Making My Stone Maul (Part 4): Thirty Hours and Counting…

“Excuse me, which level of Hell is this?”

(A rather appropriate quote about work and effort)

(Well, I’m back. It’s time to update the progress on my maul. My fingers are still intact. But a lot stiffer, sorer, and callused. I have now spent thirty hours grinding my stone maul to make the groove. Here’s what it looked like before I started.)

The unmodified quartzite cobble I chose to make my grooved stone maul, May 2021. Quartzite is a common rock in Alberta, Canada. It is a metamorphosed sandstone that attains an incredible hardness. Seven, or over, on the Mohs hardness, scale. Equivalent to the hardness of a steel knife. Diamond has a Mohs hardness of ten. And, quartzite cobbles often come in round or oval shapes which are natural shapes for stone mauls. This cobble, before being modified, weighed 1,380 grams (1.38 kilos or 3 pounds).

A Brief Recap First

I started this project in May 2021. And I’m not half finished. I started it because I like experimental archaeology – an offshoot of archaeology involving replicating activities, or objects made in the past which are often poorly recorded and understood. As archaeologists, we gain better insight into the process and techniques required to make an object. Such as this stone maul, for example.

A granite stone maul found in Saskatchewan, Canada. A few terms to keep in mind before I continue with this blog. Each end, divided by the groove, is called a poll. The distal poll is the working end of the maul. If the maul is a three-quarter maul (where the bottom is not grooved) such as this one, then the portion not grooved becomes the bottom of the maul. The wood hafting bends around the groove and comes together at this point on the maul to form the handle. This maul was likely pecked with a hard hammer (both to shape it and make the groove); not ground, as the grooved surface is quite rough. You can peck granite, but not quartzite very well, if at all.

As I mentioned before in my previous blogs there are few historical or ethnographic accounts describing stone tool technology. Even fewer on making ground stone mauls. And still fewer yet, if any, of making them out of quartzite in western North America. I chose quartzite because: 1) it’s the hardest and most durable rock we have in Alberta, Canada; and, 2) most of our prehistoric stone mauls in Alberta are made from quartzite.

Now, why would people choose such a tough material to make their stone mauls? Why go through all that trouble if a simple stone cobble held in one’s hand would probably do the same job pounding meat, grains, or berries? ¹ These are only a few of the questions I asked myself as I was making this grooved stone maul.

So, I started by trying to peck the quartzite cobble with a smaller stone cobble (also quartzite). That didn’t work very well. In fact, it didn’t work at all. It was too difficult to aim the hammer-stone precisely enough and didn’t seem to remove any material. Next, I chipped off a small quartzite flake with a sharp edge from a cobble and started sawing away on the quartzite cobble I had chosen for a maul. Below is my progress after ten hours of grinding and sawing.

One thing became immediately clear. This project was going to take a long, long time. Quartzite, on the Mohs scale of hardness, is 7.0 – 7.4. Some of the hardest rocks in the world. And, after ten hours of work, I had absolutely no doubts about that fact. Nor did my hands and fingers.

One of the stone flakes I used for sawing/grinding my stone maul for the first ten hours. Often, my finger would grind on the cobble surface as well, creating some rawness and blistering. Or getting gouged by the flake. You can see here that during the initial cutting of the cobble cortex (oxidized surface of the rock), I used a very small quartzite flake with a very thin cutting edge. The actual grinding or cutting edge surface of the flake was also very small. So, at first, progress was very slow.

Below was my progress grinding a groove on the maul. I eventually saw a groove after six hours of grinding. You can read more about my progress in my first three blogs on this website.

My quartzite stone maul through various stages, documented in hours of grinding. After four hours I was ready to abandon ship. I could barely see an incision on the cobble. And I certainly gained a new respect for our ancestors who used stone tool technology. After ten hours of work, I saw some progress. Maybe there’s hope after all in completing this stone maul before my fingers fall off. After ten hours of work, the groove is about 3.5mm deep and a maximum of 4mm wide.

My Next Twenty Hours of Grinding My Maul

I have worked on the maul for thirty hours. Below are a few photographs of what the maul looks like. I can actually say now that I’m winning the battle.

The maul after twenty hours of work (far left): groove length = 110mm; groove depth = 3.5mm; maximum groove width = 9mm. The maul after thirty hours of work (center and right): groove length = 125mm; groove depth =~5mm; maximum groove width = 11mm. The groove didn’t get much deeper (from after ten hours) but much longer and slightly wider. The amount of work invested in making the maul is measured in two ways: 1) total volume of material removed from the cobble; and, 2) total weight of material removed from the cobble. The total volume of material removed after ten hours of work: 110mm x 3.5mm x 9mm = 3,465 cubic mm; After 30 hours work: 125mm x 5mm x 11mm = ~6,875 cubic mm (the width is not uniform over the entire length of the groove, so this figure is likely less than the estimate here). The weight of the maul cobble before starting = 1,380 grams. Weight after thirty hours of grinding = 1,361 grams. I have removed a total of 19 grams of material after thirty hours of work.

