INTRODUCTION TO WEST VIRGINIA ARCHAEOLOGY, McMichael, 1968, page 63
"Stone is chipped by THREE PRINCIPLE METHODS (1) percussion, where a hammerstone is used to rough out the artifact form; (2) indirect percussion, where a hammerstone is used in conjunction with an antler "drift", placed to remove a flake from the opposite side, used to further shape the artifact; (3) Pressure flaking, used to remove fine flakes from the artifacts by applying a bone or antler "flaker" by hand pressure to a point opposite where a flake is to be removed."
For those who may be interested in prehistoric aboriginal American flintknapping, here is a researched back statement, given by McMichael, regarding how stone was once chipped.
McMichael cites THREE PRINCIPLE METHODS. That does not mean that there were not more methods. Simply, these are the principle methods, that were once used in the area now known as West Virginia.
So, how could a person such as McMichael know that these were the three predominant modes of chipping once employed by prehistoric Americans? The answer is simple. It is called "physical evidence". What is physical evidence? It is concrete evidence that you can see, feel, touch, etc. And, what evidence is this? It is found in the artifacts that have been dug up by the thousands, and thousands, and thousands, over the last hundred years or so.
For example, physical evidence of hammerstones have been recovered for over a hundred years, in the Americas, and probably over two hundred years, in Europe. Many thousands of hammerstones have been recovered from archaeological sites.
Now, anyone can form any opinion, regarding how the hammerstones might have been used. We could follow the historical examples of hammerstone use. Or, we could come up with theories that wildly stretch the imagination. Still, at the end of the day, hammerstones physically exist in museums, universities basements, unexcavated archaeological sites, etc. We do not have to wish and hope that hammerstones exist, nor can we decide that they do not exist. (The way that reality works is that reality stands on its own two feet, regardless of what one wishes for or wishes against.)
The same is also true of pressure flakers. No matter what theories one might erect, or tear down, no one can say that pressure flakers do not exist. They exist. They litter museums. They were used by Ishi. They were used by the Inuit. They are found in archaeological sites. It would be easier to dispute that the Civil War occurred than it would be to deny that pressure flakers exist, since the Civil War only lasted five years, and pressure flakers were used for THOUSANDS OF YEARS.
Of course, McMichael does not just stop with hammerstones, and pressure flakers. He cites a third COMMONLY USED flintknapping tool, that is attested to in thousands of archaeological sites. And, that tool is referred to as an "antler drift". The term "drift" was adopted from mechanic work. In machine shops drifts were used like a hammer driven nail, to knock out small bits of metal, and such. In essence, in a machine shop, a drift was a tool of indirect percussion. And, the language was borrowed to describe a class of antler tools found in prehistoric American flintknapping workshops.
The fact that drifts exist, and have been recovered by the thousands, in various flintknapping contexts, is not a matter of dispute. The physical evidence of antler drifts is embodied in the thousands of specimens that have been recorded for a straight century, right up until now, in 2015.
McMichael has a right to say that these are the primary tools, and methods, of stone tool reduction. He is not offering an "opinion". The amount of evidence that exists to back up this view - hammerstones, drifts, and pressure flakers - exceeds the amount of information that any single person could study, in one small lifetime.
What McMichael did not say is that ANTLER BATONS are a principle method of flaking stone tools. Nor did he bother to say that the use of the baton can be "inferred" from flakes, and flake scars, in West Virginia. There is no need to "infer" the use or the existence of a tool that cannot actually be found, while other antler tools can be found - namely, drifts and pressure flakers.
So, McMichael sums up in three simple parts the fundamentals of prehistoric flintknapping. But, was he the only person to recognize the use of drifts, right along with the use of hammerstones, and pressure flakers? No.
In 1916 another author writes,
"A fragment of a cylinder made from a deer's horn was found. This is no doubt a piece of one of the common tools used by all the Eastern tribes for flaking arrowheads from suitable stone..."
Wow!! This precedes McMichael by fifty years! DEER HORN CYLINDER! ONE OF THE MOST COMMON TOOLS! USED BY ALLLLLLL THE EASTERN TRIBES FOR FLAKING ARROWHEADS OF SUITABLE STONE!
So, how did this author arrive at this conclusion a half a century before McMichael? Did he write to European researchers, and ask for a theory, like the antler billet theory, that was proposed in the 1930's? No, he simply recognized that antler cylinders were associated with flintknapping, in prehistoric contexts.
It is no different than a detective finding fingerprints on the scene of a crime. And, when the same fingerprints are found at the scene of the same type of crimes, it all points to one person, as reflected in the prints. In this case, since the same type of flaking tool was found associated in so many instances with flintknapping, it pointed to the widespread use of the flaking tool, by prehistoric flintknappers. The same way that a detective can take fingerprints to court, is the same way in which archaeologists can take drift flakers to "court".
So, how did people think that these tools were once employed? Were they "blunt pressure flakers"? Or, were these antler cylinders something else?
Here is what one author had to say, in 1929:
"The pin shaped peice of antler found in heap A (Plate XVI, figure 6) was brought to nearly a CYLINDRICAL FORM, with one end nearly flat and the CELLS THERE COMPRESSED from being POUNDED. Slivers were broken off at the edge. The other end is slightly smaller and so bluntly pointed as to be nearly dome shaped. It to shows LONGITUDINAL COMPRESSION OF THE CELLS, as if from being held against something while the other end was POUNDED.."
This author recognizes the signs of pounding, and splintering, and attributes such effects to indirect percussion - not pressure.
