Types of Stone Used in Knapping

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm John Olsen for Expert Village. We're going to talk about some of the tools and stones used in flint knapping. Basically you find rough stones. Here's a piece of obsidian. Here's a piece of Indiana horn stone. There are several, in fact hundreds of different types of stones you can use to create projectile points, knives, and etc...Tools are very simple. Hammer stones, which are used to knock off blades. Billets, made out of deer horn. Chippers, flakers, made out of antler tines. Many different sizes of hammer stones and different softness?s. Some are hard, some are soft. The softer your stone, the softer your hammer stone. The harder your stone, the harder your hammer stone. When you're making things, you don't use something really big to make something really small. You get the smaller stones, hammer stones, to make something small. Used different ways, striking, clean off flakes, there is some mechanics involved. There are angles, less than 90 degree angles you can pull off flakes. This is less than 90 degrees. If it was tipped out this way, it'd be more than 90 degrees. You can't chip anything that's more than 90 degrees. Mostly what you start out is what we call percussion flaking. Percussion flaking is taking a hammer stone, setting up, what's called a platform, and striking off small flakes that eventually create, what we call a bi-face."