Grinding Acorns

Archaeologists roughly date the Archaic Period, in North America,  around 5000 to 1000 BC.  Big game hunters and game of the Clovis, Folsom, and Plano had disappeared - mammoth, ancient bison, and giant ground sloths.  New techniques and tools for hunting smaller game, such as deer, antelope, fish, and fowl appeared.  The people began to develop traits of the foraging tradition - they were no longer just hunters, but not yet farmers.  The presense of mortars and grinding stones meant that plant seeds and nuts were being utilized, probably as well as roots and berries.  Pictured is grinding acorn meats.  A few white oaks have acorns sweet enough to be eaten raw, but most are extremely bitter due to a chemical called tannin.  Tannin is water soluable and can be removed by boiling the meats in several changes of water - until the brownish coloring no longer appears.  Native Americans would also put the crushed meats in porous bags in moving streams, to leech out the tannin.  The Pawnee called acorns from the bur oak, Patki - natawawi, meaning "acorn bearing."  Often the acorns would be used in combination with corn meal to make it more palatable.  They did not use seasonings, so to make the traditional gruel or mush, acorn meal was simply mixed with water.

Making Preforms

Today the temperature was in the 50's, but it felt much warmer working in the sun.  Taking a block of mahogany obsidian, and a large hammer stone, I struck a number of flakes off.  Using an antler billet I thinned the flakes, basically making a handful of preforms.  I'll start pressure flaking them into knife blades, then haft them into antler handles.  Obsidian is formed when lava cools real fast, producing a volcanic glass in effect.  The fresh edges are extremely sharp, evidenced by the fact that I was surprised to find blood on my hands though I had not felt the cut. I am alway very careful when working with obsidian because one careless move could result in a serious laceration.  Until the final pass of pressure flaking, the edges are always ground down -  for safety and to produce a solid edge.  Trying to push a flake off of an unground sharp edge, it will simply crush and crumble.  An edge which has been properly arbraded will alllow you to build sufficient pressure against it and remove a longer flake.  I'll post updates of the progression from preform to knives as I go along.

Hide for Bow & Drill Socket

In a previous post I mentioned that the Mescalaro Apache of southwestern US and northern Mexico used the bow and drill fire making method, when the handdrill proved too difficult for some.  In a 1935 article, in the American Anthropologist, it was stated that no special set was made.  Even fighting bows were modified, when needed, to spin the drill.  Also, no special socket was used, simply a piece of rawhide or buckskin to protect the hand.  Using a piece of hide as the socket intrigued me.  We tend to get stuck in preconceived notions of how things must be to work  Traditionally, a socket being -  a piece of wood, rock, or bone with a depression in it for the top of the drill to ride in. I had a scrap of racoon rawhide, with the hair still on it.  Folded  into a thicker pad, I fired up the bow and drill.  The hide pad worked well, though the drill did start to abrade thru it.  A little freshly pulverized grass would have lubricated it and helped.  Another lesson in simplicity and primitive living skills.

Thanksgiving...a time for food, family, and flintknapping...

The Bow & Drill Revisited

When I first started demonstrating primitive skills at historical events, I tried to tie the technics to local history....what was practiced in this area.  My firemaking technic initially was the bow & drill, and later the handdrill method.  I could find references to use of the handdrill on the Plains more readily, but the information on the bowdrill was sketchy in North America.  It was thought that the bowdrill was an Alaskan Eskimo influence, who had adopted it most likely from Asian migrations across the Bering Straight during  Paleo times.  It is a fairly sophisticated technic for the time...using a bow and socket to give a mechanical advantage to spin a wooden drill in a depression in the hearth board.  The resulting friction grinds off tiny charred wooden particles, which heat up till they combust into a "hot coal".  This is placed in a nest of combustable materials and blown into flame.  It took a decade to come across solid information placing the bow & drill among Native Americans.  Archaeologists have found pieces of a bowdrill set, among the cliff dwellings of the Pueblo Indians of southwestern Colorado, dated to 1400 years ago.  And, in an article in the American Anthroplogist from 1935,  interviews revealed the technic was used by the Mescalaro Apache who lived in what is now western Texas, southeastern New Mexico, and northern Mexico.  It was said it was a technic used by those who had difficulty with the handdrill technic.  No special set was constructed for firemaking. Fighting bows were even modified and used to drive the drill.  It was related that no special socket was made either, simply a piece of folded rawhide or buckskin was used as a makeshift handhold...(hey, that is a clever idea). 

Side Notched Spearhead

Hitting the rock pile, I was able to find a nice spall of Keokuk Burlington chert, and knapped a 5-inch spearhead.  This piece has a couple of side notches facilitating hafting to a spear shaft.  Notches were developed on stone points some time during the Archaic Period (8000 - 2000 B.C.).  Hunter gatherer societies that lived thru this broad span of time developed a multitude of point styles and notching technics.

Digging Stick

(Pictured are jersalem artichokes dug with digging stick)                           One of the common items in the tool kit of early cultures was the digging stick.  Most likely pre-dating the Stone Age, an expedient stick was useful in a variety of tasks.  Europeans encountering Native Americans noted the use of the digging stick to harvest plant roots and bulbs, dig post holes for shelters, and steaming pits for cooking.  The prehistoric Hohokam  peoples (300 - 1200 A.D.) of the American southwest dug extensive irrigation ditches, some up to 15 feet wide, using digging sticks.  Basically, it is a sturdy limb of dense wood, around 3 feet long, and 1 to 2 inches in diameter.  The business end is beveled to a shovel-like edge by either chopping with a sharp stone, grinding on an abrasive stone, or a combination of charring and grinding.  A beveled green edge will dull quickly in the moist soil, but four to five scorchings in the super heated dirt under the hot coals of a fire will drive out the sap and fire-harden the edge to a degree.