Dart & Atlatl Construction

Handhaxe & Chopper

The snow has melted, the floods have receded, I can find my rock pile.  Feeling a little rusty, I did manage knap out a grainy handaxe and a couple of choppers.  I am a fan of the field expedient chopper, a couple of minutes with a hammer stone and you have a capable tool.

Open Air Neanderthal Workshop

Earlier this month the public information service, Science in Poland, published an article on the first open air Neanderthal tool making workshop, discovered on the river bank near the village of Pietraszyno, in Southern Poland.  The site was dated at 60,000 years old, and showed signs of organized flint working by a community over a long period of time.  It was unique in that it was the first Neanderthal workshop not found in a cave.  Over 17,000 recovered flint flakes revealed the manufacturing handaxes or knives that were taken away and used elsewhere.  Archaeologists were able to reconstruct, from the abandoned debris, the process of manufacturing.  Also recovered at the site were bones of rhinoceros, mammoth, and horses.  You can find the article at: http://scienceinpoland.pap.pl/en/news/news%2C33186%2Carchaeologists-discovered-flintstone-workshop-neanderthals-southern-poland-it .

Quartzite Stone Artifacts

A paper was pulished in Scientific Reports, February 2018, on the archaeological site of Porto Maior, above the Mino River basin in northwest Spain. 3,698 stone artifacts were found, in situ, dating from around 200,000 to 300,000 years old. Distinctive were the large cutting tools - handaxes, cleavers, trihedral picks and choppers, almost exclusively of quartzite. Lab analysis showed they were used on site, on wood and bone, probably to break up carcasses, and abandoned. The unique aspect of the assemblage is that it is the first European site discovered, of large cutting tools, that were more relevant in size and weight to assemblages found in Africa and the Near East, than the smaller Acheulean tools of Europe.  Archaeologists speculate that there were multiple human lineages living in southwest Europe, with alternative stone tool technologies, around the same period. You can find the story and a link to the Scientific Reports article at:

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-giant-handaxes-groups-early-humans.html

Blomboc Cave Bone Awls

Some of the earliest speculated evidence of clothing being made comes from the Blombos Cave bone awls, dated at 77,000 years old.  In 1991, on the southern tip of Africa, archaeologists discovered bones awls, among other stone artifacts.  The bone awls were generally around 5-inches long and made from small antelope limb bones. The bones may have been broken in the process of extracting marrow, or deliberately broken to make a tool.  They show signs of a stone flake being used to sharpen the bone shards to a point.  The manufacture of these awls illustrate advanced thinking.  Interestingly, studies of the polished areas of the awls, show they were used held between the thumb and forefinger, of the right hand, 3/4 inches from the tip.  Bones awls were used to shred plants for fibers, punch holes in wood or hide, or punch lacing holes for making clothing.

Chopping Tools

At some point you need something to CHOP with, to fell shelter poles, butcher a mammoth, reduce excess material in the process of making a bow or hollowing a canoe.  Hand held tools include the expedient chunk of rock with a angular edge, to removing a few flakes from a quartzite cobble to make a chopper, to the intricate knapping of a multi-purpose hand axe.  Chopping can also be facilitated by using antler or stone wedges with a baton.  Putting a handle on a sharp edge gives you greater mechanical efficiency.  Pictured are various flaked, pecked and ground stone, and antler adze and axes.  (Middle picture, antler axe - Tarjus Gaaren)

Deer Leg Tool Kit

This is my DEER LEG TOOL KIT I use to show possible resources and tools from a white tail deer lower leg, something a hunter today would discard, but earlier peoples would harvest.  Left to right:  the white tail deer leg.  The thin hide is skinned from the leg and scraped, and a possible knife sheath is made from the rawhide (not pictured). The harvested leg bone is shaped into a hide scraper, or shards are abraded into awls or needles, the inner marrow eaten.  The dried leg tendon is gently beaten with a wooden baton, or rock, to break and separate the sinew from the tendon sheath.  Sinew is used as sewing thread or used to wrap stone points to shafts.  The four phalange bones (lower right) can be used as beads, or scored with a stone burin and split.  These halves are hollowed with a stone drill and scraped with flakes in the process of making fish hooks.  Pointed bones inside the hooves are ground down into arrowheads.  Any hide scraps or hooves are slowly boiled, in a clay pot, leaching out the collagen.  This brownish liquid is reduced down - making hide glue.  The remaining item is a deer toe rattle made out of the deer leg bone, deer hide, hooves, some fur, and hide glue.  These tools demonstrate the resourcefulness of early man and just some of the possible uses of just the lower leg of an animal.