A ‘rough’ sketch of three different aspects showing the position of the grinding pebble relative to the maul groove. In the first view, you are looking straight down on the maul and flake showing the flake oriented diagonally across the width of the groove. In the second view, you are looking down the length of the groove from the end with the flake positioned diagonally across the groove but also tilted towards the right wall of the groove. In the third view, you are looking at the grinding pebble from the side with its front pointing down at a shallow angle towards the bottom of the groove. Ideally, the grinding pebble is in all three positions simultaneously as strokes are taken.

Grinding Facts and Progress

In an earlier blog, I estimated that I ground the maul 67% of the time in one hour; the remainder of the time I rested and examined my work. I decided to determine how much grinding I actually did over a one-hour period by timing five hours of grinding. I tabulated the results below:

Hour	Minutes Grinding/Sawing	% (of one hour)
1	44	73.3
2	50	83.3
3	52	86.7
4	54	90
5	47	78
Mean Time Grinding/Sawing	49.4	82.3

It turns out I ground the maul longer than I had originally estimated. On average I ground close to 50 minutes out of every hour. This turns out to be about 82.3%. However, I count the resting and examining the maul as part of the work process. It’s almost impossible to grind continuously for one hour. Maybe if you’re young and strong. I’m neither.

I also calculated how many strokes per minute I took by counting five sample strokes over a one minute period. Here are the results:

Sample Strokes per Minute	Number of Strokes
1	148
2	138
3	140
4	150
5	146
Mean Strokes per Minute	144.4

What constitutes a stroke? I counted a stroke here as the forward motion along parts of the groove as one stroke and the backward motion as the second stroke. The two strokes don’t have the same degree of effort. The backward stroke is not nearly as powerful and effective in grinding as the forward stroke which is the power stroke. How much less effective is very difficult to measure accurately. I have no idea how much force I’m exerting on the maul with either stroke (and it would be tough, but not impossible to measure). On average I took about 144 strokes per minute while grinding. If we calculate how many strokes it takes per hour, then multiply 144 x 49.4 = 7,113.6 strokes per hour. And, if we multiply that figure by thirty hours, I have taken 213,408 strokes so far. Ouch! No wonder I hurt sometimes.

The Grinding Process, or, How to Make a Very Narrow Maul Groove Wider

Initially, for the first ten hours of grinding, I used a very small, thin quartzite flake (weighing 14 grams) to establish a thin, deep, straight cut across the width of the cobble. Occasionally I placed some wet sand in the groove to gain better grinding traction (which was also more effective in removing the skin from my fingers). But once the groove was about 4mm deep, it was time to begin to widen as well as deepen it. I thought there might be two possible ways of doing this: 1) angle the grinding flake to either side of the maul groove, so that the sides of the flake rub along the sides of the maul groove; and, 2) use a larger flake with a wider edge to widen the groove. It turns out I eventually ended up doing both.

Here’s how my grinding method progressed over the next twenty hours. I did not use any sand, because I worked in the house. After knocking off a few flakes from a small orthoquartzite pebble (weighing 108 grams as opposed to the smaller quartzite flake only weighing 14 grams) to form a cutting edge, I then retouched the cutting edge, using a hammer-stone, to blunt and widen it. I used this edge for many hours. It wore down and began to conform to the size and shape of the maul groove, fitting in nicely and thereby touching not only the bottom of the groove but also the sides. As the flake wore down, it got wider, and thereby also continued to widen the groove.

That was the first step to widening the groove. Next, I started experimenting with holding the grinding flake at certain angles. I got a lot more of the pebble grinding surface on the maul walls by doing this. During the last ten hours of grinding I made the grinding process even more complicated, but also more effective. Not only did I angle my grinding flake to one side or the other (off the vertical plane), but I oriented the flake grinding edge diagonally across the groove channel and pointed it downwards. This resulted in a three-dimensional grinding action as shown in the photographs and illustration below. This technique abraded both the sides, as well as the bottom, of the groove. The front edge of the grinding flake was always fresh as you grind it down by angling it.

I think the groove is now deep and wide enough so that I can use even a bigger grinding pebble. The extra weight of the pebble and greater grinding surface should result not only in widening the groove to about 20mm (which is my ultimate goal) and 6mm – 7mm deep, but should also be more efficient because of the added weight of the grinding pebble/stone; thus requiring less effort and time.

A photograph of me grinding away with my pet pebble. The pebble is tilted to one side, its point slightly downward and aligned diagonally across the maul groove. I found that this is a very effective way of grinding the groove and scouring both sides and bottom at once. The grinding pebble’s edges seem to catch the quartzite surface better when positioned this way. Both the maul and the grinding pebble get worn down. The front edge of the grinding pebble is snapped off. So there is always a constantly new, rough front surface that grinds the groove.

