Flintknapping: Making and Understanding Stone Tools.

Flintknapping: Making and Understanding Stone Tools. Flintknapping is an ambitious work. Its 11 chapters contain muchinformation 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 withvarying degrees of competence. An important chapter on safety is alsoincluded. The emphasis throughout the book is really on the technical,the making; the 'understanding', the difficult aspect, isdealt with far less satisfactorily in two chapters, 'Using stonetools' and 'Archaeological analysis of stone tools'. Theappendix - 'Resources for knappers' - details some commercialsources of raw materials, newsletters and journals and events ofinterest to the knapping world of the United States of America UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. The name of this country. The United States, now thirty-one in number, are Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, .Whittaker has drawn together a wealth of data (30 pages ofreferences), again mainly derived from North American North Americannamed after North America.North American blastomycosissee North American blastomycosis.North American cattle ticksee boophilusannulatus. sources and, afterreading the book several times, nagging doubts crept in - not so muchabout the book per se but more about the North American perspective onstone tools generally which the book reflects.First and foremost, it appears 'stone tools' means'points' - of various dimensions, bilaterally symmetrical andinvariably in��var��i��a��ble?adj.Not changing or subject to change; constant.in��vari��a��bil bifacially worked with aesthetically pleasing pressureflaking and provided with variety of hafting Hafting is a process by which an artifact, often bone, metal, or stone, is attached to a handle or strap. This makes the artifact more useful by allowing it to be fired (as in the case of an arrowhead), thrown (as a spear), or leveraged more effectively (as an axe or adze). mechanisms. From theantipodean an��tip��o��des?pl.n.1. Any two places or regions that are on diametrically opposite sides of the earth.2. (used with a sing. or pl. verb) Something that is the exact opposite or contrary of another; an antipode. perspective, stone tools apart from in northwestern andnorthern Australia, and the eastern half of the arid zone of centralAustralia, 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 NorthernTerritory and to the Kimberley region of Western Australia. In thoseareas of the latter region where the stone-tipped spears were made andused, two other spear forms, one a plain pointed wooden shaft, the othera small composite spear of reed tipped with pointed hardwood, were usedfor fishing and fighting respectively. In the Northern Territory thestone-headed spear was but one spear form additional to a wide range ofwooden spears, with a great deal of variation in such attributes asnumber of prongs, location and orientation of barbs and barb formitself. All these spears, ranging in length between 150 and 300+ cm, arethrown with a spear-thrower (atlatl atlatl(ät`lätəl)[Nahuatl], device used to throw a spear with greater propulsion. Atlatls began to be used in the Americas in the post-Pleistocene period and were eventually replaced by the bow and arrow. ) and, like all Australian spears,are unfletched. Spear-throwers across the continent show a marked degreeof variation in form and dimension (see Davidson 1934; 1936). In theKimberley and on the Coburg Peninsula of the Arnhem Land they may exceed140 cm in length. With a prehistory prehistory,period of human evolution before writing was invented and records kept. The term was coined by Daniel Wilson in 1851. It is followed by protohistory, the period for which we have some records but must still rely largely on archaeological evidence to in excess of 50,000 years ofoccupation for the Australian landscape, stone points (and indeed mostformal stone tool types with the exception of certain unifaciallytrimmed pebble and core tool forms and ground-edge axes) only appear inthe archaeological record between 3000 and 6000 years BP. There is inAustralia considerable debate not only as to when this technologicaljump occurred but also to the how and the why. Stone points appear inthe archaeological record after the extinctions of the PleistoceneAustralian megafauna meg��a��fau��na?n. (used with a sing. or pl. verb)Large or relatively large animals, as of a particular region or period, considered as a group.meg and consequently, unlike the situation in thenorthern hemisphere. are not associated with big-game hunting.Stone-tool forms generally unassociated with projectiles except in termsof manufacture of wooden spears therefore dominate the archaeologicalrecord.The plethora of point forms in North American which may or may not bediagnostic of particular cultural groups and/or specific types ofeconomics seems, unfortunately, to divert the attention of thoseinterested in the study of lithic technology away from the lessaesthetically pleasing but equally important other stone tools andimplements used by prehistoric peoples - the burins, scrapers,flaked-adzes, blades, choppers, knife flakes, saws etc. and the varioustechniques whereby different peoples often create the same end product.Whittaker in Flintknapping has attempted to include information onaspects of stone tool manufacture and use, other than those associatedwith points, but with little attention to detail. Perhaps a series ofreduction sequences for a wider variety of tools drawn from around theworld would have enhanced the value of this work. A glossary of termsused would also have been useful. Such criticism aside, Flintknappingdoes provide a most useful broad introduction to the study of themanufacture and use of stone tools. Readers, particularly students,should be encouraged to manufacture and handle lithic lith��ic?1?adj.Consisting of or relating to stone or rock.Adj. 1. lithic - of or containing lithium2. lithic - relating to or composed of stone; "lithic sandstone" materials, if onlyto gain an appreciation of kenesic requirements; motor patterns andphysical constraints called into play when making and using tools ofstone are not necessarily those operating when metals are the medium.A final note of caution. There can be an intense satisfaction gainedfrom acquiring the skills necessary to make either replicas of ancientmasterpieces, create new flaked sculptural forms or test the limits towhich stone can be pushed, in ways never conceived by prehistoricpeople. 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)ReferencesDAVIDSON, 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 AmericanPhilosophical Society 76: 445-83.