The concept of the technique and technology of stone processing. Virginsky V., Khoteenkov V. Essays on the history of science and technology from ancient times to the middle of the 15th century. Paleolithic stone tools
Akimova E.V.
Faculty of History
Krasnoyarsk 2004
INTRODUCTION
Is it possible to trace the relationship between the shape, size and quality of the rock and the object made from it?
Think.
1. In the European part of Russia, flint is more often found in the form of tiles, and in Siberia - pebbles. The task is the same: to make a large spearhead. How to achieve this?
2. At the Ust-Kova site in the Northern Angara region, jasper, chalcedony, and silicified wood were used. There are almost no unfinished things here, no tool blanks, broken pieces of rock, and, as a rule, all objects are small in size. How can this be explained?
3. On the Middle Yenisei, on any Paleolithic monument, they find a large number of broken pebbles, damaged blanks. What is it connected with?
Rock analysis allows you to determine the deposit, the source of raw materials, the direction of exchange. Thus, in the Neolithic, at the sites of the Lower Angara, jade tools were found, the deposits of which are found only in the Baikal region.
How exactly did a person process a stone?
First of all, the data of ethnography, remontage and experiment allow archaeologists to answer this question.
The study of the stone splitting technique among the peoples of Australia, Equatorial Africa, now living at the tribal stage, makes it possible to extrapolate their techniques to the Stone Age. It is only necessary to take into account that the skills and abilities of modern people who have preserved this technique do not have to be identical to the skills and abilities of ancient people.
Repair (application)- involves the assembly of splitting objects into one initial concretion (pebbles, nodule ...). This allows you to accurately restore the sequence of withdrawals, their dependence on each other, to decipher the nuances of the process. Unfortunately, refurbishment is not always technically possible.
Experiment involves the reconstruction of the splitting process in modern conditions. Thus, many myths about ancient man were destroyed, the possibility was proved, and specific methods for manufacturing complex products were determined. The limitation of the possibilities of the experiment for reconstructing the process of processing stone (as well as bone and wood) in antiquity lies in the incorrectness of the absolute transfer of the results of the experiment to the Stone Age.
The concept of the nucleus
Nucleus- a stone product intended for obtaining chips-blanks of future tools. The term "nucleus" was introduced by L. Legay in 50-60s. 19th century G. de Mortillet in 1883 gave such a definition of the core - "pieces of flint or other stone, from which they are beaten off for industrial purposes, fragments and, in particular, plates." In domestic literature, the term “core” is less commonly used, meaning the core (core) of the stone from which the removals were made, which were later used to make tools.
Designation of elements of the core(Fig. 6).
General scheme of the stone industry
Think.
1. What is the advantage of the Levallois technique compared to the techniques of the early Paleolithic?
2. What are the disadvantages of the Levallois technique?
3. Which of the types of Levallois nuclei was the most promising? Why?
At the end of the Middle - the beginning of the Late Paleolithic, the "classical" nucleus appears parallel chipping principle (Fig. 13). It could be made on pebbles, on a shapeless fragment or nodule. In the first case, the core did not need to be prepared and was ready for splitting immediately after the site was set up. Primary blades could also be used as tool blanks. If the original concretion did not correspond to the shape of the future core, the workpiece was pre-stamped. In this case, the first chips obtained from the core do not have a pebble crust on the surface, but the negatives of decorative removals (diagonal, radial, counter, etc.).
Think.
1. What is the function of the laterals of the nucleus?
2. How is it more convenient to chip chips from the board: from the wide side or from the end?
At the beginning of the Late Paleolithic, end technology. The splitting was carried out not from the wide, but from the narrow part of the core. The first end cores could be made on flint tiles, flat pebbles, and cores flattened in the process of wear. In the latter case, the lateral of the original core could act as a front.
A variant of the end nucleus is the wedge-shaped nucleus. A feature of the wedge-shaped core is the pointed counterfront and the distal end, designed to secure the core in a kind of wooden frame (a wedged tree trunk, stump ...).
Designation of the elements of the wedge-shaped nucleus (Fig. 14).
The wedge-shaped nucleus has a narrow triangular front and wide laterals. The counterfront of the wedge-shaped core is called the ridge, the distal end is the keel.
In the Late Paleolithic (about 20 ka) microplate technique, which is a set of techniques that make it possible to obtain standard microplates3. Microlamellar cores could be prismatic, conical, pyramidal, celtic, pyramidal, pencil-shaped... In Siberia, the wedge-shaped core became the leading form of micronucleus in the Late Paleolithic (Fig. 15).
Think.
1. What is the advantage of the parallel splitting technique over the Levallois technique?
2. What could be the functional use of microplates?
SECONDARY SPLITTING
The purpose of secondary splitting is the direct manufacture of tools from a cleavage-blank, which involves the design working edge, butt (handle) and others necessary elements characteristic of a particular type of weapon.
The main type of secondary processing in the Paleolithic is retouching.
Retouching - a series of negatives of small flakes (flakes) formed by applying light blows or pressing along the edge of the workpiece (Fig. 16).
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Retouching could have occurred as a result of a counterattack, when the splitting was carried out on a hard anvil and the flakes flew off not only under the impact of the chipper, but also under the impact of the recoil of the anvil. In many cases, retouching could occur involuntarily, in the course of activity (cutting, scraping, chiselling, etc.) or under the influence of environmental conditions (gravel or pebble filling of the cultural layer, redeposition of the layer, etc.). Such retouching is usually called working retouching or recycling retouching.
Types of retouching (Fig. 17):
1. by location on the surface of the workpiece: dorsal and ventral;
2. distribution on the surface: marginal, exciting (common), covering the entire surface;
3. facet shape: rounded, elongated;
4. by facet orientation: parallel, convergent;
5. according to the dynamics of application: continuous, intermittent, localized in certain areas
6. according to the ratio of the dimensions of the facets: multi-faceted, equal-faceted
7. by orientation relative to the axis of the product4: longitudinal, transverse, no preferred orientation;
8. by application angle:
70-90 0 - sheer,
45-70 0 - steep,
30-45 0 - sharpening,
10-30 0 - flat,
up to 10 0 - creeping.
If both faces of the tool are completely or almost completely processed by captivating or covering retouching, it is called biface. If only one face is retouched - uniface(Fig. 18).
TYPES OF RETOUCH
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Think.
1. What function could a product with creeping retouching have? Steep? Sheer?
2. Can different types of retouching be combined on one tool?
3. Could retouching be used in the primary splitting process? In what capacity?
Less common methods of secondary splitting are incisal chipping, ankosh, and fragmentation (Fig. 19).
Incisal chip represents the removal of a narrow elongated cleavage from the edge of a flake or plate. The edges of the cleavage negative are used as a cutting (planing) edge of a tool designed for processing hard materials (bone, wood). In a number of cases, an incisal chip was used to create a handle, replacing a sheer retouch.
Ankosh- breaking the edge of the workpiece. After additional retouching, the resulting recess could be used for planing.