A close-up shot of my grinding pebble positioned at the angles previously described to get maximum grinding traction and removal of material. In order to widen the groove, I will now search for a new, larger, heavier, grinding pebble with a rounded grinding edge. Ideally, it should be about 20mm – 22mm wide which is the intended maximum width of my groove.

My Pet Grinding Pebble and Other Flakes I Used

One of the major challenges of hand-grinding with a pebble or flake was finding one that fit my hand with no sharp pressure points. This is very important. Blisters can form quickly if the grinding stone doesn’t fit well. Initially, the small flakes I used hurt my hands and created blisters easily because they were relatively small. And, because of their size, it was very difficult to wrap something around them to soften the grip. When I graduated to the bigger quartzite grinding pebble shown in these photographs, I taped the portion that fits in my hand. This pebble was quite comfortable and didn’t blister or cramp my hand (well, at least not as fast) as I ground the stone maul. Not only must you look for an equally hard, or harder, material for a grinding stone, but one that is comfortable if you want to save your fingers and hands.

Below are various stages, captured with photographs, of my last grinding pebble which I used for twenty hours; and the changes it went through. I resharpened it a few times to broaden the grinding edge, so it would broaden the maul groove. The pebble is not a true quartzite, but rather an orthoquartzite (which is grainier and perhaps not as hard as quartzite).

My pet grinding pebble. Made of *orthoquartzite*, this pebble was coarse and tough enough to do some serious grinding on my quartzite maul. This photograph shows the various stages my grinding stone edge went through. The grinding edge became broader and smoother as I cut down into the maul groove. The sides of the grinding stone also got worn and polished because of the way I held it. The polished grinding edge still managed to wear away material in the groove.

Stone Maul Balance – Where Should the Groove Go?

I never really thought much about this until recently. But what about the balance of the maul when hafted? Where should the groove be positioned on the maul?: near the center, or more towards one end of the polls? There are pros and cons for each position. If the maul groove is too much off-center its awkward balance might create problems when lifting and swinging it; and difficulty using both ends. If the maul groove is centred, how effective is it in the lift and swing? One way to find an answer is to experiment with various types of hafting. However, if the groove is centred, and is sufficiently well balanced to lift and swing, then both polls can be used for pounding if the maul is relatively symmetrical.

There was another way to find out if the position of the groove on a maul was important: examine a sample of prehistoric stone mauls and measure where the groove was placed. In the maul samples below from Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada, most of the grooves are off-center, either towards the proximal or distal poll. In the Saskatchewan sample, of the 15 examples shown, all 14 grooves are off-center, either on the proximal (n = 11) or distal (n = 4) poll. Rarely is the groove exactly centred, although a few specimens came close. And, in Gilbert Watson’s Saskatchewan sample (see below), when the groove is off-center towards the distal poll, the proximal poll is cone-shaped and thereby lighter than the distal poll. Thousands of years and thousands of maul users can’t be wrong. For whatever reason a hafted off-center maul was preferred. Presently, I can only speculate, without further experiments, why people chose this position for the groove. It likely has to do with balance (or imbalance with the weight more towards the striking end) since those mauls with grooves nearer the distal poll generally have smaller, lighter proximal polls.

If you look closely at my maul in the above photographs, the maul groove is slightly offset towards the proximal poll.

A sample of ground stone mauls from Alberta, Canada. Note that all of the grooves on the complete specimens are off-center, mostly toward the proximal end (n = 6) of the poll as opposed to the distal end (n = 4) (however, the numbers are close and the sample is small). When the groove is closer to the distal poll then the proximal poll is almost always more cone-shaped and therefore slightly smaller and lighter (as in the last two mauls). ²

These drawings of stone axes were published by Gilbert Watson in the Saskatchewan Archaeological Newsletter, 1966. Only one of the grooves in 15 samples is centred while the remainder are off-center, most often towards the proximal poll.

A Few Closing Thoughts

“The underlying principle behind optimizing theory is that past cultures always attempted to maximize returns while minimizing the expenditure of currency….As all humans operate under finite constraints, tool designs reflect the necessity to conserve time.” (John Darwent, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada)

As I sat hour after hour grinding away on my quartzite maul, feeling the pain and stiffness in my fingers, I often wondered why people chose quartzite to make these mauls. The answer to that question may have something to do with the effort to procure raw materials, time expenditure, and the benefits of making it from such a hard material. Archaeologists have pondered the trade-off between time and effort of making an object and the benefits acquired.³ Archaeologist, John Darwent, and others suggested four possible scenarios of the cost-benefit of making an object: 1) high cost, low benefit; 2) low cost, low benefit; 3) high cost, high benefit; and, 4) low cost, high benefit. He suggests that in terms of efficiency (benefit divided by cost), the cases can be ranked, except for instances 2 and 3 which are equivalent, as follows: 4 > 3; 2 > 1.

