Identification of Knapped Flint from Natural Piecesįlint is very hard, and this means that its edges can be incredibly sharp and resistant to wear. However, massively outnumbering those and overwhelming used for ‘everyday’ tools in the region is flint which was worked by knapping. In East Anglia we do sometimes find imported stone, mostly from northern or western Britain and on rare occasions we might find stone such as Jadeitite that has come from as far as the Alps. Once artefacts had been shaped, either by pecking or knapping, some were further modified by grinding and polishing eventually this can achieve a mirror-like finish. Many types of rock can be fractured in this way but the best known is flint. Finer grained rock, where it is possible to control the lines of fracture, can be flaked into shape – basically by hitting it to remove large lumps. These can be recognized by the traces of wear to their surface and by evidence for their deliberate shaping. Very coarse grained rock or rock with prominent bedding plains can be pecked into shaped by repeatedly pounding, removing small fragments and dust until it attains its desired shape.In most cases we must look for signs that the stone has been intentionally modified, and this can occur in two main ways: But unless it has been visibly modified or we find them in an unusual context – piles of small rounded stones found near hillfort entrances for example, that may be a cache of slingstones – it is usually very difficult to be sure that a natural stone has been used if that use does not leave traces. Stone undoubtedly was and still is used in completely unmodified states – many people have used a stone as a hammer at some point if nothing else is available. But what can we do with them? The first thing we must do is to recognise them and distinguish them from natural background stone. So there are lots of them, and they were made over a long period of time. A single episode of knapping can generate thousands of pieces many millions of pieces of struck flint remain to be found, each capable of telling its own small part of the story of our past. A further reason stone tools are significant for archaeologists is that they were made in vast quantities.Even for more recent periods, the effects of weather and ploughing over thousands of years means more often than not stone tools are the only surviving evidence for where people were living and what they were doing. Palaeolithic tools have survived for hundreds of thousands of years, enduring repeated Ice Ages and being washed down rivers, but we can still pick them up, see how were made and say things about their makers. Stone tools play a privileged role in archaeology as they are extremely durable and they survive through most circumstances.Flint nodules continue to be knapped for decorative building stone and flint knapping remains a popular recreational pastime. They still continued to be made for specialist purposes as strike-a-alights, for working shale and more recently as gunflints. Regular stone tool use continued thereafter until the Iron Age, around 2,000 years ago. Stone tools first appear in Africa around 3 million years ago and the earliest so far recognised in Britain, from Happisburgh in Norfolk, are nearly 1 million years old. Stone tools provide some of the earliest evidence for what we might consider human behaviour and have been made more or less continuously since the first human-like ancestors appeared.Studying the technology of making tools allows us to better understand ourselves and others. Humans are the only animals to regularly make tools and the way they do it varies across cultures.The aim of this guide is to help in recognising flint tools and in distinguishing deliberately modified from naturally occurring rocks. This beginner’s guide to identification of knapped flints and stone tools has been written by Barry Bishop and is one of a series of introductory guides published by the community archaeology network, Jigsaw.
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