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Fragmentation- artificial dissection of the workpiece in order to obtain a tool of the required size and shape.
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PALEOLITH STONE TOOLS
In the archeology of the Stone Age, the synonym for the words “product”, “tool”, is the term artifact. An artifact is an object made or modified by an ancient person.
Think.
1. Is a pebble chipped and discarded by a person an artifact?
2. On what basis is the classification of living organisms in biology based? Can this experience be used in archeology?
The problem of systematization of artifacts faced archaeologists from the very beginning. The difficulty lay in the need to classify the products of human hands - infinitely diverse in forms. The different criteria that were taken as the basis gave most of the classifications an extremely subjective character and did not allow them to be used on materials from other regions, epochs and monuments.
The modern general classification divides stone artifacts into large groups: cores, chips, tools... Each group has internal subdivisions - categories.
The most difficult to classify tools. So, if scrapers, side-scrapers, incisors, etc. are distinguished mainly by functional criterion, then pointed-points are distinguished exclusively by shape (according to morphology). The situation is further complicated by the presence of combined tools - combining different functions (piercing-scraper, knife-scraper), as well as redesigned products - changing their function during operation (core-chisel tool). A significant part of the artifacts was found in fragments, in blanks, which do not always allow them to be correctly interpreted.
Tools made from whole nodules
choppers
Probably the very first tools of Homo habilis and Homo erectus. Survive almost the entire Stone Age. They are large tools on pebbles, chipped on one side (Fig. 20). The working edge is formed at the intersection of pebbly and upholstered surfaces. The functional use is very wide: one can distinguish cutting forms (actually choppers) and scraping, scraping forms (choppers-plows) (Fig. 21).
Choppings
Like choppers, they arose in the Olduvai era, but are practically not found later than the Paleolithic. They are large tools on pebbles, chipped on both sides (Fig. 20). The working edge is formed at the intersection of both upholstered surfaces. Could be used in a chopping function.
For choppers and choppings, the terms are used: face(front side), rear face(backside), working edge,heel(butt). In chopping, as a rule, the rear face does not stand out.
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Fenders
As a rule, they are whole or split elongated oval or rounded pebbles with traces of clogging localized in separate areas (Fig. 21). In the future, broken, used products, cores, choppers could be used as chippers (as well as pushers).
Hand chopped.
Most characteristic of the ash. They have a bilaterally upholstered (biface) oval or almond-shaped shape with a pointed working edge and a blunt heel (Fig. 22). The length of the tool reached 12-15 cm. For the manufacture of the first axes in the early Acheulean, about 30 chips were required, for later ones - about 60. At the end of the Acheulean and the beginning of the Mousterian, there are axes la micoque up to 5-6 cm long.
As an instrument of an ancient man, it was first recognized by B. de Pert in the 30s. 19th century during excavations on the Somme in France. The term "hand ax" was proposed by G. de Mortillet, suggesting its use as an ax-shaped tool held in the hand. Now it is interpreted as a universal tool, designed to perform various functions: cutting wood and bones, ripping up the skin, cutting meat and, possibly, digging up plants.
Tools on the rocks
Skrebla
The most common tool in the Paleolithic. In Europe, they are found mainly in the Mousterian monuments, in Siberia - in the Mousterian and Late Paleolithic. The diagnostic feature of the scraper is a longitudinal straight or convex working edge, treated with a steep or sharpening retouch (Fig. 23). Designed primarily for processing skins.
Differ:
1. for harvesting– on blades, on flakes5;
2. by the number of working edges- single, double;
3. the location of the working edge relative to the axis of the workpiece- longitudinal, transverse, diagonal;
4. the shape of the working edge- convex, concave, straight ...;
5. the location of the edge on a specific face- ventral, dorsal.
scrapers
Most common in the Late Paleolithic sites. They were made mainly on flakes and plates of medium size. A diagnostic sign is a convex working edge, treated with a steep or sharpening retouch (Fig. 24). The forms of scrapers are very diverse. More common end scrapers with a working edge located at the distal end of the workpiece (blade or flake) and round scrapers with a working edge covering more than half of the perimeter of the workpiece (flake). The main difference from scrapers is the smaller size and the predominant location of the working edge across the axis of the product. The functional use is wider: cleaning narrow areas of the skin, cutting the skin.
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Scrapers differ in the workpiece, the number of working edges, the location of the working edge relative to the axis of the workpiece, the shape of the working edge, the location of the edge on a certain face, the design of the butt.
pointers
They probably appeared in the late Acheulean and existed throughout the Paleolithic, evolving from wide massive to elongated forms. The term “pointed” has no functional meaning. The points could both be used in different functions (knife, scraper, dagger, piercing), or combine several functions at the same time (dagger-knife). As a rule, they are a large tool on a blade with two convergent edges, decorated with retouching and forming a sharp end (Fig. 25).
They differ in the shape of the working edge, in the location of the working edge on the face, in the angle of convergence of the edges, in the design of the butt.
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incisors
Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic tool. It is characterized by the presence of a sharp cutting edge formed by incisal chips (Fig. 26). Usually, lateral, angular, median, transversal incisors are distinguished6.
Side the cutter is formed by a longitudinal cleavage applied from a fracture of the plate or a previously prepared shock platform.
Angular the cutter is formed by two directions of chips: along the edge of the workpiece and along its fracture.
Median the cutter, as a rule, is the result of the movement of the edge of the corner cutter as a result of a series of adjustments to the middle position - along the line of the axis of the workpiece.
transversal the cutter is formed by a diagonal chip directed from one edge of the workpiece to the other.
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Combinations of incisors are widespread: double angular, double lateral, angular-lateral, angular-median, etc. The characteristics of the combined forms of incisors are supplemented by the terms: adjacent, opposite, alternative.
The incisors are designed for processing (cutting, planing) bones, horns, tusks (Fig. 27).
Punches, checks, drills
Could be made on any blanks of any size and shape. A common feature of these tools is the presence of a ledge ( sorry) and to varying degrees of pronounced notches ( shoulders)(Fig. 28). Some tools have two or three stingers. Functional differences can be identified only in some cases by the nature of the coherence of the stinger and shoulders.
piercings designed for piercing soft material (skins). With prolonged use, the piercing stinger acquires a soft polishing, smoothing out the retouching.
Checks designed primarily for drilling holes in bone and tusk, for widening narrow holes in hides. As a result of work in the hanger area, some chipping (utilization retouching) or grinding is observed.
Drill designed for drilling hard materials (bone, tusk, some types of stone), which led to complete chipping of the stinger.
Chisel guns
Chisel-shaped tools could be prefabricated by giving a blank (usually a massive flake) a quadrangular shape by double-sided processing.
