3D models of Flintknapping Tools - Museum of Stone Tools

Flintknapping Tools

Stone tool manufacture, or flintknapping, was accomplished using a variety of tools including hammers, punches, and billets made from stone or organic materials.

Hammerstones are the most common flintknapping tool in the archaeological record. These tools were often highly prized because it can be difficult to find a stone of the appropriate shape, weight, and material to suit various flaking techniques. Hammerstones of hard materials, such as igneous or metavolcanic rocks, were used for removing flakes by striking in from the edge of the core (called ‘off-edge percussion’); and softer materials, such as limestone or sandstone, were used to remove flakes by striking right onto the edge of the core (called ‘on-edge percussion’). The effects from using soft hammerstones can be similar to the effects from using antler hammers.

Hard hammers and soft hammers were variously used to accomplish different tool making goals. While stone hammers were common, soft hammers could be made from organic materials such as antler, bone, or very hard wood. Historically, more recent flintknappers and stonemasons used iron hammers, and modern hobbyist flintknappers often use hammers made from soft copper.

Antler is an ideal material for removing flakes by striking onto the edge of a core because the stone can bite into the antler, resulting in an efficient transfer of force. But, unlike bone, antler is unlikely to shatter or break.

Copper is preferred by many modern flintknappers because it is relatively soft, like antler, but much heavier and more durable. Copper hammers are referred to as ‘boppers’ by North American flintknappers; some boppers are solid copper bars, while others are composite tools made by hammering a copper plumbing cap over a short wood, plastic, or metal handle.

In pressure flaking, force is transferred by pressing against the stone rather than striking it, and both bone and antler work well for this. In prehistory, bone tended to be used for light percussion, such as retouching the edges of flakes, or for pressure flaking.Bone pressure flakers were often splinters shaped from larger bones.In the Kimberley region of Australia, Aboriginal flintknappers usually used the ulna of a kangaroo for pressure flaking, but they also used crocodile mandibles or, in one case, a human leg bone.

Teeth might be used in pressure flaking—the Yahi flintknapper Ishi had a beaver tooth in his flintknapping kit—but tooth enamel tends to be brittle and unsuitable for forceful techniques. Australian Aboriginal flintknappers used their back teeth to micro-flake the edges of flake tools to prepare them for use. Modern flintknappers have shown that the sharp edge of a stone flake can be used as a pressure flaker to make notches and edge serrations.

Flintknappers often used an antler hammer, called a ‘billet’, to strike the core directly, but one technique—called indirect percussion—was accomplished using a relatively short antler or bone punch.The punch was held against the edge of the stone and struck with a mallet, detaching the flake.The flintknapper could be very precise in placing the punch on the core’s platform.Stone punches may have been used for the indirect percussion technique in New Zealand, where deer (and hence antlers) were absent prior to the European invasion.

An unusual technique used by modern stone bead-makers in Khambhat, India, involves bracing the core platform onto an iron punch embedded in the ground, and striking the core with a wood or horn mallet to detach the flake.

Most types of wood are too soft for direct percussion flaking, although modern knappers have shown that very hard wood works for on-edge percussion if you strike hard enough. Aboriginal flintknappers in Australia used the faces of hardwood boomerangs to retouch the edges of flake tools, and flintknappers in the Kimberley region used a wood tool for the initial stages of pressure flaking. Modern flintknappers have successfully used cactus needles to punch holes through thin obsidian flakes to make beads. The attributes of flakes struck by wood flaking tools are similar to the attributes of using an antler or bone tool, so archaeologists may be underestimating the use of wood hammers in prehistory.

Stone tool technology did not disappear with the invention of metallurgy and in many areas stone tools persisted side-by-side metal technology for thousands of years. Bronze tools such as awls were likely used to pressure-flake stone arrowheads, and bronze was probably used for the fine punching seen on some Danish daggers. Copper awls may have been used for pressure flaking in the late prehistory of North America, and copper nuggets may have been used for percussion flaking, but this is poorly documented by archaeologists. Most modern flintknappers prefer copper for pressure flaking tools.

Iron hammers were used by gunflint makers in England and France during the historic period, and, more recently, by threshing board-makers around the Mediterranean. Modern makers of hide-scrapers in Ethiopia use iron tools to detach and retouch obsidian flakes, and recent Aboriginal flintknappers in Australia sometimes used the back of an iron hatchet to make flakes and blades. Highly-controlled pressure flaking was accomplished using iron nails or sections of steel fencing wire by traditional flintknappers in Australia and North America.