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John McNabb, archaeologist at the University of Southampton said of this: "The tools the people at Jebel Irhoud were making were based on a knapping technique called Levallois, a sophisticated way of shaping stone tools. The date of 315,000 years ago adds to a growing realisation that Levallois originates a lot earlier than we thought.
Knapping is the shaping of flint, chert, obsidian, or other conchoidal fracturing stone through the process of lithic reduction to manufacture stone tools, strikers for flintlock firearms, or to produce flat-faced stones for building or facing walls, and flushwork decoration.
A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The microliths were used in spear points and arrowheads.
Usually, the objective piece is held clasped in the flintknapper's hand, with a durable piece of fabric or leather protecting the flintknapper's palm from the sharpness of the flakes removed. The tip of the flaking tool is placed against the edge of the stone tool and pressed hard, removing a small linear or lunate flake from the opposite side ...
Stone has been used to make a wide variety of tools throughout history, including arrowheads, spearheads, hand axes, and querns. Knapped stone tools are nearly ubiquitous in pre-metal-using societies because they are easily manufactured, the tool stone raw material is usually plentiful, and they are easy to transport and sharpen.
Knapping freehand allows for greater control while supporting the core against the leg makes the work easier. The technique used to make the tranchet flake was used in the making of other tools as well, including tranchet axes (characterized by their trapezoidal or triangular shape) adzes, and even tranchet arrowheads. Unlike chisel arrowheads ...
The flakes are shaped using the lithic reduction techniques, allowing for creation of various tools such as arrowheads and handaxes. Two stone characteristics will determine whether one is able to chip away large enough flakes to make tools out of: whether the stone is of a cryptocrystalline structure, and how conchoidally the stone fractures.
This may require flint-knapping a tool comparable to the artifact under analysis, which can be long process dependent on personal ability, or buying such a tool. Also, the replication of tool use requires comparable source material (for tool creation) as well as access to the material the tool was used on.