A suitable chip, spent core, or damaged tool could also be used as a chisel-shaped tool. The technology of using chisel-shaped tools consisted in placing the tool at the site of the alleged cut of the bone and applying a strong blow to it with a chipper. In the areas where the tool came into contact with both the chipper and the bone, the edge was chipped. Thus, in the process of repeated use of the chisel-shaped tool, two opposite edges were formed: one had crumples from the impact of a stone chipper, the other acquired a characteristic grooved shape. With a regular change in the position of the gun, these differences between the edges were erased. The diagnostic features of a chisel tool are the presence of a pair (often two pairs) of opposite working edges and their grooved shape (Fig. 29).
Designed for dismemberment of bones, mammoth tusk.
Widely used as tools in the Paleolithic flakes and retouched plates. One can speak about their functional purpose by such indirect signs as the steepness of the retouch and the shape of the working edge. Flakes and blades were often used without additional processing.
Think
1. What natural raw materials could really have been at the disposal of an ancient person in the Olduvai era? What raw material could a person master in the first place?
2. How could a person use different animal bones without special treatment?
Disposal of bone remains
The ability of a person to dismember animal carcasses by joints did not come immediately. The man broke, broke the carcass, getting fragments of bones of various shapes. Further, the fragments were obtained by splitting and crushing the bone to obtain bone marrow. What were the possibilities of a person to use bones without additional processing? Based on the materials of Paleolithic sites, it can be argued that chipped bones with sharp edges and ends could be used as knives, scrapers and piercers; fragments of ribs and articular bones (phalanges of fingers) - smoothers and polishers; skulls - lamps and cups for mineral paint; pieces of horn and flat large teeth (horses) - chippers and pushers; fragments of shoulder blades and pelvic bones - linings, cutting boards.
The first real bone tools appear in the Mousterian era, but the heyday of the bone industry comes in the late Paleolithic. So the Madeleine era in France gave the most striking examples of bone products of the world Paleolithic.
Think.
1. What methods of stone processing could a person use when processing bones, horns and tusks? What other possibilities does bone raw material provide?
2. How to change the general scheme of splitting (Fig. 9) when replacing stone raw materials with bone raw materials?
Processing Features
Bones, horns and tusks
tubular bone can be processed (cutting, sawing, scraping) when heated. In our time, the bone is hovering in a Russian stove for 5-10 hours.
deer horn does not prick, but is sawn and cut in its raw form. Probably, the horn was soaked for a long time, and then water was added under the cutter.
When splitting tusk stone processing techniques were used. Initially, the tusk was broken out of the alveoli, where its quality was worse, then chopped into "chocks". Two methods are known: the tusk was cut in one place by 1/3 of its thickness (at the Malta site) or it was hemmed round by 1/4 (at the site of Afontova Gora II), and then it was broken.
At the next stage, the plates were chipped. According to the materials of Malta and Ust-Kova, two methods can be distinguished.
1. Due to the ring structure of the tusk, the plates could be obtained by cutting two parallel grooves and chipping with a wedge (chisel tool).
2. The chipping of lamellar chips and flakes was carried out from the “core”. If the "nucleus" was located on a hard anvil, a conchoidal fracture was formed. In a number of cases, counter-removals could be made from two opposite "sites".
Chips from the tusk were subjected to steaming or soaking. According to M.M. Gerasimov, pieces of the tusk were wrapped in a wet skin and buried next to the fire.
Think.
1. At the Listvenka site near the city of Divnogorsk, a hole was found with traces of wooden pegs once stuck around the circumference. Numerous small fragments of a tusk with traces of cutting and scraping were located nearby. What could this mean?
2. At the Sungir site near the city of Voronezh, a burial of two teenagers with spears made from whole mammoth tusks was excavated. What was the technology of their manufacture?
Think.
1. The idea of the utilitarian purpose of the "wands" was based on two observations: a roughly hewn end of the rod and damage in the hole area. What could these features be associated with?
2. How to explain the desire of a person to distinguish "rods" from a number of other tools, decorating them with engraving, relief and sculptural images?
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As a rule, wands were made of horn, but there are isolated cases when mammoth tusk was chosen as a raw material (sites of Kostenki on the Don, Listvenka on the Yenisei).
Needles
Needles(Fig. 31) appeared at the beginning of the Late Paleolithic (known in the Aurignacian sites). Their main function was to pull a thread into a hole prepared with a stone piercer or a bone awl. The first needles had a circular thread instead of an eyelet, which made it possible to fasten the thread. As a rule, the most ancient ears were round in shape, the later ones were oval. By the end of the Paleolithic, a channel for threading appears.
The needles were made from a piece of bone or tusk. The manufacturing process included upholstering the rod, planing with a flake or a plate with a notch, biconical drilling with a check, and grinding (Fig. 32).
A variety of tools were made from bone, horn and tusk: awls, pointed points, shoulder blades, burnishers, ironers, wringers, chippers, handles and many others. A large number of original forms are known that are not amenable to functional interpretation.
Rice. 31
Rice. 32
Clothing details and decorations
Man widely used teeth (incisors and fangs), bones of birds, fish and small predators as pendants and piercings, without subjecting them to special processing and limiting himself to drilling holes in the root of a tooth or grinding a broken place.
The most common decoration in the late Paleolithic was mammoth tusk beads.
The technology for making beads (based on materials from the Ust-Kova site) included several stages (Fig. 33):
Punching a rectangular plate
Marking with a cutter into squares,
Drilling a hole in the center of each square,
Breakdown along the marking lines,
Cutting corners and rounding blanks,
Surface grinding.
2.
3.
Bone engraving
In the late Paleolithic, engraving with a chisel on the surface of a bone (tusk) was widespread. These could be cut lines that form a certain composition, patterns of drilled depressions twisted in spirals (in Siberia: a plate from the burial of children in Malta, a phallic rod from the Achinsk site). The classic monument containing the most striking examples of ornamental art is the Mezinskaya site (Ukraine) (Fig. 35).
In Western and Central Europe, engraved images of animals are known - mammoths, bison, deer, horses, made in a line drawing manner.
In Siberia, the image of a mammoth on a diadem from the Malta site (Fig. 36)10 is the most striking and reliable.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Bray.W., Trump D. Archaeological Dictionary - M., 1996.
2. Vasilevsky R.S., Drozdov N.I. Paleolithic sculptural images from Eastern Siberia // Plastics and drawings of ancient cultures - Novosibirsk, Nauka, 1983. P.59-65.
3. Volkov P.V., Girya E.Yu. Experience in the study of cleavage technique // Problems of technology of ancient industries - Novosibirsk, 1990. - P.38-56.
