From: woody@knapper.cactus.org (Woody Baker)
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology
Subject: knapping
Date: 21 Aug 1992 13:46:12 -0500
Organization: Aurora Contracting
Reply-To: "Woody Baker" <woody@knapper.cactus.org>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

some further thoughts.  Al writes..

...not how it feels to knapp (sic) a tool...
...analysis of artifacts is what is important...
...what difference does it make...

hmm.  How it "feels" is not the issue.  Archaeology is concerned with
understanding history.  It is concerned with preserving, and extracting
information from the past.  Anything that adds to that effort is worthwhile.
To give some rather trite examples, from day to day life... You can reah
Alex Haleys "ROOTS", and extract valuable information.  You however, will
understand more, and the information will mean more if you watch the TV
series that was produced.
You can find details on items that make no sense whatsoever, until you
attempt to use the item, or reproduce it.  I could take a spent slug
from a gun and look at it all day long.  I can measure it's expansion, 
fragmentation etc, but if I had no knowlege of what a gun was, how it worked,
and how it was used, would I know anything more than the object is merely
a curiously shaped piece of metal?  No.  If you have a limited, or no base
for relating to an item, it becomes sensless.  Would you recognize a button
hook if you saw one? (hint they were used to lace shoes).  Unless you knew
that there was a particular style of shoe that people needed this item
for, you would have no frame of refernce.

Apply "analysis of artifacts" to a Texas corner tang knife.  How much
sense does it make?  Why would you notch the corner of the blade?  Unless
you had knowlege of the context (buffalo kill sites), you would not have
any idea what it was for, and could only conjecture wildly.  It turns out
that the current conjecture as to why they were made, makes perfect sense,
and indeed has been deduced by modern knives etc. (they were most probably
used to skin buffalo).  The corner tang let you haft the knife at an
angle, that allowed you to use the knife in a scything motion, and thus
utilize the entire edge of the blade with a swinging motion to skin an
animal.  Not only does it allow the useage of more blade edge, it also
allows the knife to contact the fat/flesh at a very effecient cutting
angle.

Experimental useage of these tools bears this out.  Knapping provides a
deep insite into the relative strengths of tools, stone, and early man.
(try letting your 98 lb wife remove a 6 inch spall from a tough piece
of flint).  It also allows us to understand HOW tools were made, and that
often leads to WHY tools were made.

This all reminds me of the story of the 7 blind indians and the elephant.
One felt the trunk, and said "it feels very much like a snake", another got
the tail, and said "it feels very like a rope". etc. etc.  The point of the
story, is that each person interpreted the data based on his experiences, and
while they each made accurate statements about the elephant, they still
did not understand what it was.

I just thought of a good one.  Obsidian makes wonderful blades.  However,
just go try knapping obsidian useing the same techniques you would for flint,
and you will just get shards and pieces, and quite likely many nasty cuts.
You have to treat it much diffrently than flint both in the way you approach
it, and the tools that you use.  (sandstone percussors, vs quartzite (hard))
precussors etc.  You can look at an obsidian blade all day long, and not 
understand this.  You could find a worksite, and not find the type of tools
that you would expect, and be at a loss to know why.  Twenty minutes of
knapping, and you know why, and how.
Cheers
Woody
-- 
Woody Baker Postscript consultant/Flint knapper  512-837-8317 (Austin, Tx)

"If you ain't bleedin' you ain't knappin'" ---> go ahead, ask me...

woody@knapper.cactus.org
woody@chinacat.unicom.com (temporary) is forwareded to woody@knapper