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2 Experimental Drekeologies in one day, nuts! I wanted to elaborate on the Flake one I did so here is more elaboration on Concoidal prepared cores as they are very easy, very effective, and would likely be very common in the DragonScape. There are a lot of prepared core styles and technologies of course so this is just one of them, things are gonna vary culture to culture even just with how they pursue concoidal core technology.
As I have said maaany times (pretty sure). Noone winding up in the DragonScape has probably had a longstanding flintknapping tradition under their belt or their cultures belt save a small minority of hobbyists. Combined with the lack of things like pressure flakers, indirect percussion tools, etc. being known of by most folks means they are mostly going to have to figure it out with that hot rock on rock action (direct percussion). Combined with most early survivors just desperately trying to break any and every rock for a sharp edge period means that for many, they stick with core flake technologies. It works and is a highly effective means of making tools! Especially in combo with other things like bone, chitin, copper, etc. etc.
As for concoidal cores They are generally self refreshing prepared cores that use prior flake removals to establish new flake removals. The ones here are known as Centripedal and are very easy to make, here is the guide!
1) Break the rock on one end, that will leave a flake scare on the side facing downwards from your strike
2) flip the rock over
3) use that prior flake scar as a platform, aim slightly towards the wall of the dished scar and take another flake
4) repeat steps 2 and 3 until the rock runs out or you get tired of it
This is very straightforward and almost every strike, provided you have the fundamentals down, will yield some sort of usable flake.
You can, if you want, set up 2 strike points which I did a few times but its not necessary. In our history this is a technology associated much with the paleolithic, particularly the middle paleolithic and upper paleolithic, as well as a technique common to the late Bronze and Early Iron ages of Europe, the Pastoral period in central Africa, the Yayoi of Japan and the Paleoindian-Archaic period of the Americas. As its very rock efficient, gives you a lot of useful bladelike flakes and pseudo levallois point flakes, and a lot of general blanks you can use as tools as is (more on that in a moment) or modify into other tools
This could be drills, scrapers, knives, saws, etc.
Above in the image is just a small selection of the best, and not at all all of them I have a 40 gallon cat liter bucket full of other obsidian flakes that are still plenty usable! Even if they are wonkier shapes. But really even if i just had the above these are gonna serve me for months of projects. Thats really the benefit here.
concoidal cores are very efficient, arguably a bit less efficient than blade cores but considering how much easier they are to make, and how much less punishing they are to user error, I would argue they are about as if solely due to fewer user errors burning rock. If anything its possibly one of my favorite ways to flintknap! Makes flakes of good shapes, usable shapes, and modifiable shapes and makes a lot of em, many of a very respectable size.
there are 5 cores in total of varying size and style, some were linear concoidal cores, most were centripedal (knapping around the whole shape, circular going inward). One of the non totally exhausted ones is to the right, its small at this point but I could still knock more smaller flakes off of it.
To the right of that is a simple manner of using one of these as a knife! This is an Australian Aboriginal style of knife known as a Leilira blade which involves a blade flake that, rather than hafted, has a handle built off of it made of resin. In this case pine resin (I have a good source for that as of late so, yeah!) which forms a small handle. Its not a giant knife though you could definitely make these bigger if you have larger rocks to make into centripedal cores, its just a question of how big your core is really!
Making the leilira blade took, maybe about 30 minutes of tapping some pitch onto it, Very simple! Once the blade dulls I can just melt that resin back off and onto another one of the many blades I have. Its great! Definition of disposable stone razor blade!
Very simple flintknapping with enough consistency to be legitimately useful in defining a local lithic tool industry! It dominated much of the stone age, continued to see use in the Americas till the woodlands period, saw use in africa up to the pastoral period, and saw use in Australia up into the 20th century! Its a good way to do it and if you wanna get into flintknapping and make useful things without having to invest a lot of time in learning? Here you go!
As I have said maaany times (pretty sure). Noone winding up in the DragonScape has probably had a longstanding flintknapping tradition under their belt or their cultures belt save a small minority of hobbyists. Combined with the lack of things like pressure flakers, indirect percussion tools, etc. being known of by most folks means they are mostly going to have to figure it out with that hot rock on rock action (direct percussion). Combined with most early survivors just desperately trying to break any and every rock for a sharp edge period means that for many, they stick with core flake technologies. It works and is a highly effective means of making tools! Especially in combo with other things like bone, chitin, copper, etc. etc.
As for concoidal cores They are generally self refreshing prepared cores that use prior flake removals to establish new flake removals. The ones here are known as Centripedal and are very easy to make, here is the guide!
1) Break the rock on one end, that will leave a flake scare on the side facing downwards from your strike
2) flip the rock over
3) use that prior flake scar as a platform, aim slightly towards the wall of the dished scar and take another flake
4) repeat steps 2 and 3 until the rock runs out or you get tired of it
This is very straightforward and almost every strike, provided you have the fundamentals down, will yield some sort of usable flake.
You can, if you want, set up 2 strike points which I did a few times but its not necessary. In our history this is a technology associated much with the paleolithic, particularly the middle paleolithic and upper paleolithic, as well as a technique common to the late Bronze and Early Iron ages of Europe, the Pastoral period in central Africa, the Yayoi of Japan and the Paleoindian-Archaic period of the Americas. As its very rock efficient, gives you a lot of useful bladelike flakes and pseudo levallois point flakes, and a lot of general blanks you can use as tools as is (more on that in a moment) or modify into other tools
This could be drills, scrapers, knives, saws, etc.
