Period: Transition between Mesolithic and Neolithic (4500 - 3500 BC)
Project title: Apprenticeship in European Paleaeolithic Societies
Researcher: Farina Sternke, Arkæolog, Irland
E-mail: f.sternke(at)archaeology.arts.gla.ac.uk
Year: 2008
Abstract:
Stone Age people used flinttools all the time and a large production of quality tools was necessary. But the shaping of flinttools, called flintknapping, is difficult. It takes a long time to become a good flintsmith. It demands precision, thoroughness and the ability to see the finished tool in coarse lump of stone – in other words three dimensional thinking. One wrong blow and you have to start over. Flintknapping is even difficult to explain, which makes you wonder, how the flintsmiths of the Stone Age were taught how to shape tools out of flint.
It is also difficult to interpretate the archaeological remains of flintknapping. Some flint waste shows signs of great skill and control of the process; this is the working place of a trained flintsmith. But some flint waste shows wrong blows and random results. Was this flint waste produced by a bad craftsman or perhaps rather, a person learning to be a flintsmith? Maybe this is the waste of young apprentices or even children? Was the craft learnt be merely observing and imitating the skilled craftsmen or was it a matter of an actual education? It has become fashionable among archaeologist to study apprenticeship in flintknapping. Modern Archaeologist try to become as skilled at knapping as the flintsmiths of the Stone Age and it is studied, how the training of a flintsmith could take place. How does one learn to have the feel for the material, the strength of the blow and shaping of the tool? It’s all about having it in your hand, as they say, but how does one learn that?
Archaeologist Farina Sternke is working with the learning process in flintknapping. Beginners, experienced and expert Knappers are to learn and knap alongside each other, after which their flint waste will be analysed and we will see if we can tell the flint waste of the master from that of the apprentice!
Reference number HAF 18/08