I was working a couple flakes last night into points per the request of the historian lady whose house I'm roofing. She had sold most of her artifacts years ago when she became disabled as an extra cash reservoir and now she only has a few shadow boxes on display with 25 or so points in each. She said that she doesn't know anyone besides me who is interested in primitive tech so she wanted me to knap a point from local rock for display and as a family heirloom to pass to her great grandkids. Since she directed me to some local rocks near her house, I decided I would make the points from some of that source rock. (they had been removed from fields so I wasn't worried about historic significance even though a Muscogugli tribe lived where her farm is.)
local rock is a long way from ideal for knapping. It is usually poor quality chert, often with freeze fractures, and always with ancient crustaceans interrupting the flake bells. Often I wind up with layered "chunks" toward the middle of the piece that are extremely hard to remove. It will usually make the flake one-sided as far as weight is concerned.
I have a few questions for the advanced knappers who have hopefully worked with such low quality stone before.
1. How do you prevent these 'sudden-stop' cliffs from forming initially?
2. When they do form anyway, from being interrupted by impurities or vacancies in the stone, what is the best way to remove them?
3. If I have a coarser stone that would be good for grinding, like a river cobble, would it be possible to grind down the humps? (not lovely-lady humps). I've tried this before with marginal success, I've broken one or two like this so I didn't try it last night.
4. Would indirect percussion be more appropriate than pressure flaking this rock?
Thanks in advance!
ycc
