My Stone Knife: A Note About Canadian Stone Tool Technology

Much of Canadian human history is written in stone. Stone tools, and detritus from making those tools, are often the only remaining physical evidence of the presence of the New World by First Nations peoples for thousands of years. That record goes back well over ten thousand years in some parts of the Americas.

I’m just analyzing the stone tools we found in 2018 at a prehistoric site in the Fort Vermilion region, northern Canada. I always marvel at the level of craftsmanship (or craftswomanship) these tools display.

This prehistoric biface, likely a stone knife, found in northern Alberta, Canada, was an important type of cutting tool for First Nations people for thousands of years.

Take for example this beautiful bifacially flaked quartzite knife. It still retains its edge, even though possibly made thousands of years ago. The reason is that quartzite, on the Mohs hardness scale, is about a seven (diamond being a 10), equivalent in hardness to a good steel knife blade.

Years ago, at Simon Fraser University, we learned how to make stone tools. We smashed our fingers, we bled, we cursed… Soon I began to appreciate just how hard it was to make even a simple stone tool. Such as this knife.

There’s a lot of thought, effort, and skill involved when making a stone knife. Let’s consider a few of the necessary steps.

First you need to know something about the characteristics of stone. And where to find the best ones. When it comes to stone tool making not all rocks are created equal.

Many stone tools are made by a method called direct percussion where the knapper (stone tool maker) drives flakes off a cobble or spall to thin and shape it. The best rocks for making stone tools have a cryptocrystalline (or having a microscopic crystalline) structure. These rocks fracture in predictable ways because the force created by the blow dissipates through them evenly. Quartzite, a metamorphosed sandstone, is such a rock.

Stone flakes from a northern Alberta prehistoric site, driven off a larger piece of rock. The dark rock on the left is chert (a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of cryptocrystalline crystals of quartz); in the middle is orthoquartzite (similar to quartzite) and on the far right, quartzite. These three types of rocks are found in northern Alberta. Prehistoric First Nations people made most of their stone tools from them.

I have wandered the North Saskatchewan River Valley looking looking for just the right quartzite cobble to flake. Because not all quartzites are equal either. I have yet to find quartzites of the quality of some of the prehistoric quartzite stone tools in the region.

For example, below are some average quality local quartzites. Notice how much coarser and grainy they are compared to the ones above. With these materials it is much harder to flake, thin and shape a tool. Over the years I have learned what cobbles to look for before splitting them. Those that have chatter marks (made from hitting other rocks or scoured by ice) on the cortex (outer oxidized layer) are usually better quality. And, when you strike another rock against them, the good ones ring a bit; the poor quality ones ‘clank’.

A quartzite flake (left) and a quartzite biface (right). These quartzites are coarser and grainier than the quartzite above. And therefore do not flake as well.

Once you have found good raw material, you then have to strike the piece you are working on just right to remove a flake. Again, easier said than done. If you don’t strike the piece at the proper angle with your hammer (often simply another stone), you either crush the striking platform or nothing happens because you did not create enough force to move through the rock to remove a flake.

Or, you could break and ruin the piece. That’s where more cursing and smashing of fingers usually comes in.

We refer to stone tool making as a ‘reductive’ technology. One major mistake and you have to start over. Unlike pottery-making which is an ‘additive’ technology and more forgiving if you make a mistake.

I started flintknaping obsidian (volcanic glass). Although dangerous it is relatively easy to work. After a few months I made some decent tools.

I made this small obsidian point by another flintknapping technique, known as pressure flaking. In this technique you push off the flakes to shape and thin the artifact with an antler tine. It takes special platform preparation, and proper angle to ‘push’ off the flakes. One slip and you could either drive your hand into the edge or drive the tine into your thigh. Done both.
This obsidian knife snapped in half when I tried to remove a thinning flake from the left end. Later my professor told me this is referred to as ‘end-shock’, where the force of the blow stops at some point in the object and then travels up. Snapping it in half. There was a lot of moaning after that incident.
Obsidian is easier to work than quartzite, and achieves a very sharp edge. But it is more brittle and does not maintain an edge as well as quartzite. There is always a trade-off.

