely in this modern age we should stick to “knapping” softer and safer materials - like plaster of Paris, ice or bar soap! I’ve heard similar tales from other archaeologists who have practiced traditional flint-knapping as well. I cut myself once in the process, and received a finger wound. It has been a fine learning experience, but one I would not recommend that all try. that one normally finds on old stone arrowheads and scrapers. Washed up, the bluish white glass now shows many of the proper characteristics, tool markings, scars, edge chips, etc. With a little care and attention to detail, I found I could create some good flint-knapped edges on the new glass piece using the deer antler. In the process, I also produced one blade “blank” that appeared to show promise to become a new point. In a few minutes, I had reduced many of the found glass pieces in size - so as to be less of a hazard to people walking in the area. I made one of the bigger stones an anvil stone, picked up a smaller stone to use as a hammer stone, and started to strike some of the old bottle bottoms to see what might be done. Outdoors, I found a river bank that was rocky, with some pieces of broken glass - old discarded bottle fragments. These factors motivated me to try flint-knapping a piece of glass, not stone. A fellow named Daniel Wells also makes new points of glass. I further recalled my brother once found an arrowhead near the Kennebec River in Maine that appeared to have been made of clear glass. I had no good chunks of local stone at hand, but recalled some of the best Native arrowheads and knife blades in America were anciently made of obsidian, a type of natural volcanic glass. The small antler had just two sharp prongs at the other end, which could be used for concentrating pushing power to a precise point where it was desired a new edge flake be produced. The bottom or “trunk” part of the small antler was thick, rough like tree bark, and made for an excellent natural handle. I bought the antler because I wanted to try flint-knapping myself. It has a knobby edge on its base, showing it was naturally dropped by a deer. The antler looks a like a small ivory colored tree. Recently, I picked up a small deer antler at an antique shop in Brunswick, Maine. Careful edge chipping could produce a nice sharp scalloped cutting edge - much like that found on a modern serrated steel steak knife. In edge chipping, a rough edge would be shaped and sharpened by pushing inward, often with sharp points of a deer antler. Most often, points and blades were made through a combination of processes, including direct percussion (when stones were split and reduced in size by knocking or knapping off pieces, hitting them with other stones) and edge chipping. These included pieces of grey, black and purplish Marblehead porphyry, rhyolite, white quartz, and the Lynn volcanics, often reddish in color. Over the years, I have found ancient flintknapped arrowheads and stone chips in some of the most unlikely places, in Massachusetts, Montana, and coastal Maine.Ĭenturies ago, Natives in our old Naumkeag area routinely preferred chipping and shaping many stones that were brittle, sharp and flint-like. Many Indian arrowheads were anciently crafted by flint-knapping, using tools like an anvil-stone, a hammer stone, and a deer antler. That was the English name the skill and trade associated with manually working special types of local or imported brittle stones into beautiful edge-chipped blades for sharp cutting edges of effective spears, arrows, knives and hide scrapers. One of the most ancient and useful activities routinely performed in Naumkeag centuries ago, was flint-knapping.
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