4. Gerasimov M.M. Excavations of a Paleolithic site in the village of Malta // Paleolith of the USSR. - Izvestiya GAIMK, vol. 118. - M.-L. - 1935. - S.78-124
5. Gerasimov M.M. Bone processing at the Paleolithic site of Malta // MIA, 1941, N2. - P.65-85.
6. Girya E.Yu.
7. Derevyanko A.P., Markin S.V., Vasiliev S.A. Paleolithic Studies: Introduction and Fundamentals. - Novosibirsk, 1994.
8. Elenek Ya. Large illustrated atlas of primitive man. Prague. 1980.
9. Lambert D. Prehistoric man. M., 1991.
10. Lyubin V.P. Acheulian epoch in the Caucasus - St.Petersburg, 1998.
11. Matyushin G.N. Archaeological dictionary - M., 1996.
12. Description and analysis of archaeological sources - Irkutsk, 1981.
13. Paleolithic of the Yenisei - L., 1991.
14. Paleolithic of the USSR - M., 1984.
15. Problems of terminology and analysis of archaeological sources - Irkutsk, 1975.
16. Semenov S.A. The development of technology in the Stone Age. L., 1968.
17. Semenov S.A. Technique of bone processing in the Paleolithic // Proceedings of KICHP, Issue 13, M., 1957.
18. Semenov S.A., Korobkova G.F. Technology of the most ancient productions - L., 1983.
1 A very small chip (1-2 mm in diameter) is called a flake.
2 In practice, flakes and chips are sometimes distinguished, meaning massive flakes, fragments, fragments of stone by chips.
3 A microplate is considered to be a plate no longer than 4 cm.
4 The axis of the product is considered to be a straight line connecting the proximal and distal ends.
5 Can also be made on flat pebbles, massive fragments. Other options are possible.
6 There are many more options in real life.
7 In archeology, “bone tools” means tools made from tubular bones, reindeer and red deer antlers, and mammoth tusks.
8 Later versions: magic tablets, signs of hunting prey, fasteners, spear throwers, sling handles, trigger for hunting traps, tent pegs, a device for controlling horses ...
9 In the first publication, the figurine is interpreted as an image of a sitting bird.
10 The image of a mammoth from the Berelekh site in Yakutia has no exact dating. Reports of other finds of engraved drawings are not always substantiated.
Akimova E.V.
STONE AND BONE PROCESSING TECHNIQUE IN THE PALEOLITH
Textbook for 1st year students
Faculty of History
Krasnoyarsk 2004
INTRODUCTION
What qualities must a stone meet in order to be used by a person? The main qualities are hardness, the ability to give a reliable sharp edge when splitting, isotropy (single structure, constancy of physical properties in all directions). Man preferred to use sedimentary rocks: flint, jasper, siliceous schists, lydites, siliceous sandstones, silicified wood, quartzite, chalcedony, hornfelses ... Obsidian, andesite were widely used in areas of outcrops of volcanic rocks, less often trachyte, felsite, diabase, porphyry. But the most widely used stone with the necessary properties is flint.
Stone in nature is found in the form of individual pieces of various shapes and sizes, which, together with the properties of the stone breed, has always been reflected in the specifics of its processing, thereby affecting the final result.
building materials and natural stone products Today they are produced in almost all countries of the world. And there are more than a dozen technologies for its processing - and there are hundreds of types of stone-working equipment and tools. However, this was not always the case - and the first masons of antiquity faced tasks, the solution of which still amazes contemporaries to this day. It is now - in the age of lasers, high-temperature gas jets, plasma, ultrasound and CNC machines - grinding, polishing, sawing and textured processing of hard rocks seem to be commonplace. While some 200 years ago, even, and not an ordinary chipped one, was a rarity. And large-sized granite on the machine for an hour, in ancient times it was made for a week. And the way to modern technologies was very long.
Ancient world
Despite the seemingly complete lack of opportunities contemporary work with stone, the ancient masters managed to lay the foundations for most technologies that still exist today. It was much more than the usual chipping of edges and primitive grinding. Already 7-8 thousand years ago, using sharpened stone drills, saws and eccentric mechanisms, our ancestors made hollow stone dishes, carved seals, amulets and tools with a shaped surface. Patterned stone carving and the manufacture of the first large-sized slabs for the construction of palaces, and in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Central America, also pyramids, spread massively. Diamond cutters (albeit rare) made it possible to perform miracles on the stone.
The apogee in the skill of processing and large-scale use of granite, basalt and other rocks was reached in ancient Rome. On the account of its engineers and builders - a thousand-kilometer network of roads, and, and houses of such scope and quality that many of their creations are still in use today.
Middle Ages
Blooms in Europe from the 7th-8th centuries manufacture of stone products for monasteries and knight's castles - due to the expansion of the geography of the extraction of raw materials and the increase in population. Stone processing begins to be applied using water, abrasive and mechanical saws.
From the 10th to the 15th century, the production of building materials was added to piece products, which led to the emergence of workshops (prototypes of future stone processing plants). Since the 14th century, the assortment has been significantly expanded - and mosaics are added to the first paving stones and slabs. For such labor-intensive and large-scale work, appropriate tools were also needed, which were wire-based wire saws, which first appeared in the Czech Republic. Soon, grinding mills in Spain, Holland and Germany were added to them - the drive for which was the transmission system of driving moment from the wheels rotated by water falling on their blades (subsequently used everywhere - up to the first paddle steamers).
Late 18th - early 20th century
Then came the turn of the industrial revolution - and mechanical, steam, hydraulic, and then electric machines led to the emergence and development of all currently existing areas of stone processing. In essence, they were distinguished from the capabilities of today's technologies only by their lower speed and not so high accuracy - despite the fact that the latter in the manufacture of crushed stone, paving stones, slabs, rubble, as well as products such as countertops, window sills and steps, in fact, does not play such a decisive role. roles.
20th - 21st century
And, finally, the last 100 years have brought ultrasonic, plasma, gas, laser and waterjet cutting and engraving of stone, which are familiar today - a thousandfold increase in speed, but not the complexity of processing, subject to cutters in the golden hands of former masters.
About eight thousand years ago, people mastered the technique of sawing, drilling and grinding. These discoveries were so important that they caused a real revolution in the development of society, called the Neolithic revolution. A person learned to saw when he noticed that a serrated knife cuts better than a smooth one. As you know, the action of the saw is based on the fact that its cutters, or teeth, when the strip moves, consistently penetrate the material and remove a layer of a certain depth in it. It turns out like a system of knives. The oldest extant
Our primitive saw was entirely made of flint. Working on it required great physical effort, but it made it possible to successfully cope with sawing wood and bone.
Sawing stone took even more time and effort. It developed gradually, but only in the Neolithic era this technique became widespread. The saw was usually a toothed flint blade, under which quartz sand moistened with water was sprinkled. Sawing was rarely through. Usually the master made only a deep inscription, and then with a calculated blow of a wooden mallet he broke the stone into two parts. Thanks to sawing, the correct geometric shapes of products are available to people, which was very important in the manufacture of tools.
