Knapping, not napping

Have you ever thought about early weapons and tools?  We have created more and more advanced weapons and tools but at the same time we’ve almost lost some of the skills that we used to have.  We have an interesting prehistory in southeastern New Mexico and Mrs. Linam collected many lithics (chipped stone artifacts) and displayed them in her museum.  We have these objects in our Virgil and Thelma Linam Collection.  To create these lithics, ancient people used a technique called flint knapping which we will look at here.

Flint knapping, quite simply, is the process of making stone tools such as arrowheads, knives, and hand axes.  According to msu.edu flint knapping has been around for millions of years.  Only recently has man stopped using flint knapping as part of their daily lives.  A few groups of people still use this skill and some people learn it as a wilderness survival technique.  There are also some groups, mainly anthropologists and enthusiasts, who learn this technique to study ancient cultures.  In fact, the interns here at the Museum have told me that some people have gotten so good at this skill that it is hard to tell a modern point from an ancient point.  There are also experts who can tell if a flake was chipped purposely or if a goat stepped on it.  Flint knapping is a reduction process meaning flakes of stone are broken off the original piece.  The best way to start is by “direct percussion” which means you directly strike the stone you want made into a point (msu.edu).  You would use another tool like a hammer stone to achieve direct percussion and get the stone to the right thickness.  This would be followed by “pressure flaking” which uses a pointed tool such as an antler to remove small, thin flakes from the stone.  This will shape and refine the point.  Finishing the point may include something like notching, stemming or fluting.  According to wildwoodsurvival.com the best stones to knap include obsidian, flint, and chert.

As you can see, we’ve really come a long way.  New technologies have allowed us to advance to the state we are in now but thankfully this art form has not been completely lost.  In fact, flint knapping may be making a return.  The interns were also telling me that some archaeologists have taken knapped stone into a surgeon and signed a release for them to use the obsidian blade rather than surgical steel.  It is said that the obsidian blade makes a cleaner cut and will, therefore, heal faster.  Only time will tell if this will become a trend.  Stop on by the Western Heritage Museum Complex and Lea County Cowboy Hall of Fame to see some of the lithics that are a part of the Virgil and Thelma Linam Collection.