Hey Blog! On Monday I visited Cresswell Crags to do an ancient form of art and survival technique I’ve wanted to do for as long as I have been interested in archaeology!
Before I go on about what I did at Creswell, I said last week that I would give you the latest news about the bronze axes this week. Well…
They both worked perfectly! The first one to be taken out was solid, as in it had no hole where it could be secured to the haft, therefore only needed a two-part mould and was easier to make. The second, a socketed axe, where the haft is in a socket in the axe head, needs a three-part mould (both outside sides and the inside) to create the hollow in the middle. This is far more tricky! But AncientCraft obviously knew what they were doing, as they both came out looking bright golden brown.
This week on Monday I went up to Cresswell Crags. This was, in the Ice Age (Lower Palaeolithic) and slightly later into the Upper Palaeolithic, an important site for hunter-gatherers of the time, who took shelter in the gorge which it is situated in. The caves are of international importance for their rock art, which includes a stag, an ibis, and many other animals, though, of course, we can’t say exactly what the artists meant by them! However, we were not going inside the caves, but staying in the visitors’ centre where AncientCraft was doing the workshop I was attending.
I suppose I had better tell you about AncientCraft. It is a business founded by Dr. James Dilley in 2009 dedicated to educating people about their prehistoric connections. They run workshops for children and adults in flint knapping and bronze casting, all over the UK. The website is https://www.ancientcraft.co.uk/ where you can find out about all that they do and buy replica finds. These are not exact copies as the flint or bronze they are made from will be different, but the techniques they are made by will be the same. Or, you could make your own – like I did!
The workshop I was doing was a children’s introduction to flint knapping, making a few bits and pieces like scrapers and blade flakes. To knap, you simply get a large chunk of flint, a nodule, and then take a stone and split it. When you have a piece that is flattish on one side and convex on the other, you turn it so the flattish face is facing up, tilt it slightly down, take a pebble (beach pebble works well) and hit the flint flake about a centimetre from the edge. You should get a small flake of flint to come off. If you want your flake to look nice and flinty, use an antler’s base to hit the very edge of the large flake. This removes a long flake which goes far into the convex side, which should remove the cortex, the white outer bit. I don’t live in an area where there are many bits of flint (in fact there are none, except for the imported garden chippings!) so I’ve never been able to knap much. However, this workshop made a change! My best piece, a scraper, is pictured below.
Flint knapping is an ancient skill developed before the first Homo Sapiens ever stood on the planet. The oldest indirect evidence of stone tools is in Ethiopia, 3 and a half million years ago. If you’re surprised that’s earlier than humans, then welcome to the club! To put it in perspective, if the history of the universe was a 90 minute soccer match, we humans would only have been playing for a quarter of a second…! Flint tools, however, would have been on the pitch a little longer, but not much.
I think flint knapping is a truly timeless thing to do, as no one can remember its start and it is still being done. Yes, doctors occasionally use flint as it is completely sterile, and can be made sharper than surgical stainless steel can be! Not to mention the many craftsmen, re-enactment groups and experimental archaeologists who are forever whacking rocks with other rocks or antlers to make precisely worked, beautiful and extremely sharp tools, which also have a mystic, old-time feel of spiritual rocks. This feeling dates back to the age when having a few pebbles and a flint nodule, plus knowing how to use them, could save your life, and it is this feeling I think which inspired me to want to start knapping. Now I’ve done quite a bit, I want to keep going even more, and make some truly sharp, spectacular, and smashing stones!