Clearly, in terms of production time (exceedingly long) and benefit (a maul that is virtually indestructible), my quartzite maul is probably a “3”: High Cost, High Benefit. In Alberta, other materials for maul making (e.g., granite, amphibolite, basalt, sandstone, granite) exist but are less common requiring more time and effort to find them. Even though these rock types are not as hard, and therefore easier to grind, there would be less benefit, breaking more easily (as the granite maul below shows, missing part of the distal poll). Quartzite cobbles are very common in Alberta. Saskatchewan Sands and Gravels, eroding out in creek and river cuts contain naturally suitably shaped cobbles, thus not requiring any, or little shaping (and thereby reducing work and effort considerably). Once the maul is made, relatively little maintenance is required.

The arrow points to the granite maul where chunks of the distal poll broke off, probably through use. The maul was found in a cultivated field so breakage from farm equipment can’t be ruled out. However, the break surface looks sufficiently weathered suggesting it happened a long time ago.

However, is this rather economic-oriented view of maul manufacture too simplistic? Is the choice of this tough stone, and the many hours required to fashion a maul, intended for something else? Here also, archaeologists have speculated, stating that optimization theory fails to explain why so much time and effort (or ‘surplus’) goes beyond a purely ‘functional’ point when making a stone tool. As Darwent explains, “…the most optimal decision on an economic level may not be the best choice on a social level.” In other words, a simple stone maul, made from softer materials, may be just as functional as one made of quartzite, but less prestigious at a social level. The difficulty, however, becomes knowing where to draw the line between how much work and effort is ‘functional’, as opposed to what is considered ‘surplus’. And whether the ‘benefits’ outweigh the ‘cost’.

Before signing off, my other thought about western Canadian stone mauls, concerns the scarcity of evidence of their manufacture in the archaeological record. In other words, where do old stone mauls go when they die? Or do they ever die? It seems most of them are found on the surface of cultivated fields and end up in farmers’ collections. Prehistorically, they might have been highly valued and curated, because of the effort it took to make them, and were perhaps passed down from one generation to the next. As mentioned before, we rarely find them in buried archeological contexts. And, we don’t find broken bits and pieces of mauls, such as parts of the poll hammer end or groove, in the archaeological record. ⁴ To my knowledge, we don’t find polished pieces of stone flake used to grind and shape the groove. This lack of evidence makes this artifact a bit of an enigma. Many questions, regarding its manufacture and use still need to be answered.

My pet grinding pebble (far left) and a number of rejuvenation flakes were removed from it to widen the grinding edge (on the right). The arrows all point to the polished surfaces of the flakes and my grinding pebble that wear very smooth when grinding the groove. If this method was used prehistorically then we should find evidence of it in the archaeological record. The characteristics of grinding on pebbles or flakes are subtle and require careful examination of the archaeological materials recovered.

From this experiment, it’s more likely the quartzite mauls were made by grinding rather than pecking. Although, here I admit, after looking closely at the grooves (which seem more ‘grainy’ than my maul), in the Alberta maul sample, that that the grooves may have been pecked. Perhaps I was too hasty in dismissing this method. It’s something that I will test by pounding and pecking on a quartzite cobble for a greater length of time.

My colleagues and I want to acquire some independent evidence to either verify or refute whether quartzite mauls were ground and not pecked. If you look at a close-up photograph of the granite and my quartzite maul grooves, you will immediately note the difference in the degree of smoothness of the maul grooves. This difference in smoothness is partly due to the differences in grain size in both types of rocks, but perhaps also on how each groove was made; by grinding for quartzite and pecking for granite.

Comparison of the granite and quartzite maul grooves. The quartzite maul groove is much smoother although parts of the granite maul groove also show some polish. I wonder if it too was ground instead of pecked; perhaps both. The other issue we have to consider is how much of this polish occurred when the maul was hafted and then used with the hafted handle constantly rubbing in the groove. The two different types of polish may not be distinguishable with the naked eye but may appear different under higher magnification.

We plan to examine my quartzite maul groove under high magnification and note the type of wear marks left from grinding it with another quartzite rock. Then we will examine both the granite maul and other quartzite mauls in the Alberta museum collections, to see if similar marks are present on them. Hopefully, this little exercise will give us independent verification (or not) of whether prehistoric Indigenous peoples in western Canada used this method to fashion their stone mauls.

In closing, I estimate it will take another ten to fifteen hours of grinding to finish one-half of this maul (assuming that the use of a larger, heavier grinding stone speeds up the process). This figure, when added to my already thirty hours of grinding, puts us at the 40-45 hour mark for just one-half. Thus, it will probably take about 80 – 90 hours to make the entire groove and perhaps another ten hours to make the handle and haft it onto the maul. That brings us to around one hundred hours of work.

And I intend to finish at least one-half of the maul. So, there will likely be one more final blog on my progress. And hopefully, by then there will be results from looking at the maul grooves under high magnification for manufacturing wear marks.

However, I’m going to soak my hurting hands in some warm Cuban waters before I tackle the home stretch of this project.