Simultaneously with sawing, the technique developed drilling stone. This technique was very important in the manufacture of composite instruments. As in the case of sawing, the ancient masters first mastered the drilling of soft materials. AT ancient times when a person needed to make a hole in a tree or bone, he resorted to knocking out. Rotating a stone punch in a hole, the ancient master discovered that drilling required much less effort. Drilling also had the important advantage that it made it possible to make a hole in hard and brittle materials. The first drill, apparently, was an ordinary stick, to the end of which a stone point was attached. The master simply rolled it between the palms. A significant shift in drilling occurred after the bow method was invented in the Neolithic era, in which the rotation of the drill was achieved by turning the bow. With one hand, the master shook the bow, and with the other he pressed the drill from above. Then the stone drill began to be replaced with a hollow animal bone of large diameter. Inside it, quartz sand was poured, which played the role of an abrasive. It was a fundamental and very important improvement that greatly expanded the possibilities of drilling. In the course of work, sand gradually spilled out of the drill cavity under the edges of the crown and slowly abraded the drilled stone. Since the success of drilling largely depended on the force of pressure, later artificial weighting agents began to be used.
When sawing and drilling was supplemented grinding , ancient man fully mastered the entire technology of stone processing . From now on, nothing was impossible for him - he could give the product any desired shape, and at the same time, the edges of the stone always remained smooth and even.
Stone processing technology includes the following stages: primary processing of raw materials and production of blanks, production finished products, their texture processing and mounting.
The primary processing of raw materials consists in sorting the stone in such a way as to obtain the corresponding blanks with the least amount of time.
The most time-consuming process in the production of art products and stone souvenirs is hand carving. The stone carving process includes two stages: preparatory and final. Preparatory operations - markup. peeling and filing of workpieces - usually performed in a mechanized way. The final operation is to give a given model of products a certain artistic form. The craftsman reproduces a model or drawing of an item using chisels of various shapes and sizes, archery and bastard saws, rasps, files and a hand drill.
This is followed by textured surface treatment of products: grinding and polishing. In the process of grinding, the surface of the product is cleaned of strokes and small irregularities. When polished, the surface is given a mirror finish. As a result of these operations, the natural pattern and coloring of the stone are better revealed. Grinding and polishing is carried out on a grinding wheel covered with calico cloth. When polishing plastic products, wooden discs are sometimes used, the working part of which is covered with sheepskin. To speed up the polishing process, the surface of the products is moistened with soapy water. Horsetail or washed quartz sand is used for polishing art products and souvenirs, and fluff lime, powdered chalk or aluminum oxide is used for polishing. In hard-to-reach places, grinding and polishing is carried out manually. Finish the textured processing of products by coating their surface with a protective film of paraffin. Products are wiped with paraffin heated to 50 - 60 ° C. As a result of waxing, the gloss of the surface of stone-cutting products increases. and the natural pattern and color of the stone are more clearly revealed. In addition, paraffin protects products from contamination and moisture penetration into the pores.
The essential difference between stone grinding and other processing methods was that it was possible to remove the material in very small and even layers, and simultaneously from the entire surface of the workpiece. Thanks to this, it became possible to create tools of regular geometric shapes with a smooth surface. Grinding made it possible to process material of any shape, structure and hardness.
The Art of Polishing reached such a height that in some places the production of stone mirrors, quite suitable for use, was practiced (in Hawaii, such mirrors were made from basalt, in pre-Columbian Mexico - from obsidian).
Grinding and polishing were the last links in a long chain of stone processing history. New processing techniques allowed a person to master harder types of stone: jade, jadeite, jasper, basalt, diorite, etc. These materials were more suitable for making tools that used impact force (such as axes) than brittle flint. In addition, the flint was completely unsuitable for drilling and was difficult to polish.
Main:
1. Smolitsky V. G. Folk art crafts of the RSFSR. - M .: Higher School, 1982.
2. Folk art crafts. Under total ed. Popovoy O. S. - M .: Light and food industry, 1984.
3. Bardina R. A. Folk art crafts and souvenirs. - M .: Higher School, 1990.
4. Popova V. F. Kaplan N. I. Russian art crafts. - M., 1984.
5. Baradulin V.A. Koromyslov B. I. Maksimov Yu. V. and others; Ed. Baradulina V. A. Fundamentals of artistic craft. Painting on varnishes. Carving and painting on wood. Artistic processing of bone, horn and metal. Ceramic toy. - M .: Education, 1979. - 320s., 16 sheets. ill.
6. Semenova M. We are Slavs!: Popular Encyclopedia. - St. Petersburg: Publishing House
7. Fedotov G. Ya. Encyclopedia of crafts - M .: Eksmo Publishing House, 2003. - 608 .: ill.
8. Folk art crafts of Russia. Compiler of the album Utkin. P. I. - M .: Publishing house "Soviet Russia", 1984. - 230 p., ill.
- Fersman A.E. From the history of stone culture in Russia - L.: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1946.
- Baldina O.D., Kaplan N.I., Skavronskaya Z.S., Utkin P.I. Artistic crafts
RSFSR - M .: "Higher School" - 1986.
11. Big illustrated encyclopedia of antiquities. Translation into Russian by B. B. Mikhailov. – Prague: Artia Publishing House, 1980.
Additional:
1. 1. Rafaenko V. Ya. Folk art crafts. – M.: Knowledge, 1988.
2. Milovsky A. S. Folk crafts. Meeting with original masters. - M., 1994.
3. Nikonenko N. M. Decorative and applied art. Artistic decoration of the interior. A practical guide for adults and children (Series "School of Joy") - Rostov / D .: Phoenix, 2003. - 128 p .: ill.
Questions for self-control
As economic activity became more complex, man began to feel the need for more advanced tools with carefully finished blades. Their manufacture required new techniques in stone processing. About eight thousand years ago, people mastered the technique of sawing, drilling and grinding. These discoveries were so important that they caused a real revolution in the development of society, called the Neolithic revolution.
A person learned to saw when he noticed that a serrated knife cuts better than a smooth one. As you know, the action of the saw is based on the fact that its cutters, or teeth, when the strip moves, consistently penetrate the material and remove a layer of a certain depth in it. It turns out like a system of knives. The oldest primitive saw that has come down to us was entirely made of flint. Working on it required great physical effort, but it made it possible to successfully cope with sawing wood and bone.
At the end of the Mesolithic, in a number of places in the Middle East, the process of establishing a manufacturing economy (agriculture and cattle breeding) began. In other areas, the transition from an appropriating economy to a productive one, from hunting to agriculture and cattle breeding began to take place during the Neolithic, Eneolithic and Bronze Ages.
The Neolithic, the New Stone Age, got its name because of the widespread introduction of new methods of processing large stone tools - grinding, drilling and sawing. These techniques allowed a person to move on to the processing of new, harder types of stone: jade, jadeite, jasper, basalt, diorite, etc., which began to serve as the raw material for creating large-stone axes, adzes, chisels, pickles, hoes.
The blank for the future tool was made either in the old way - by chipping, or using a new method - sawing. The necessary geometric shape of the workpiece was created, which was then polished. Dry and wet grinding of stone tools was used. According to S. A. Semenov, it took 2.5-3 hours to make a polished ax from hard rocks of slate, 10-15 hours to make it from jade when grinding the working edge, and 20-25 hours to polish the entire ax.