Then, while excavating a prehistoric site in Edmonton, Alberta, in the early 1980s, I decided to work with local quartzite. Well, it was as if I had never flintknapped before. Quartzite, when compared to obsidian, is much harder. You really had to whack those edges (and occasionally fingers) to get anything off. And often you couldn’t control what came off.

After months of practice I made some passable tools, like the quartzite biface below. But that took tremendous effort and many attempts. And, when you compare the thinness (a sign of quality workmanship) of my biface to the one we found in northern Alberta, it shows what an amateur I still was after all that practice.

This quartzite biface made by the author pales in comparison in workmanship to prehistoric bifaces, such as the one below. And I have seen even thinner examples in Alberta assemblages.
The northern biface on edge, showing the thin cutting edge and overall thinness of this stone tool.
My quartzite biface on edge. Not nearly as thin as the northern biface. The thicker cutting edge on my biface would not cut as well as that northern biface. And, hafting this piece onto a wood or bone handle, would have been difficult because of its thickness.

And that folks is what it takes to just make a stone knife. There are other more sophisticated stone tool making techniques that take even greater skill and are more time-consuming. Such as pecking or grinding stones to make tools.

Nephrite adze blades found in the Grande Prairie area, Alberta, Canada. This tool, which was cut from larger blocks, and the cutting edge ground down, was likely made in British Columbia and traded into Alberta. A good example of ground-stone technology. https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/0197d86f-f7e1-4726-9440-cc2765e79c6e/resource/06315117-4c8d-45b0-bcaf-80a6995e35a7/download/pre-contact-jade.pdf
The Viking Ribstones, near Viking, Alberta, Canada. An example of grinding or pecking stone technology. It took either many years, or many First Nations people, or both, to patiently grind away on these granite boulders to create these incised lines, which some people believe depict the ribs of a buffalo. https://hermis.alberta.ca/ARHP/GetImageDetails.aspx?ObjectID=4665-0111&MediaID=127160

Today We Occasionally Use Stone Tools

Humans and their ancestors, throughout the world, made a variety of stone tools. Some of the earliest stone tools date back to over 2.58 million years ago, and were nothing more than fist-sized cobbles with some flakes removed to create a cutting edge.

In some parts of the world, people still made and used stone tools during the 20th century. Even today we are not totally out of the stone age. Nothing, not even the best steel, compares to this obsidian surgical scalpel blade (left), with an edge thickness of approximately one micron.

https://ca.images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=obsidian+scalpel+blade+images&fr=yhs-trp-001&hspart=trp&hsimp=yhs-001&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.stack.imgur.com%2FxSNCk.png#id=6&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.stack.imgur.com%2FxSNCk.png&action=click

Today, many people, including archaeologists, create beautiful tools from exotic rocks, to better understand the ancient tool-making techniques.

Some prehistoric tools, however, are almost beyond the believable, such as these Mayan ‘eccentrics‘.

Some of the finest ancient flintknapping and most beautiful ancient stone artifacts, or eccentrics, ever made come from the Mayan Civilization, northeastern Belize, central America. These objects are pieces of art. http://www.lithiccastinglab.com/gallery-pages/2010septembertussingereccentricspage1.htm

When I see these Mayan artifacts, or the stone workmanship below, I only sigh with envy. And, as a Canadian, I refer to that often-used hockey analogy when viewing this piece. ‘Hell, I could have been that good (to make the NHL) if only I’d practiced more.’ Ya, right!

This begs the question, of course, why Indigenous people around the world eventually abandoned these techniques and traded for similar European tools? Answers to that question of Canadian history, are complex and often hotly debated.

Maybe, in a future post, I will elaborate further on that question with a work of historical fiction!

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