Adiós

Footnotes:

See the article by Kristine Fedyniak and Karen L. Giering. 2017. More than meat: Residue analysis results of mauls in Alberta. Archaeological Survey of Alberta, Occasional Paper 36, regarding what types of materials people pounded with these mauls.[↩]
Photographs of Alberta mauls are from: Kristine Fedyniak and Karen L. Giering. 2017. More than meat: Residue analysis results of mauls in Alberta. Archaeological Survey of Alberta, Occasional Paper 36.[↩]
see John Darwent’s M.A. thesis. 1996. The Prehistoric Use of Nephrite on the British Columbia Plateau. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.[↩]
One of my colleagues suggested that broken stone mauls were used as boiling rocks, or in sweats, virtually disintegrating, leaving no evidence behind[↩]

May 18, 2021January 28, 2023

My Stone Maul. Just Grinding and Pecking Away: Progress(?) Report Number Two

I picked up this ground-stone granite maul on the Canadian prairies many years ago. I decided to try and make one like it. Hopefully by making one I would understand better the methods Indigenous peoples used, and also the amount of work involved.

In a previous post (https://canehdianstories.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=2853&action=edit) I discussed Indigenous ground-stone technology on the Canadian prairies. I decided that because we knew so little on how some objects, such as grooved stone mauls, were made I would try to make one. This method of inquiry is known as ‘Experimental Archaeology’ – a sub-field of archaeology intended to gain insight into prehistoric methods people used by replicating them. These are a few of my thoughts after a little over a week of working on this project. As usual, whenever I take on projects like this there are some real eye-openers. So far, I haven’t been disappointed.

I managed to get in about four hours of work on the quartzite cobble I chose to make my ground-stone maul. Below is a photograph showing my progress pecking and grinding the stone maul. Most of you, after looking closely at this photograph, will probably think: ‘What progress? I don’t see any.’

My quartzite cobble that I chose to make a ground-stone maul, after about four hours of work. As is quite evident, there are some scratches on the cortex (the outer oxidized layer of the cobble) and ever-so slight grooving.

Well, let me explain. Perhaps another photograph will help. If you look at the cobble closely, at just the right angle, with just the right light, you can see a slight indentation on the cortex (the outer oxidized layer on the rock). You can actually feel it better than see it.

A closer view of my attempt to start a groove on the maul after about four hours of work. In places I may have broken through the cortex. But barely. I’m also finding it hard to aim the stone grooving tool and keep it straight. It kind of wants to wander everywhere. Once I have established a groove, it should become easier to direct my aim.

In short, it’s going to take a little longer than the eight hours someone estimated it took to make a granite grooved maul. At this rate with the methods I’m using, you might add one or two zeros to the number eight. I’ll explain my methods, and the tools I’m using to make the maul, to give you a better understanding WHY it’s taking me so long to make any progress.

Pecking? Forget It

First I thought I would try to peck the groove using a small quartzite pebble having the same hardness as the maul. That didn’t work worth a damn. Not only was the impact area of the pecking stone too round, it wore down faster than the cobble I was pecking. And, after forty-five minutes of banging away I was getting nowhere, fast. At first the surface of the cobble looked good with all the stone flour on it. Then I realized that the flour was coming off my pecking stone and not the cobble.

This method was a waste of time. At least for me. It might work better to form basalt hand-mauls, but is difficult to make an initial groove in the quartzite cobble this way. Also, the hammerstone I used was too large with too blunt an end to be accurate. And, while there was a lot of stone flour on the quartzite cobble, it was mostly from the hammerstone.

The end of the hammerstone I used to peck on the quartzite cobble, after about forty-five minutes. It was getting me nowhere. Quite a bit of wear on the hammerstone though.

Sawing and Grinding

Next, I found a small coarse-grained sandstone flake. I used a sawing motion across about two centimetres of the flake edge to grind a groove on the cobble. This method worked much better than pecking. After one hour, I thought I saw some of the natural pockmarks on the cobble surface begin to smooth out. But, there was no point measuring my progress. I don’t think they make instruments capable of measuring that small a depth. I was averaging about 150 – 155 strokes per minute using this sawing technique. Or, with one hour’s work, 9,000 – 9,300 strokes. My fingers cramped pretty badly after only one hour’s work.

I started grinding the cobble with this orthoquartzite or hard sandstone flake. I used the entire thin edge length of the flake to grind away on the cobble surface. This method worked moderately well, but after about one hour, the flake no longer had an effective edge and will have to be replaced or resharpened.

Continued Search for Just the Right Tool

The coarse-grained sandstone flake worked well enough. But, was there something better? At this stage of the project I’m still guessing and experimenting with different methods. Next I fashioned a few more quartzite flakes. But this time I looked for flakes having burin-like tip (a type of handheld lithic flake with a chisel-like edge which prehistoric humans used for cutting wood or bone), or graver tips (lithic tool with a slightly more pointed tip than a burin), so that I could better gouge the surface of the maul.