Here is what another author had to say, in 1907:
"Such hammerstones were applied directly to the material in removing large; flakes, but punch like cylinders of antler (Fig. 23c) were probably sometimes interposed between the hammerstone and the edge of the blade to be flaked and the points were finished by removing fine scales from their edges by pressure with a piece of bone or antler."
So, here we see the idea affirmed of indirect percussion, via antler cylinders also known as drifts. Also, like McMichael, in 1968, the author cites hammerstone direct percussion, antler drift indirect percussion, followed by pressure flaking. Wow! A single understanding endured for over half a century. And, it did not happen because of a new theory imported from Europe. It happened, because researchers kept their eyes on the evidence.
In 1918 another author wrote:
"The only object of antler found with the burials is a flaking tool which accompanied skeleton 44. It is a SHORT, COMPACT, CYLINDRICAL piece of ANTLER (2-3/8 in. long, 1/2 inch in diameter), and shows the effect of considerable use. It is of the type of implements used in connection with a hammer for removing the large flakes during the initial stage of chipping which followed the general roughing out of a prospective stone tool."
WOW! The antler drift was the ONLY object of antler found with the burials. That means that in the afterlife, the most important antler item that these individuals could have taken was an antler drift.
DOUBLE WOW!! The author recognizes that the tool was used in conjunction with a hammer, and the phase of flaking follows the roughing out phase. This shows that the author was cognizant of the fact that the drift work followed hammerstone percussion work, since it was commonly understood that hammerstone percussion was generally used for the roughing out stage.
So, is all of this "old science" as some people claim? Well, here is an archaeologist who has authored over 150 publications. This is what he has to say regarding his own study of the evidence:
"Few archeologists in Texas are aware of the Maya punches and the large thin bifaces made using them. If the Maya could make large thin bifaces using punches, then it is reasonable to assume the central Texas flintknappers could as well. Missing in bone assemblages across central Texas are antler billets and the bone debitage related to their manufacture; antler debitage from punch manufacture was present at Colha. If such tools and debitage do occur, they are not being reported. The most-common flintknapping tools recovered archeologically are antler punches (often misidentified), antler tine pressure flakers, and deer ulna pressure flakers. Examples of presumed antler flakers from Archaic sites are not convincingly shown to have been billets."
"The use of indirect percussion using an antler punch is foreign to most modern flintknappers, but it was a method widely used by prehistoric chipped stone artisans from North America to Central America. Punches made of deer antler bases have large contact areas that produce wide flake initiations consistent with the production of large biface-thinning flakes (Geib 2004). The rare finds of flintknappers’ kits provide a glimpse into the tool set used for chipped stone manufacture. Flintknapper kits from Horse Shoe Ranch Caves (Shafer 1986:105), Burial 119 at Morhiss (Dockall and Dockall 1999), Feature 9 at the Crestmont site (Hall 2002), Lemens Rockshelter (Smith 1994), and the San Dune Cave cache in Utah (Geib 2004) are cases in point. The Horse Shoe Ranch Caves tool kit clearly provisioned the man for the hunt. It contained not only biface blanks, spare flakes, antler punches, sinew, and an edge abrader but a scarifier, jackrabbit mandibles, and buckeye and mountain laurel seeds for hunting rituals, all components of the technological system supporting his technological style of hunting and associated ritual behavior.
Feature 9 at the Crestmont site (Hall 2002:14, 60–63) contained three antler punches, three biface cores, an atlatl hook, and three socketed bone points. The burial is described as an adult female, but the sex-linked artifacts associated with the burial are reason to question the sexual identification. The burial most likely contained a flintknapper’s kit, and the punches are hardly deniable. In the American Southwest, the Sand Dune Cave cache (Geib 2004) found inside a white dog skin bag is an excellent view into a Basketmaker II flintknapper and hunter’s bag. This bag contained three smaller bags, two of which are prairie dog skin bags, and a bundle of six dart point fore shafts with hafted stone points and two large mammal tendons for sinew. One of these contained 16 dart point preforms, two notched points, and a lump of uranium ore. The other prairie dog skin bag contained eight rod-like punches fashioned of mountain sheep horn. The Lemens Rockshelter (Smith 1994) kit contained only nonperishable items, but here, too, the burial assemblage consisted of seven antler tools, two of which are clearly punches; possibly three others are punches as well, although Smith describes four as flakers. One (Smith 1994:Figure 7a) is identical to Postclassic antler punches from Colha, Belize. These antler base tools at Colha were originally described as billets (Shafer 1985) but were later examined microscopically by the author and John Dockall. We identified them as punches based on wear patterns; they were used in the manufacture of very large thin bifaces. One site that yielded punches, possibly in the time frame of the proposed Prairie Caddo assemblage, is Blum Rockshelter (Jelks 1953). Jelks mentions indirect percussion tools of antler being stratigraphically between Scallorn and Perdiz deposits; these same deposits yielded arrow points identified by Jelks as Alba."
If I produce 100 to 200 more quotes, what will eventually be seen is that the actual EVIDENCE is at odds with what people believe. The EVIDENCE is pretty simple, as noted by McMichael, back in 1968. There is no need to invent new flintknapping methods, in order to create ancient points. The tools of ancient American flintknapping are well known to people who study evidence. Those tools are hammerstones, and other tools of direct percussion. Drifts used in indirect percussion. And, flakers used via pressure. What the modern American flintknapping community has done is to acknowledge hammerstones, embrace the European designed flintknapping baton, embrace modified pressure flakers, and ignore antler drifts. So, if flintknappers ever want flintknapping to become relevant again, they will have to admit the error that is being committed, and make a concerted effort to focus on the evidence, that other people have been studying for over a hundred years.