Adze (A) and chisel (B) from polished stone of the Neolithic period (IV millennium BC)
The first polished tools appeared in the Mesolithic, but it was in the Neolithic that they became widespread. Polished guns were even more effective.
If the flint plates of lined tools were connected to the handle with the help of bitumen, it was impossible to fasten large-stone tools with a wooden or bone handle in this way. I had to find new way- drilling holes. Even during the Upper Paleolithic, beads and pendants made of stone with holes appeared. Holes of a larger diameter in stone objects began to be punched, but at the same time, holes of a biconical shape were obtained, inconvenient for mounting a stone tool on a wooden handle. Cylindrical holes were required for a tight connection. The mastering of the technique of drilling cylindrical holes dates back to the Neolithic period, when tubular bones or bamboo trunks began to be used for these purposes. Quartz sand served as an abrasive. The production of rigid-compound tools began.
The use of sawing, drilling, grinding made it possible to achieve a certain shape, cleanliness of the surface of the tool. Work with polished tools reduced the resistance of the material of the workpiece, which led to an increase in labor productivity.
Reconstruction of methods for drilling stone of the Neolithic period (according to S. A. Semenov) 1 - one-handed drilling (without a handle); 2-3 - drill with handles; 4 - two-handed drilling (drill on a rod); 5 - Mbowambov drill (New Guinea)
New techniques for making an ax increased the efficiency of its use. It was difficult to work on wood with Upper Paleolithic axes, made by double-sided upholstering of stone nodule, fastened with a wooden handle with straps, it was difficult to work on wood, since the blow of such an ax did not chop the tree, but macerated it. With polished stone axes, rigidly fastened to a wooden handle by means of drilled cylindrical holes, they began to chop wood, hollow out boats, and build dwellings. Polished axes were of great economic importance among the tribes that occupied the forest regions: without such a tool in these regions, the transition to agriculture would have been impossible.
ancient builders
Sawing stone took even more time and effort. It developed gradually, but only in the Neolithic era this technique became widespread. The saw was usually a toothed flint blade, under which quartz sand moistened with water was sprinkled. Sawing was rarely through. Usually the master made only a deep inscription, and then with a calculated blow of a wooden mallet he broke the stone into two parts. Thanks to sawing, the correct geometric shapes of products became available to people, which was very important in the manufacture of tools.
Simultaneously with sawing, the technique of drilling stone developed. This technique was very important in the manufacture of composite instruments. People have long noticed that the most comfortable and durable axes are obtained when the handle is tightly hammered into the hole of the ax itself, and not tied to it. But how to make the right hole in solid stone? The answer to this important question has been hidden from man for many millennia. As in the case of sawing, the ancient masters first mastered the drilling of soft materials.
Primitive Flint Saw
In ancient times, when a person needed to make a hole in a tree or bone, he resorted to knocking out. At least, this was the way some primitive peoples made holes until recently. It is possible that during this operation, rotating a stone punch in the hole, the ancient master discovered that drilling requires much less effort. Drilling also had the important advantage that it made it possible to make a hole in hard and brittle materials. The first drill, apparently, was an ordinary stick, to the end of which a stone point was attached. The master simply rolled it between the palms.
A significant shift in drilling occurred after the bow method was invented in the Neolithic era, in which the rotation of the drill was achieved by turning the bow. With one hand, the master shook the bow, and with the other he pressed the drill from above. Then the stone drill began to be replaced with a hollow animal bone of large diameter. Inside it, quartz sand was poured, which played the role of an abrasive. It was a fundamental and very important improvement that greatly expanded the possibilities of drilling. In the course of work, sand gradually spilled out of the drill cavity under the edges of the crown and slowly abraded the drilled stone. Since the success of drilling largely depended on the force of pressure, later artificial weighting agents began to be used.
When sawing and drilling were supplemented with grinding, the ancient man completely mastered the entire technology of stone processing. From now on, nothing was impossible for him - he could give the product any desired shape, and at the same time, the edges always remained smooth and even. The essential difference between stone grinding and other processing methods was that it was possible to remove the material in very small and even layers, and simultaneously from the entire surface of the workpiece. Thanks to this, it became possible to create tools of regular geometric shapes with a smooth surface. Grinding made it possible to process material of any shape, structure and hardness.
Stone drilling device with beam drive and weight
In the early stages, the workpiece, apparently, was simply polished on a rough stone. Then, quartz sand was poured between the workpiece and the grinding stone. This significantly speeded up the processing. Finally, the process of wet grinding was mastered, when the grinding plate was plentifully and often poured with water. Thus, the grinding time of even a very hard workpiece was reduced to several hours (for example, according to Semenov's observations, it took up to 25 hours of continuous work to make a polished ax from jade). For final finishing and polishing, ancient craftsmen in some places used very fine pumice powder, which was applied with a piece of leather.
Grinding and pointing stone tools
The art of polishing reached such a height that in some places the production of stone mirrors, quite suitable for use, was practiced (in Hawaii such mirrors were made from basalt, in pre-Columbian Mexico - from obsidian). Grinding and polishing were the last links in a long chain of stone processing history.
Cutting stone with a scraper cutter
New processing techniques allowed a person to master harder types of stone: jade, jadeite, jasper, basalt, diorite, etc. These materials were more suitable for making tools that used impact force (such as axes) than brittle flint. In addition, flint was completely unsuitable for drilling and was difficult to grind.
Bone, plant tissues, wood and some types of stone have been the main raw materials for human technology for most of its existence. Metallurgy is a relatively recent invention, and stone tools have been the basis for classifying many prehistoric cultures since the dawn of scientific archaeology. The raw material itself set rigid limits to human technological achievement for most of history, and the evolution of stone processing has been infinitely slow, spanning millions of years. Nevertheless, in the end, in the manufacture of tools, people took advantage of almost all the opportunities that were given to them by suitable stones for processing (Odell - Odell, 1996).
stone processing
The manufacture of stone tools is reductive(or subtractive) technology, because processing requires a stone, which is given the desired shape by chipping. Obviously, the more complex the artifact, the more splitting is required (Swanson, 1975). At its core, the tool manufacturing process is linear. A stonemason prepares a piece of stone from raw materials ( nucleus), and then carries out the initial processing, making several flakes. Further, these flakes are processed and sharpened, depending on which artifact is required. In the future, after use, these tools can be sharpened again or recycled for new use.
Production principles. by the most in a simple way obtaining a stone that can be cut or chopped, and such a tool was undoubtedly the main one among others produced by prehistoric people, was this: a piece was beaten off from the stone and the resulting sharp edge was used. But in order to get a more specialized tool or one that could be used for different purposes, a more complex chipping technology was required. First of all, an uneven or even piece of stone can be given desired shape, systematically chipping off pieces from it with the help of another stone. Flakes from the core are waste, and the core becomes the final product. The flakes themselves can also be used as sharp-edged knives or can be processed into other artifacts. Many complex stone industries have developed from this simple process. The oldest tools were so simple that they practically did not differ from naturally destroyed stones (Crabtree - D. Crabtree, 1972).
