your opinions on why the art of knapping degraded as time progressed in Flintknapping - Theory, Replication and Scientific Discussion Forum Forum

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your opinions on why the art of knapping degraded as time progressed

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uniface

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Posts: 368

Sep 10 11 2:04 PM

Believe what you want.

Your agreement plus $1.17 will get you a coffee to go at the Stop-and-Rob.

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WilliamMunny

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Posts: 509

Sep 10 11 3:48 PM

uniface wrote:
Believe what you want.

Your agreement plus $1.17 will get you a coffee to go at the Stop-and-Rob.

Huh? That's a bit incoherent even for you. Did you trot over here on this thread to avoid Woody's obsidian question? Here's a link for you in case you forgot where it is....... http://paleoplanet69529.y.../obsidian-in-new-england

http://Kentuckyflintworks.com

jackcrafty

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Posts: 186

Sep 12 11 9:43 AM

Your agreement plus $1.17 will get you a coffee to go at the Stop-and-Rob.

Hmmm...I get my coffee for $.89 at the Stop&Rob, so my agreement is worth LESS than zero (-$.28?). Heheh. Cute. I'll send you a check.

Last Edited By: jackcrafty Sep 12 11 2:37 PM. Edited 1 times.

uniface

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Posts: 368

Sep 12 11 4:41 PM

If you're ever in central PA, stop in & I'll buy you one

jackcrafty

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Posts: 186

Sep 13 11 5:33 AM

Cool.

stoneshaper

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Posts: 862

Sep 26 11 5:10 AM

The reason why knapping degraded was because the Aliens from Rexocoricopalipatorius and Alphamatraxis, the 3rd and 4th planets in the Dunga System stopped comming to earth and teaching humans to knapp better.

Best wishes,

Joe

"Safe? No you aren't safe. There are a billion other things out there ready to burn your whole world, but if you want to think you are safe just so you can sleep at night, then you're safe, but not really."- The Doctor

thekentuckian

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Posts: 25

Jan 15 12 12:57 PM

i belive it the advancment of the bow made the need for a perfect point go by the way of the dinosour( smaller game more kenetic enrgy) its clear to me as a bow hunter that the exstisive flutin was to take off surface area and weight thats what was need the help penetration into huge animals like the mamoth or giant buffalo the act of shootin a 500 gr arrow from a 50 pund bow as aposed to a 3 or 4 pound spear hand thrown is what made the perfect points un needed not to metion the acuracy that was to be relized but what do i know im just a counrty boy whole like to peck on rocks

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thekentuckian

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Posts: 25

Jan 15 12 12:59 PM

of course a couple of mounths late

mcleandesign

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Posts: 52

Feb 1 12 6:57 AM

Why don't we use a horse and buggy any more for transportation? Because we've found something that works better for us. Granted, in parts of this world, it's still their standard. But I've always figured that for whatever reason, the apparent decline in skills had to do with the next generation finding what they felt to be more valuable. Is playing a Nintendo more valuable than sitting in a tree stand? My son thinks so, and perhaps in 500 years his skillset would be of more value than mine. Who knows... could be totally the opposite.

I think that it all boils down to trying to make your life simpler. Want to find an efficient way to do something, go ask a lazy man.. he'll show you how to do it the fastest so he can get back to being lazy. (Don't take that literally... you get the point). I can see Jr looking at grandpaws fluted point and saying, “shoot, I can accomplish that task as well without that extra effort”. And grandpa says, “Yes grasshopper, but you must follow the ways of the ancient ones.” Then Jr brings home a big old bear with a non fluted point and from then on his standard is the new way. And then along comes some amazingly talented person who takes this new unfluted style to amazing levels of quality. A new standard is set...for the week. But generations later, “Fluted?...what's a fluted point?” Or they find one in the river and say, man, what a fool. Do realize how much effort this guy went to make that point?

And then, along comes el nino... she always screws things up. Like the snow we're supposed to have on the ground....so i can avoid work. What's up with that! .

d

Bullethead

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Posts: 1207

Feb 1 12 6:08 PM

@Mcleandesign
I'm with you up to a point, but where I live quality rose and fell during the Archaic, which is something of a puzzle. The Archaic is usually defined as starting at the definite end of the last Ice Age and ending whenever the locals got into agriculture. This happened at different times in different places so the Archaic's end varies over the continent. But during the Archaic, the longest period of prehistory in North America (it lasted 8000 years more or less), things were relatively stable. No major change in subsistence, no major change in game animals. Point types went in and out of style but on the whole remained of about the same size. Still, around here at least, in the Middle Archaic, knapping quality seems to have suffered a severe reverse. But then it rebounded in the Late Archaic and generally remained at a high level until the Indians gave up knapping.

Where I live, the Late Archaic was an interesting time, what with the Poverty Point and Marksville Hopewell mound-building cultures. But mound-building hereabouts goes back at least as far as the Middle Archaic at Watson's Brake, the oldest mounds so far known in the US, which was right when knapping quality hit its local nadir. So it's hard to make any judgments based on societal evolution.

-Bullethead
May your flakes always run as you desire

stoneknife

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Posts: 1429

Feb 3 12 8:32 PM

I still conclude the advent of the dart & atlatl (that hits a target with 200X the ft. lbs. of energy as a thrown spear - so I hear) made it unnecessary to have a finely made point like a Clovis. Of course dart points would be smaller, generally. I am basically saying the delivery method is the difference. Just guessing, but being effectiveness may have won out over craftsmanship when craftsmanship became unnecessary for the point to be effective.

Bullethead

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Posts: 1207

Feb 4 12 2:34 AM

stoneknife wrote:
I still conclude the advent of the dart & atlatl (that hits a target with 200X the ft. lbs. of energy as a thrown spear - so I hear) made it unnecessary to have a finely made point like a Clovis. Of course dart points would be smaller, generally. I am basically saying the delivery method is the difference. Just guessing, but being effectiveness may have won out over craftsmanship when craftsmanship became unnecessary for the point to be effective.

I dunno. The atlatl goes back at least 30,000 years if not longer, and seems to have been in use everywhere else in the world a long time prior to anybody reaching the Americas. Thus, the archies are pretty much all of the opinion that the Paleoindians brought the atlatl with them when. Thus, Clovis points (at least the smaller ones) are usually considered dart points.

Also, it seems most Clovis points weren't very big, at least by the ends of their lives. Many of those found at elephant kill sites are quite small (in comparison say to a Wenatchee), only about 2-3" long. IOW, about the same size as typical Archaic points. So it could be that the mondo Clovis points began life as knives (for butchering big things like elephants) and as they were resharpened and repaired over their lives, eventually got small enough to use as dart points.

Still, you CAN use a big, heavy point on a dart. I've tried this myself just to see if it would work. I didn't use an actual point, but a large unknapped piece of gravel of the same weight. To make such a nose-heavy dart fly right, you have to change the design. Instead of being about 6' long with fletching, the shaft is only about 3.5' long without fletching. But boy does it zing right along. It's so effective, I've made it a regular part of my arsenal to use on the varmints that periodically invade my yard.

-Bullethead
May your flakes always run as you desire

stoneknife

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Posts: 1429

Feb 7 12 9:05 AM

Well that blows my lame theory...doesn't it?

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your opinions on why the art of knapping degraded as time progressed