This close-up view of a lithic burin tool used for cutting wood, bone and antler, also seems to work for grooving the quartzite cobble. From: https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-burin-used-for

In this photograph I’m using a burin-like quartzite flake tool and pushing it forward on the quartzite cobble. I’m slowly but surely removing microscopic bits of quartzite to form the groove for the maul. At first I just hand-held the flake. But after a while it was doing more damage to my fingers than to the cobble. So, I wrapped it in paper towel to prevent blisters (a real authentic touch). After about two hours of using this tool, the tip got dull. I retouched the edges of the flake to resharpen it. It should still work until at some point it becomes too small to effectively hold. I am also thinking of using a heavier, larger flake to apply more pressure on the edge. It might also be easier to hold.

If I held the flake at just the right angle (about 20 – 30 degrees) and pushed real hard, I felt I was scouring the cobble better than with the other two methods. However, if the flake point is held to low, not much scouring happened. If I held the flake too high, I couldn’t push it very well, or accurately. Blisters were starting to appear on my fingers, so I wrapped the flake in a paper towel. A piece of leather would do quite nicely as well. Occasionally I found my fore-finger scraping across the cobble as I pushed the flake.

Closeup of the tip of the quartzite flake, showing the wear from grinding on the stone maul. Also, the wear on my fingers holding the flake to grind the maul.

I’m working with rocks, which are good conductors of heat. I’m causing a lot of friction and heat when using the sawing methods. Perhaps dunking the flake tool in water, or adding water to maul surface, would prevent heat build-up.

A Few Closing Observations

It’s pretty obvious already that this project is going to take a long, long time to make. Unless I figure out a better method of incising my cobble. So far, both the sandstone saw and graving/gouging with considerable force on the flake work the best.

Patience is a key here. We live in a society of instant results and gratification. This project would be something you worked on all winter when there was less other work to do. Like knitting sweaters or large rugs, which took many hours to fashion. I also find that grinding away is a lot like distance running. Eventually, through repeated strokes which take little thinking, it puts your mind in a different place, relaxing it. We could all use a bit more of that in our present-day society.

Given the amount of work that I expect to put into making this tool (if I ever do), I would highly value it. In archaeology we call this curation. People would have valued these mauls because of the effort involved making them. If people were not carrying their mauls from one camp to another, then they would have carefully cached them for safety. Or there was some sort of agreement among families using the same camp, to leave the mauls after use. In a previous post (https://canehdianstories.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=2016&action=edit), on stone axes in Australia, I noted how highly prized they were among the Australian aborigines. Similar processes might have been operating here in the Americas with these mauls.

Indigenous people on the West Coast of Canada used more ground-stone technology to fashion stone tools than people on the prairies. The major reason may be related to access to more relatively softer (than quartzite) types of stone, such as basalt, for fashioning ground stone tools. I’m making my ground stone maul out of quartzite, the hardest and most common material available on the prairies. If I had a choice, knowing what I already know about this process, quartzite would not have been my first choice. Yet, most ground-stone mauls on the prairies are made from quartzite. The trade-off, however, is that a quartzite maul would not break as easily as mauls made of softer types of rocks.

These rather ornate hammerstones and grooved mauls are from the North West Coast of Canada. They are made mostly of basalt which is slightly easier to work than my quartzite cobble. However, even so, it would have taken a considerable amount of effort and ingenuity to fashion them. (Image from: Hilary Stewart, 1973. *Artifacts of the Northwest Coast Indians*. Hancock House Publishers.)

I just finished reading an article on how First Nations peoples in British Columbia, Canada, made nephrite adzes. Nephrite, on the Mohs hardness scale, is between 6 – 6.5. This material is slightly less hard than my wonder cobble, but still not that easy to carve. According to author, Hilary Stewart, people sawed nephrite boulders using a sandstone saw, with sand and water added for greater abrasion.

This series of sketches shows how archaeologists think nephrite boulders were cut into thin slabs which were then edged to make the highly prized nephrite adzes. As a sedimentary stone, sandstone has a hardness between 6 and 7. But the quartz fragments that it is composed of have a hardness of 7. So, as a saw this material would work well to cut/grind the hard quartzite. (Image from: Hilary Stewart, 1973. Artifacts of the Northwest Coast Indians. Hancock House Publishers.)

Maybe I’ll use a larger piece of sandstone next, and add a sand/water compound for more grit. And, a saw makes more sense since there is a greater surface area working to groove my cobble. With the flake burin I could only use a forward motion. Thus, a sawing tool having a greater edge area and back and forth motion should be much more efficient than a tiny tip of stone being pushed in only one direction. However, having said that, often what we think works best, doesn’t always materialize into reality. That’s why experimenting with these techniques is so important.

But, what kind of edge should the stone saw have to be most effective?

