Part of the Experimental Archaeology: Learning about Technologies in the Past project, funded by Historic Environment Scotland and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
We had another fantastic session in the Experimental Archaeology workshops with James Dilley from Southampton University focussing on flint knapping. In the course of the day James demonstrated and talked, producing a range of objects for the loans box, and then guided people in the first steps of how to do flint knapping. James had brought with him flint nodules from England and some from Aberdeenshire and a wide variety of replicas.
We watched in wonder as he started with a large lump of flint, and while he explained techniques of flint knapping, worked away at this to create a flint axehead. As he explained, it was not a case of brute force, but of tapping at the right angle and force with a hammerstone, gradually roughing out the shape. As flakes were struck off, he would note those that could be worked later into other artefacts, such as arrowheads or scrapers – clearly seeing properties in the flakes that only comes with a lot of practice. And since each rock is unique, we saw how he identified areas of the emerging axehead which needed fixing, discussing with us strategies to overcome them. In an hour we had a flint axehead ready for polishing. If, like so many of the Neolithic axeheads, it had been polished, he estimated it would take another 40 hours or work.
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