DISCOVERIES
ZINJANTHROPUS BOISEI IN OLDUVAY GORGE, TANZANIA, EAST AFRICA, 1959It was a hot day in 1959. Olduvai Gorge in East Africa. Lewis Leakey lay in his tent suffering from the flu. At this time, Mary Leakey, covered with a sun umbrella, dug up a small scattering of broken animal bones and rough stone artifacts deep in the gorge. She spent hours clearing them of dry soil. Suddenly, she came across a part of the upper jaw with teeth so similar to human ones that she began to examine the find more closely. A moment later, she threw herself into her Land Rover and sped to the camp along a bumpy road. Lewis, Lewis! she screamed, bursting into the tent. “I finally found Dear Boy!”
Forgetting about his flu, Lewis jumped to his feet, and together they began to dig up the fragmentary remains of a remarkably strong hominid skull. The Leeks named it Zinjanthropus boisei ("Boise's African Man" - Mr. Boise was one of the benefactors of their expedition) and is now called Australopithecus boisei.
Zinjanthropus was the first of a series of human fossils found by Mary and Lewis Leakey in Olduvai Gorge in later years. At the same time they discovered a man of a much more delicate build, whom they called Homo habilis, "handy man," because they were convinced that he was the first tool maker.
Leakey worked on meager means until the discovery of Zinjanthropus gave them access to the collections of the National Geographic Society. Since then, their remarkable discovery and subsequent search for our oldest ancestors has become an international enterprise that reveals a much more diverse picture of human ancient ancestors than anyone could have imagined in 1959.
Stone Age people chose flint, obsidian and other homogeneous rocks as raw materials for their artifacts. All of these rocks break in predictable ways, like glass. The result can be compared to a hole in the window glass from a shot from an air gun. A sharp blow directed vertically to the surface of the stone knocks out a flake with the apex at the point of impact. With this method, one obtains conchoidal (conchoidal) fault(Fig. 11.1). When a stone is struck at an angle and the fracture becomes conchoidal, a flake is separated. The surface of the flake, along which the split has passed, has a characteristic shape with a tubercle protruding from the surface of the stone. It is called percussion tubercle. The core from which the flake was separated also has a corresponding cavity, or scar. The percussion tubercle is easy to recognize not only by the bulge itself, but also, as shown in Fig. 11.2, in concentric circles, which, expanding, diverge from the center - the point of impact.
Such man-made kinks are very different from kinks caused by natural causes, such as frost, heat, exposure to water, impacts of stones falling from mountains. Sometimes, in such cases, stones are destroyed in a similar way, but then most of the scars of the flake are irregular, and instead of concentric rings and an impact tubercle, a depression with concentric rings around it remains on the surface.
Distinguishing man-made from naturally fractured stones requires a great deal of experience, especially when dealing with very ancient artifacts. Our ancient ancestors used the most simple methods striking, separating two or three pointed flakes from pieces of lava (Fig. 11.3). Several conflicting cases are known with artifacts found in the layers of the early ice age in Europe and Africa, which are simultaneous with periods when hominids have already settled everywhere. Under such circumstances, the only reliable way to be sure that these tools were carved by a man is to find them in a complex with petrified human remains and broken animal bones, preferably on a residential monument.
Methods. On fig. Figures 11.4–11.6 show some of the main stone chipping methods used by prehistoric people. The simplest and oldest method is direct splitting with a chipping stone (Fig. 11.4). Millennia later, man began to make double-sided tools, such as the Acheulean hand ax (the name comes from the city of Saint-Acheul in northern France, where they were first found). Over time, stone processors began to use bone, "soft" horns, or wooden hammers to work the cutting surfaces of hand axes. 150,000 years ago, a hand ax had a symmetrical shape, sharp, hard cutting surfaces, and a fine finish. As people became more skilled and more "specialized", like the hunter-gatherers of 100,000 years ago, they began to develop technologies for the production of stone artifacts for a narrow purpose. They gave the cores a special shape in order to obtain one or two flakes of a standard size and shape (Fig. 11.5).
About 35,000 years ago, stone processors began to use a new technology based on the preparation of cylindrical cores, from which, using indirect impacts with a chipper, long plates with parallel sides were split off (Fig. 11.6). These blanks correct form then processed into knives, scrapers and other specialized artifacts (Fig. 11.7). This technology for manufacturing plates was a great success and spread throughout the world. It has proven to be effective. Experiments showed that of the raw core, 6% remained in the depleted core, and 91% was used to make 83 usable sheets (Sheets and Matow - Sheets and Muto, 1972). After separating the plates from the core, they were shaped using a variety of methods. In some cases, the side of the plate was retouched by pressing, sharpening or blunting with the help of a deer antler or a piece of wood. Sometimes the flake was retouched by pressing it with another stone, bone or wood, obtaining a sharp stepped surface or a chisel (Fig. 11.7a and b).
Press retouching became so advanced that it became the most common technology of the late prehistoric period, especially in the Americas (Fig. 11.7c and d). The stonemason used a small block of wood or antler, pressed it against the working side to obtain pressure in a limited area, and pressed a thin flake with parallel sides. Gradually, most of the surfaces of the gun were covered with such scars. Press retouching facilitates the production of many standard tools with extremely efficient working edges in a relatively short period of time. In Asia, Europe and many parts of Africa, so-called microliths were made from small plates - tiny arrowheads, teeth and adzes. Often they were made using a characteristic notching technique (see Fig. 10.4). A variant of this technique appeared in Arctic America and Australia, where small cores were used to make tiny micro-blades or small knives. Later plate technologies made it possible to obtain many more guns per unit weight than previous technologies. In the Late Stone Age, man ground and polished stone if a sharp and durable blade was required. He sharpened cutting edges by rough chipping and subsequent laborious grinding on harder rock such as sandstone. Modern experiments have demonstrated the high efficiency of polished stone axes when felling forest trees. At the same time, their working surface blunts more slowly than that of axes made simply by the splitting method (Townsend - W H. Townsend, 1969). Polished stone axes played an important role in many ancient agricultural communities in Europe, Asia, Central America and the temperate regions of North America. In New Guinea, they were used as early as 28,000 years ago, and in Melanesia and Polynesia they were cut down for canoes necessary for fishing and trade (White and O'Connell - J. White and O'Connell, 1982).
THE PRACTICE OF ARCHEOLOGY
PLATE MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY
LATE ICE AGE SWISS ARMY KNIFEThe bright red Swiss Army Knife is a common item in the pocket of travelers the world over. Its purpose is not limited to cutting and opening bottles, in some types of knife there are scissors, tweezers, screwdrivers, a nail file, a toothpick, a corkscrew and much more. I have eaten with this wonderful knife, pulled out thorns, spliced the ends of cables on the sea, and even stitched skins together. All this is due to the fact that the Swiss Army Knife is basically a swivel base with all sorts of tools attached to it.