In this series of diagrams a piece of nephrite is cut using a sandstone saw. Note the upper three diagrams. Before use the saw blade edge is a V-shape. Then after grinding/cutting the nephrite, it becomes rounded from use, probably making it less effective to cut a thin groove, but still useful to form a wider groove in the rock, which is necessary for my grooved stone maul. Perhaps this is a natural, necessary progression. We start with a thin, deep groove when the sandstone edge is thin, then as it gets rounder it widens the groove. (Image from: Hilary Stewart, 1973. Artifacts of the Northwest Coast Indians. Hancock House Publishers.)

Stay tuned. I’ll check in again after reaching another sort of milestone with my project. However, I’m going to rethink what type of grinding tool to use and what it should be made out of. That’s what happens when, after four hours of hard work, you can barely see any progress. Suddenly creativity sets in.

May 3, 2021October 3, 2023

Just Grinding And Pecking Away: A Closer Look At Ground Stone Tool Technology (Part One)

A grooved stone maul. A prehistoric object, found on many continents, made by grinding or pecking the groove to attach a handle. An incredibly labor-intensive activity taking many hours to complete.

In Alberta, stone mauls were used for thousands of years. One maul was found in an archaeological site dating over 10,000 years in Alberta (Fedyniak and Giering, 2016). Unfortunately very few mauls are found in an archaeological context, allowing accurate dating. There is currently no known change in their shape and/or size through time. And, these mauls mainly occur on the southern prairies and not further north.

In the mid-1970s, while out hunting in southern Saskatchewan, I picked up this grooved stone maul in a cultivated field near the edge of a slough. The maul is made from a coarse granitic stone. This one is about 11cm high and 10cm wide. It weighs 1.3kg (2.8lbs). The groove goes almost all the way around the maul, but gets shallower on one side. The groove is about 15mm wide and 5mm deep. One side of the maul has been damaged, either through use or when hit by a farm implement.

Considerable chunk missing on one side of the maul. There is a thin, deep cut line at one edge of the fracture. Possibly made by a cultivator blade rolling over the maul, breaking off a piece.

Close-up view showing the grove in the maul that is polished and smoothed and not as rough as the rest of the stone.

At the time my buddies gathered around to see what I’d found. I confidently stated it was a grooved maul. First Nations people made and used them for pounding things.

How could anyone know so much about a seemingly foreign-looking object by just picking it up and looking at it? Good question. There’s nothing really obvious about the maul to give us a clue what it was used for. Is there? Most people would have walked right by it without even noticing it was a tool.

One method to discover the function of an object is to closely examine it. I looked at both the distal and proximal polls. The proximal poll (smaller end) contained small surface indentations and pocking from use. The distal poll showed smoothed areas, possibly from grinding. It was also slightly flattened from use. Likely from pounding or grinding things. More sophisticated methods, such as microscopic use-wear analysis, would reveal even more about how these abrasions were made.

The base of the proximal poll of the grooved maul, showing indentations and pocking from pounding.

The base of the distal poll showing a combination of indentations but also smoothing on some grains, possibly from grinding something.

Another method we use to determine the function of an object are historic references and ethnographic sources. If an object was used in a certain manner historically, then it was also possibly used in the same way thousands of years ago. This is known as ethnographic analogy. It can be dangerous and it’s always best to use multiple lines of evidence before determining the function of an object.

In his journals explorer David Thompson mentioned First Nations women used stone hammers to smash up deadwood from the trees. According to early ethnographers, “The hammers were of two sorts: one quite heavy, almost like a sledge-hammer or maul, and with a short handle: the other much lighter, and with a longer, more limber handle. This last was used by men in war as a mace or war club, while the heavier hammer was used by women as an axe to break up fallen trees for firewood; as a hammer to drive tent-pins into the ground, to kill disabled animals, or to break up heavy bones for the marrow they contained.” (Grinnell, G. B. 1892. Blackfoot Lodge Tails; The Story of a Prairie People. Scribner, New York.)

This rare photograph of a Northwest Coast Kwakiutl warrior shows a rather larger, fearsome looking stone hand maul near his right arm. Northwest Coast First Nations peoples made a very sophisticated array of ground stone tools. The shapes and varieties of these mauls are considerably different than those used by people on the Canadian prairies. (From Hilary Stewart, 1973. Artifacts of the Northwest Coast Indians. Hancock House Publishers.)

There are other ways to determine the function of an object, which I discuss in later posts. However, first we have to talk about how these mauls were made. Based on ethnographic sources and examination of the stone hammer, the groove was made by patiently pecking, or grinding away at the stone with another preferably harder stone.

The question I often ask myself is why would anyone go through all the trouble to make a stone grooved maul to pound berries, meat and other things, when you can just pick up a suitable rock and use it to pound something, then discard it when you’re finished? You wouldn’t want to carry this object too far. My colleague, Robert Dawe, Royal Alberta Museum tells me that people used the mauls at campsites and left them there when they move. The mobile Kalahari bushmen did the same thing with their heavy metal axes.