Above in the image is just a small selection of the best, and not at all all of them I have a 40 gallon cat liter bucket full of other obsidian flakes that are still plenty usable! Even if they are wonkier shapes. But really even if i just had the above these are gonna serve me for months of projects. Thats really the benefit here.
concoidal cores are very efficient, arguably a bit less efficient than blade cores but considering how much easier they are to make, and how much less punishing they are to user error, I would argue they are about as if solely due to fewer user errors burning rock. If anything its possibly one of my favorite ways to flintknap! Makes flakes of good shapes, usable shapes, and modifiable shapes and makes a lot of em, many of a very respectable size.
there are 5 cores in total of varying size and style, some were linear concoidal cores, most were centripedal (knapping around the whole shape, circular going inward). One of the non totally exhausted ones is to the right, its small at this point but I could still knock more smaller flakes off of it.
To the right of that is a simple manner of using one of these as a knife! This is an Australian Aboriginal style of knife known as a Leilira blade which involves a blade flake that, rather than hafted, has a handle built off of it made of resin. In this case pine resin (I have a good source for that as of late so, yeah!) which forms a small handle. Its not a giant knife though you could definitely make these bigger if you have larger rocks to make into centripedal cores, its just a question of how big your core is really!
Making the leilira blade took, maybe about 30 minutes of tapping some pitch onto it, Very simple! Once the blade dulls I can just melt that resin back off and onto another one of the many blades I have. Its great! Definition of disposable stone razor blade!
Very simple flintknapping with enough consistency to be legitimately useful in defining a local lithic tool industry! It dominated much of the stone age, continued to see use in the Americas till the woodlands period, saw use in africa up to the pastoral period, and saw use in Australia up into the 20th century! Its a good way to do it and if you wanna get into flintknapping and make useful things without having to invest a lot of time in learning? Here you go!
Category All / All
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File Size 6.06 MB
Well I mean as long as you can produce sharp edges, that is the goal! The flake doesn't have to be a perfect shape and better shaped flakes will come with practice and experience. As long as it has some solid, workable edges then I would call that a success.
Keeping ones goals humble helps keep the hobby exciting! As some sorts of things
1) I don't know what sorta rock you may have over there in switzerland that is available but the larger the better! Even if you're just making flakes, larger rocks usually mean larger flakes which usually means more sharp edge to use. Just mind safety!
2) If natural rock isn't available you can always use things like glass or melted slag glass (I use that to practice a lot). I would do some research on potential local stone sources that you can legally travel to and take from, or at least buy from other places, be they physical or online. For physical places landscaping stores tend to gather a lot of rock and you can sometimes find knappable stones there!
3) Depending on your flake and its shapes and how it fits in the hand you can always modify it to be a better edged tool! If it has more than one good edge then you can dull part of it to make it more comfortable and safer to hold in the hand and to avoid cutting yourself. You can likewise make simple grips, be they wrappings onto the blade or like the example above with a resin handle. Or you can haft them into wood in a myriad of ways!
4) Don't be afraid to experiment with other mediums too! Ground slate or shale stone (identified by large, flat planes of stone) are pretty useful cutting tools and the same can be said of many sort of bones! If you can't source those then there are a lot of easy purchaseable sources. At least here in the US (can't speak for Switzerland) you can buy landscaping tiles of Slate from most stores and most sorts of proper dog bone, cow bone especially, works well for making bone tools. Just make sure the bone is genuine bone.
5) Don't worry about failure, trust me I've been flintknapping for years and there is a lot of failure, particularly in the first hurdles to learning the basics. I would happilly recommend watching videos online to see other folks to do it, and to keep your expectations more focused on developing basic skills. I am definitely not that great a knapper so don't worry!
Above all just be safe and have fun with it!
Keeping ones goals humble helps keep the hobby exciting! As some sorts of things
1) I don't know what sorta rock you may have over there in switzerland that is available but the larger the better! Even if you're just making flakes, larger rocks usually mean larger flakes which usually means more sharp edge to use. Just mind safety!
2) If natural rock isn't available you can always use things like glass or melted slag glass (I use that to practice a lot). I would do some research on potential local stone sources that you can legally travel to and take from, or at least buy from other places, be they physical or online. For physical places landscaping stores tend to gather a lot of rock and you can sometimes find knappable stones there!
3) Depending on your flake and its shapes and how it fits in the hand you can always modify it to be a better edged tool! If it has more than one good edge then you can dull part of it to make it more comfortable and safer to hold in the hand and to avoid cutting yourself. You can likewise make simple grips, be they wrappings onto the blade or like the example above with a resin handle. Or you can haft them into wood in a myriad of ways!
4) Don't be afraid to experiment with other mediums too! Ground slate or shale stone (identified by large, flat planes of stone) are pretty useful cutting tools and the same can be said of many sort of bones! If you can't source those then there are a lot of easy purchaseable sources. At least here in the US (can't speak for Switzerland) you can buy landscaping tiles of Slate from most stores and most sorts of proper dog bone, cow bone especially, works well for making bone tools. Just make sure the bone is genuine bone.
5) Don't worry about failure, trust me I've been flintknapping for years and there is a lot of failure, particularly in the first hurdles to learning the basics. I would happilly recommend watching videos online to see other folks to do it, and to keep your expectations more focused on developing basic skills. I am definitely not that great a knapper so don't worry!
Above all just be safe and have fun with it!
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