Report on Knapping Activities in America

Abstract

THE LAST TIME I demonstrated flintknapping and talked about the archaeology of stone tools to a grade school class, the teachers informed me that in their survey of “what I want to be when I grow up” the next week, a majority of students had decided to become archaeologists. God forbid! But at least they all know now that archaeologists study people, not dinosaurs. Anyone who can make “arrowheads” and other simple tools, play with the kind of sharp objects usually forbidden by parents and banned from schools, and talk amusingly about the different lives of prehistoric people is, for a brief space, a hero. OK, fifth graders are an easy audience for that sort of thing, but to some extent, so are their elders. Archaeologists who complain about the disinterested or even hostile public are not taking advantage of some easy connections among the large numbers of people attracted to “primitive skills.” Flintknappers are only one of several more or less organized subcultures where an interested audience, and even friends and colleagues, can be found among the non-academic public. Moreover, it’s a two-way street: many knappers would like more archaeological knowledge, and many archaeologists could learn a lot about stone tools from exploring the knap-in world. Since this journal is mostly read by (too few) academics working with stone tools, one of my major goals in writing this article is to point out to my colleagues that the non-academic knapping world provides many resources that academics should be aware of, as well as a few less pleasing aspects.