There are a few possible reasons for carrying a maul with a hafted handle permanently: 1) warfare and defense; 2) it had sacred or symbolic meaning and was used in ceremonies; and, 3) it created more leverage and force. The American ethnographer George Bird Grinnell described an old Blackfoot man’s attempts to heal a sick child. He instructed two women to sit near the doorway of the tipi facing each other. “Each one held a puk-sah-tchis, [a maul] with which she was to beat in time to the singing” (Grinnell 1892:163) (In (Fedyniak and Giering, 2016).

A hafted grooved stone maul from rawhide and wood. A handle on this stone maul would create more leverage and force. The author of this post said it took about eight hours of pecking and grinding to form the groove on this fine-grained granite rock. From, ‘Sensible Survival’: https://sensiblesurvival.org/2012/04/28/make-a-hafted-stone-axe/

As I mentioned before, making ground stone tools is very labor-intensive. But, I have read few articles on just how much work it takes to make a stone maul. One researcher conducted an experiment to make a mortar from a basalt cobble. Below are some basic results of that research.

In this particular experiment, it took about two hours to peck a cavity about 8cm in diameter, 3cm deep into a basalt cobble. From, Andrea Squitieri and David Eitam, 2016. “An experimental approach to ground stone tool manufacture. Journal of Lithic Studies Vol. 3:553-564.

Pecking the mortar hole from a basalt cobble. From, Andrea Squitieri and David Eitam, 2016. “An experimental approach to ground stone tool manufacture. Journal of Lithic Studies Vol. 3:553-564.

Finishing the mortar by polishing it with water and basalt powder. Andrea Squitieri and David Eitam, 2016. “An experimental approach to ground stone tool manufacture. Journal of Lithic Studies Vol. 3:553-564.

I guess there’s only one way to find out how long it takes to make a grooved stone maul out of quartzite. And that is to make my own grooved stone maul. I’ve nothing but time on my hands during these Covid days. I mean, how hard can this be?

The Experiment

First I went down to my local river to find some suitable rock candidates to make a stone maul. What was I looking for? Having never made one, I wasn’t sure. I checked some of the mauls at the Royal Alberta Museum collections. They come in all shapes and sizes. And they are made from various types of rocks: granite, basalt, sandstone and quartzite. But, according to research at the Royal Alberta Museum, in Alberta, First Nations people used quartzite (67%) most often to make a stone maul (Fedyniak and Giering, 2016). The reasons? Quartzite was the hardest and most abundant rock available.

A sample of stone grooved mauls in the Royal Alberta Museum collections. This photograph is taken from an article by Kristine Fedyniak and Karen L. Giering, 2016. “More than meat: Residue analysis results of mauls in Alberta.” In: Back on the horse: Recent developments in archaeological and palaeontological research in Alberta. ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF ALBERTA, OCCASIONAL PAPER No. 36.

Looking for suitable rocks to make a stone grooved maul along the south bank of the North Saskatchewan River, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. These rocks along the shore have eroded out of a higher layer of Saskatchewan Sands and Gravels. Although these deposits contain a variety of types of rocks of different sizes, by far the most common is quartzite, a hard metamorphic rock. I looked at thousands of rocks before picking one or two particular specimens.

After searching for some time, the cobble I finally decided on felt the right weight to pound things and was almost round and symmetrically shaped. This cobble was about 12cm high and 11cm wide. Before pecking, it weighed 1.38kg (3.0lbs).

The unmodified quartzite cobble I chose to make my grooved stone maul.

I’ve read some literature about stone tool pecking and grinding. According to most sources the hammer used to peck out the groove should be a harder material than the stone maul material. This is somewhat problematic since quartzite is a 7 on the Mohs hardness scale. Even granite is slightly softer being only around 6.5-6.6 on the Mohs hardness scale. And basalt is only a 6. This then posed the first problem. If prehistoric peoples were pecking and fashioning grooved stone mauls out of quartzite, then what were they using to make them? None of the local rocks in the Edmonton area were harder than quartzite.

And were they just pecking, or incising and grinding the grooves? The smooth finish on the stone maul I found didn’t help answer that question. When I used a magnifying glass I could see the granite granules were crushed and smoothed. Examination of the groove under a low-power microscope might tell me even more.

I chose these two rocks to peck and groove the maul. The one on the left is a granite (1.6lbs or 0.73kgs) and the one on the right is probably a quartzite (0.44lbs or 0.2kgs) (hard to tell with the cortex still on the rock). Only experimentation and time will tell whether these two rocks will work. I’m not that optimistic though.

I have no idea how long this will take. It may take weeks, or perhaps months. I’ll record the amount of time I spend pecking away, whether I peck or grind and how my pecking stones hold up. I’ll keep you posted on my progress, problems, success. We’ll turn this post into experimental archaeology, since there are still relatively few studies on how to make ground stone tools. Especially grooved mauls found on the Canadian prairies.

That’s it for now. Time to get to work….