Manish YadavFlintknapping is the making of chipped or flaked stone tools. The knowledge of flint knapping was used during the ancient times in the manufacturing of gun flints, to make speared dart points, arrowheads, knives, scrapers, blades, gravers, perforators, and other tools. Technology requires one to have control over how rocks break when they are struck. Good rock is the one somehow brittle and the texture is uniform. It does not have frost fractures, inclusions, and flaws. The rock should be fine-grained and non-grained and might be the chart, chalcedony, quartzite, jasper, and obsidian. Here are some of the DIY Flint Knapping Tools made from this technology.
Flake:-
These are DIY Flint Knapping Tools used during the Stone Age. It was made by striking a flake from a prepared stone core. This tool was made because it was easy to make, could be made extremely sharp, and could easily be prepared. Flakes were made by chipping depending on the natural character of the stone. Others were also created through flint knapping through lithic reduction. Lithic reduction involved three steps;
- Hard hammer percussion
- Soft hammer percussion
- Pressure flaking
Hammerstone:-
This is a stone used in creating percussion structures on other stones. This is a tool made from rounded cobbles of medium-grained stones which weigh between 400 to 1000 grams. Hammer stones are made from finer-grained materials, rocks such as obsidian and chert.
Antler flint tools:-
These were hollowed-out DIY Flint Knapping Tools for inserting a cutting tool .for example the antler hammers –axes, have perforations for a wooden handle.
Arrow-heads flint knapping tool:-
Some of the Best stones which were used in making these arrowheads include flint, chert, obsidian, and jasper. This tool making involved certain processes like percussion flaking, activities like pressure flaking, and notching. In the notching stage, the notches are made using a combination of pressure flaking and abrading to carve the gaps that allow the arrow to head to an arrow. Arrowheads were used in hunting and gathering.
Hand scraper:-
This is a single-edged tool that is used to scrape the metal surface. Scrapers can perform tasks that chisels and a gouge cannot perform. This is because they make repetitive shapes time and again. Scrapers can also make an undercut. They can machine a perfect fit between parts. Scrapers are mostly shaped to the needs of ever-changing turning situations.
Flint Blades:-
This is a portion of a tool, or a machine with an edge that is designed to chop, puncture, and slice or scrape surfaces or materials. Blades are made from materials harder than the ones they are to be used on. Historically, blades were made from flaking stones, such as flint and obsidian. Again they were made from metals such as copper, bronze, and iron.
They are essential in providing good cutting edges .some blades are used on bread knives, saws while the serrated ones concentrate force on both sides. Common uses of blades include scraping, by moving the blade sideways. They serve also as ink erasers.
Borers:-
These include awls, drills, and micro borers. These tools are elongated are produced mainly from blades. The drills are made from large and thick flakes. The materials for making these tools vary. Some are incorporated from high and low-quality flint. The awls were made from the sickle blade of grey banded flint.
Flint bifacial tools:-
This category of tools includes adzes, chisels, axes, and picks. The Adzes have a trapezoidal cross-section .others are triangular, rectangular, and ovular in shape. Axes are triangular, trapezoidal and ovular. They are amorphous. The cutting edges were predominantly shaped bifacial. Chisels were the commonest bifacial tools. The shape varied from ovular, rectangular, and triangular subtypes. Picks were made from local raw materials and had various sizes.
Fan Scrapers:-
Certain materials were used in making fan scrapers. The materials utilized were of high quality. They included the brown flint and the brown-red lines. Their shapes are very oval, elongated, circular, and also irregular.
Sickle blades:-
The sickle blades were produced from different raw materials including grey banded flint. Some have straight profiles while others are twisted.
Bowlets:-
These are made from various materials and have multiple bowlike depressions. They were made of compact basalt, limestone, flint, and limestone. The depressions are on average, either circular or ovular.
Burnishers:-
The tools are made of limestone which is primarily soft and chalky. Classification of burnishes’ can be done based on the shape, the number of active faces.
Perforated items:-
The perforated items are made from basalt, limestone, and conglomerate indistinct raw materials.
Flaked limestone:-
These tools make the scrapers. The tools were primarily flakes and they have minimal flake removals. The tools had secondary uses.
Flaked discs:-
Tools comprising flaked discs are made from limestone. They are complete and minimally flaked. They feature bidirectional flaking. Some of the tools were circular and others ovular. Others were Plano-convex and biconvex.
Tokens:-
These are drill marks. It’s a term used to describe tools without perforations. The tools were made from soft limestone and shaped to form ovals. The tools were well-shaped and smoothed along the surfaces and edges.
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