Flint Knapping Rocks!

Terrible pun aside, it is a very cool activity. I was fortunate enough to spend an afternoon with Denise Ashman of Heartwood Wilderness Skills learning this ancient craft. Denise has worked with our school in the past transforming young men and women through her amazing talents and I am grateful she could help me fulfill one of my objectives for the fellowship.

I had originally planned to take a workshop in Germany, but it was undersold and cancelled. Then I discovered an amazing flint knapper right in Les Eyzies, France, only to discover he was away on holiday (until the morning I left - and the short twenty minutes I had to watch him was amazing). So under Denise's tutelage, I was all set to learn the ancient art of turning raw stone into a tool. After viewing the cases and cases of spearpoints, microlithes, and harpoons in Les Eyzies and the corresponding videos, I figured I'd have no problem whacking a piece of chert and fashioning a tool. Yeah. Sure.

Getting ready to rumble!

Denise started with the basics: identifying rock; understanding concussion; knapping terminology; and learning to "read the rock." Then she put a rock in my hand and asked  me to talk through the process.
Ummmm, identify the centerline. Look for ridge lines for easy fracture/ cleavage. Prepare a platform for concussion. Abrade said surface. Hold rock in left hand, adjusting the angle to maximize the conchoidal fracture and the hammerstone (or concussor) in the right hand. Make a full swing, following through the strike. Sounds like I know what I'm doing, doesn't it?

He swings...and a miss!

First attempt, I missed the rock completely (and we're not talking a small rock). Second swing I chipped the platform. Third try nothing. Same with the fourth swing. On my fifth, frustrated attempt, Denise stopped me and said, "Tell me what's happening."
"The rock isn't breaking!" I said with a tinge of sarcastic exasperation.
"Why do you think?" queried Denise in her trademark soothingly calm voice. "Don't answer right away, think it through."
"Maybe I'm hitting too hard?" I responded, grasping for the right answer.
"You think so?" pushed my teacher.
"No, not really...I'm not sure, it's..." I looked at the rock clenched in my fist, rotating it up and down...A-ha!, "Oh! It's the angle - I'm holding it at the wrong angle."
"Try again," was her reply.
CHINK! A flake of rock popped off effortlessly.
"You did it! You took your first flake - how did you figure out what you needed to do?" asked Denise.
"Um, well, I had to kind of re-trace my steps and picture what you had done and then think about how I was holding the rock. It looked okay, but it was the wrong sound when it hit."
"Nice," she said with a smile and nod of the head, "keep going!"

Tools of the trade

I did. For the next few hours I tried different kinds of rocks, new techniques, an assortment of tools and learned which combinations of items made for better experiences. I still have a long way to go and so I am eternally grateful for the gift of Denise's time and fifty pounds of rock to practice on. She modeled so much in terms of behavior and patience - I can only envision how a Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon passed along the technique and technology, but I am pretty certain that a mentor/apprentice-like relationship evolved over time. It was interesting being the student, too. I'm usually a patient person, but it was frustrating to make repeated mistakes, need reminders and redirection (or re-teaching) to get the craft into my own blood.

Knapping flint to give it a serrated edge (not as easy as you'd  think)

I know I have such a long way to go and Denise told me that I shouldn't even worry about making something, I should just enjoy the time breaking rock, getting a feel for the stone in my hand, the motion of the knapping, and find the peace I will need to then make something grand. She also pointed me in the direction of some local masters with whom I can continue to study. Denise will be leaving our area for new endeavors and while I so wish her well, I can't help but feel a sort of loss, not just for myself as a student and teacher, but for all the future students who could so learn so much from her wisdom.  Perhaps it will become my future responsibility to carry own the flint knapping tradition to others (my daughter is already eying up the obsidian and chert stored in the garage!). That means I need to get good and pay it forward, just as countless generation of humans had in the haze of prehistory. I stumbled upon a great quote from Michelangelo: The sculptor's hand can only break the spell to free the figures slumbering in the stone. 


While I have no illusions to be a Michelangelo - or even an amateur flint knapper (not quite yet, anyway!) - I am looking forward to trying my hand at a Mousterian hand ax or, in a few years, an even more complicated Solutrean spear point. But I have a lot of rock to break before any of these "figures" awake from their slumber! Next stop, Letchworth State Park and the Stone Tool Technology Show where I can learn more about the art and artifact of becoming a flint knapper.