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ysabetwordsmithThis year in Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, I'll be posting questions from the new 2024 questionnaire that I made. If you like the questions, feel free to follow along. You can post your answers in a comment below, or make a post in your own blog and link to it in a comment.
Question 7: What is the strangest thing you've ever found?
I won't say that this is the strangest thing I've ever found, but it is an unusual object that I can easily show you and talk about.
This is a paleolithic multitool. I'm in central Illinois, which used to be prime hunting ground for First Americans, and it's not rare to find artifacts in a yard or field. This picture shows the convex side up, which means that was the "inside" of the flake. (Chert breaks with a conchoidal fracture like glass, so the rounded side is the inside.) It was made by knocking a flake off a larger core, which allows you to make a lot of blades from one stone. Then it was retouched to create more refined work surfaces.
This is why I call it a multitool: it can be held in different grips, so that different parts of the edge point forward, with at least three functions: saw or serrated knife, awl, and scraper. One of the points was probably longer and sharper when new, but it's still possible to feel where a couple of them extend farther from the base. This is a primarily a right-handed tool based on shape, but could be used in the left. It doesn't look like much at first glance, but as you handle it, you get a feel for how it's meant to be used and how versatile it is.
This is the back side. It has kind of an odd angle with a ridge toward the right side, the butt of the tool. This is actually the side where most of the working was done -- when you hit a chert flake like this, the little round chips break off the underside of where you hit it. So most of the serrations visible from the convex side began here. There is just a tiny bit of shaping that shows similar notches here, and that may have been reshaping to sharpen an older tool after the initial edge dulled.
I don't know the whole story behind this. I don't know whether it was lost or discarded. I do know that it was old and close to worn out when it parted company with its user. I don't know exactly how old it is. I do know that it's not typical of what we normally find around here, which is a lot of sophisticated bifacially knapped arrowheads and spearheads. This is sophisticated in a different way. The basic style is considerably older; it doesn't have a ton of shaping all over it. But it's far from a simple, unretouched flake and it's not a single-purpose dedicated tool like most stone tools either. Multitools are rare because they're so tricky to make well.
So I think this is a gizmo. It's bleeding-edge technology made by some genius knapper who was experimenting with different ways to shape stone and what it could be used for. They found a way to combine multiple uses into one small tool, rather than three -- it's small enough that I can just barely wrap my thumb and forefinger around the edges, and I have small hands. I suspect that this belonged either to the knapper, a close relative, or someone smart enough to bargain for an unusual but very useful tool. It's not typical camp equipment, and most people don't want to carry strange things.
I'm holding a nerd's invention from thousands of years ago, and that is just so awesome. :D
Question 7: What is the strangest thing you've ever found?
I won't say that this is the strangest thing I've ever found, but it is an unusual object that I can easily show you and talk about.
This is a paleolithic multitool. I'm in central Illinois, which used to be prime hunting ground for First Americans, and it's not rare to find artifacts in a yard or field. This picture shows the convex side up, which means that was the "inside" of the flake. (Chert breaks with a conchoidal fracture like glass, so the rounded side is the inside.) It was made by knocking a flake off a larger core, which allows you to make a lot of blades from one stone. Then it was retouched to create more refined work surfaces.
This is why I call it a multitool: it can be held in different grips, so that different parts of the edge point forward, with at least three functions: saw or serrated knife, awl, and scraper. One of the points was probably longer and sharper when new, but it's still possible to feel where a couple of them extend farther from the base. This is a primarily a right-handed tool based on shape, but could be used in the left. It doesn't look like much at first glance, but as you handle it, you get a feel for how it's meant to be used and how versatile it is.
This is the back side. It has kind of an odd angle with a ridge toward the right side, the butt of the tool. This is actually the side where most of the working was done -- when you hit a chert flake like this, the little round chips break off the underside of where you hit it. So most of the serrations visible from the convex side began here. There is just a tiny bit of shaping that shows similar notches here, and that may have been reshaping to sharpen an older tool after the initial edge dulled.
I don't know the whole story behind this. I don't know whether it was lost or discarded. I do know that it was old and close to worn out when it parted company with its user. I don't know exactly how old it is. I do know that it's not typical of what we normally find around here, which is a lot of sophisticated bifacially knapped arrowheads and spearheads. This is sophisticated in a different way. The basic style is considerably older; it doesn't have a ton of shaping all over it. But it's far from a simple, unretouched flake and it's not a single-purpose dedicated tool like most stone tools either. Multitools are rare because they're so tricky to make well.
So I think this is a gizmo. It's bleeding-edge technology made by some genius knapper who was experimenting with different ways to shape stone and what it could be used for. They found a way to combine multiple uses into one small tool, rather than three -- it's small enough that I can just barely wrap my thumb and forefinger around the edges, and I have small hands. I suspect that this belonged either to the knapper, a close relative, or someone smart enough to bargain for an unusual but very useful tool. It's not typical camp equipment, and most people don't want to carry strange things.
I'm holding a nerd's invention from thousands of years ago, and that is just so awesome. :D
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-05-03 03:15 am (UTC)Now if such a tool had been found in situ there would be context -- the layer of soil would give an approximate date, and any other artifacts might hint whether it was a nerd's tool (because nerds often collect other odd things) or a rich person's purchase from a master knapper (if found with other high-end items) or something that's uncommon because it was pretty much only used for long-distance hunts (if found with only other normal hunting gear). Kinda makes me wonder if there's a jumbo version for big game though.