2019 Primitive Skill Goals

I recognize people enjoy seeing videos of primitive skill technics.  There are a number areas that I recognize that I may know the prescribed methods to produce certain technics, but like most I have utilized modern tools to do to speed up the process, and have not done them primitively.   I need to practice primitive, so I can teach/demonstrate primitive.

1.  Drill shaft holes, for foreshafts, on spears and darts using stone, bone, or antler drills. Further
     research how this could be done with Stone Age tools.  Post results.
2.  Make and post videos of technics:
     a.  Corn cob bow drill fire making
     b.  Antler axe use
     c.  Bow drill fire making
     d.  Drilling foreshaft holes
3.  Make and use antler axes/adze.
4.  Drill handle hole in antler axe using stone or wood drills.
5.  Compare bone drilling/shaping using dry and soaking bone
6.  Experiment and form levallois core and blades.
7.  Research and practice notch forming on spear and handle shafts, using Stone Age tools.
8.  Use fire to debark, round handle, and form wedge on diggings sticks.  Compare to Neanderthal            technics.
9.  Practice ‘new’ indirect percussion technic for blades and thinning.
10. Rudger roll technic.
11. Neanderthal birch bark pitch ‘handle’ on scraping flake.
12. Rattan fire thong technic.

Making Notches With Stone Tools

Among my projects, I have been looking at making notches, for stone points, using only stone tools.  This aspect sometimes get glossed over discussing hafting technics.  There are a number of technics I have come across.  These photos are by Tom Mills (aka Paleo Aleo, on Paleo Planet).  In sequence, a stone drill is used to make a hole, from both sides.  A stone flake cuts a groove from the hole to the end of the shaft.  The notch plug is then cut or knocked out of the shaft with an antler punch, not pictured.  The notch is then cleaned up with a sharp flake.  Just thinking, an antler wedge could be used to help split and remove the notch plug.  I came across some information in the Society of Primitive Technology bulletin that carving the base of the notch to a sharp “V”, is superior to leaving the base flat and rough.  On impact, flat rough bases tend to blow off the side of the notch.  A V-shaped base tends to split the shaft, but wrapping the shaft with sinew strengthens that.

Clovis Points Found In Nebraska

2019 Bois d’ Arc Primitive Skill Gathering & Knap In

This is a video for the 2019 Bois d’Arc Primitive Skill Gathering & Knap In, held annually at the Hulston Mill Historic Park, near Greenfield, MO.  It is held the fourth weekend of September each year, in 2019 this being September 27-29.

Missouri Creek Chert & Wood

Notching

The act of creating a notch, to attach a stone point, kind of gets glossed over when discussing Stone Age hafting technics.  There are a number of methods involving sawing, drilling, wedging, and splitting.  One used prehistorically for atlatl dart foreshafts and spears, was perhaps first described by archaeologist C.B. Cosgrove in 1947.  The tale tell splintered condition at the bottom of the notch, score marks, and shaft splits, led to the discovery of how it was made.  The shaft is notched on opposite sides, rotated 1/4 turn, and two more notches are cut farther down the shaft.  Splits are started by bending the end of the shaft back and forth.  Then the split section is carefully, and forcefully, bent and broken from the shaft - leaving a notch.  This can be cleaned up with a stone flake.  This is actually a fairly easy technic. The original Cosgrove drawing of this technic was published in, “Caves of the Upper Gila and Hueco Areas in New Mexico and Texas.”  This same technic was noted in the artifacts studied in “Stone Age Spear and Arrow Points of California and the Great Basin”, by Noel D. Justice.  If you have any methods, using stone age tools, I’d like to see them.

Neanderthal & Maganese Dioxide

I used to say I hoped to grow up to be a caveman, in that vein:  There was a paper published, in 2016, in Scientific Reports, by Dr. Peter J. Heyes.  I’m not sure how I stumbled upon it a week ago.  Archaeologists excavating Neandrathal sites, in the Dordogne region of SW France, catalogued hundreds of curious manganese dioxide blocks.  Originally, they were thought to be used as black mineral pigment.  But, researchers recognized the availability of charcoal and soot were so much more accessible, and looked to other reasons for the quantity of blocks at the Neandrathal sites.  Some stones showed abrasion marks, and a grinding stone was found at a location.  Researchers found and tested manganese dioxide from the region, and some of the cave blocks, and speculated they might have been used to facilitate fire making.  They are not sure how they produced fire, but reason it may have been from striking stones together (marcaste & flint?). To facilitate fire making, they found manganese dioxide powder, mixed with wood shavings, acted as a catalyst and lowered  the ignition point of the shavings 100 degrees C./180 degrees F., and promoted charring.  You can read the article at :  www.nature.com/articles/srep22159.  I tried igniting yucca shavings found on damp ground, and shavings rubbed with manganese dioxide.  I found that the rubbed shavings did ignite and char more sustainably.  There was a difference.  (It would have to be added to a tinder nest and blown to flame.).  What does this mean?  1.  Neanderthals were more cognitively advanced than thought.  2.  As a primitive skills enthusiast - maybe not as much, though dry cell batteries, dis-assembled with a screw driver, yield an amount of manganese dioxide, there are other options available. (Pictured:  manganese dioxide ore/powder/ yucca shavings;  blocks from site;  YouTube beech shavings, with m.d., smoldering.)