Plate technology of the Late Ice Age had its Swiss knife, a concretion of fine-grained rock, carefully cut into a certain shape, from which the stone processor beat off numerous plates with parallel edges (Fig. 11.8). Carry the core with you like a penknife, and then you can make the right tool out of stone at any time. The range of Late Ice Age stone objects was wide - spear points, cutting tools, woodworking tools such as the curvilinear plow, and most importantly, the chisel, a blade with a cutting bevel at the end that opened up new possibilities for artifacts.
The chisel could process the outer hard shell of a deer antler and make fishing harpoons and spearheads from it (see Fig. 11.8). Larger fragments of the horn were turned into javelin-throwing devices that allowed them to be thrown farther, belt rules and many other artifacts for special needs. The most important thing is that thin incisors and drills made it possible to obtain the first needles with eyes, which made it possible to sew clothes, which was necessary for survival in long winters with temperatures below zero
All this technological prowess has come from a simple plate technology that, like a Swiss army knife, gives way to endless innovation and invention.
This technology of making incisors and working deer antlers persisted long after the Ice Age and remained the main tool in the hunter-gatherer communities of Europe until 7000 BC. e. By this time stone-working techniques were so sophisticated that stone-workers used much smaller cores to make small micro-blades, which were broken and then often inserted into wooden handles for use as arrow points and for other purposes.
Stone specialists still grind stone to this day, especially flint for flintlock guns. The manufacture of flintlock guns flourished in the 20th century in England and France, and they are still used for hunting in Angola, Africa.
Analysis of stone tools
Stone analysis. Stone analysis is a term used to describe the study of stone technology. Early attempts to analyze stone tools used finished tools, or "typical fossils", and were thought to represent different cultures. As more modern typological methods came into use, this "typical fossil" approach gradually lost ground. In the new methods, well-defined types of artifacts were named according to their shape, size, and intended use, such as the Acheulean hand ax and the Mousterian scraper, named after the village of Le Moustier in France (see Figure 11.7a). This approach led, like the previous concept of typical fossils, to the search for perfect, typical artifacts. Many functional labels, such as "throwing tip", are still used in modern stone tool research, but are little more than generalized descriptions of the artifact's shape. Functional analysis of this kind reached a high stage of development in Western Europe, where an unprecedented variety of Stone Age tools was discovered. As with artifacts of other forms, recent classifications concern analysis based on attributes capable of shedding light on their production technology or function.
In recent years, the focus of stone analysis has shifted dramatically from a preoccupation with finished tools to a broader interest in prehistoric stone technologies in the context of human activities. The modern study of stone technology relies on a synthesis of several approaches that focus on both the production processes of artifacts and the artifacts themselves.
Analysis of production residues. Making any stone artifact is the result of transformation sequences, that is, a series of successive steps that begin with the selection of a core from a fine-grained rock and end with a finished artifact. Reconstruction of these transformations is one of the methods by which archaeologists can understand the production process in prehistoric times.
The production of stone tools in antiquity can be reconstructed in several ways: information can be obtained by studying flake scars, impact platforms, flake and blade sizes, and even obvious and non-obvious mistakes made by ancient craftsmen. For example, hitting the wrong point on a carefully prepared core destroys it in a certain way that a person familiar with stone technology can easily recognize. Most of the stages in the production of stone tools can be recognized by examining finished artifacts, cores, and remnants of production. By closely examining the remains of production, a stone technologist can separate the primary flakes obtained during the rough hewing of the core from the finer ones, which were separated during the preparation of the impact platform on the upper or sides of the core. In addition, there is what all the pre-processing was aimed at - artifact blanks cut from the core. Finally, there are finely retouched flakes made from a blank for a point, scraper, or other tool (Sullivan and Rosen - A. Sullivan and Rozen, 1985).
Experimental work. Archaeologists have been experimenting with the production of stone tools since the 19th century. Today, in many archaeological laboratories, the sounds of blows are heard - experts are trying to make tools from stone and reproduce ancient technologies (Flenniken - Flenniken, 1984). Experimental work began with a general attempt to compare the stone tool-making methods of existing peoples, such as the Australian Aborigines, with those of prehistoric cultures. Modern experimenters are recovering prehistoric technologies through both experiments and ethnographic research (Swanson, 1975). The focus of recent research is the study of the sequence of artifact production and the study of quarry monuments. It attempts to reconstruct patterns of prehistoric trade in obsidian and other rocks that may help to locate their source (Chapter 16) (Torrence, 1986) and better understand the relationship between human activity and stone technology (Ericson and Purdy, 1984) . There is another side to experimenting with stone technologies. Obsidian flakes and their cutting edges are so sharp that they are widely used by modern ophthalmic surgeons, who say they are better than steel tools.
Petrological analyzes. Petrological analysis has been applied with great success to the rocks from which stone tools were made, especially the frosted stone axes in Europe. Petrology is the science of stone (from the Greek petros - stone). In this analysis, a thin cross-section of the ax is prepared and examined under a microscope. In this way, the minerals in the rock can be identified and compared with other monument quarries (Ericson and Purdy, 1984). British archaeologists have had great success using this approach, identifying more than twenty sources of stone for ax blades (Bradley and Edmonds, 1993). And in Southwest Asia and Central America, where there was a widespread trade in volcanic rocks from several quarries, remarkable results were obtained in the spectrographic analysis of distinct residual elements in obsidian (Torrence - Torrence, 1986) (chapter 16).
Reconstruction. Look at a man making stone tools. It turns out that he is sitting in the middle of constantly accumulating waste - fragments, flakes, unnecessary cores, chipping stones. It was the same with ancient stone processors, hundreds, if not thousands of small fragments - waste and by-products of stone production are hidden on monuments of any age. Very important information about stone technologies is obtained by carefully studying the remains of production in those places where ancient artisans worked. They try to put these leftovers together and restore the production processes step by step, and this is called reconstruction.
Reconstruction tests the patience and endurance of even the most diligent archaeologists, but can give remarkable results. At the 9,000-year-old Meer II site in northern Belgium, archaeologists Daniel Kahan and Lawrence Keely combined edge wear analysis with reconstruction to recreate a spectacular scenario. They used data on three left-handed drills to show how a right-handed master left the settlement and made several tools using plates and cores prepared and brought with him. Later, a left-handed master joined him and, from a pre-prepared nucleus, he broke off several plates, from which he made tools. These kinds of detailed reconstructions are often impossible, but they have the advantage that a modification of an artifact found in the archaeological material can be interpreted with extreme accuracy, because the reconstruction shows that no change has affected the fact found in the archaeological material.
Sometimes stone specialists trace the movement of individual fragments or cores along the horizontal of the monument, a process that requires even more patience than a simple reconstruction. Such a procedure is of great value in reconstructing the functions of individual sites in, say, a rock shelter site, where a stone-worker could make tools in one site and then move the core to an adjacent hearth and work another slab for a completely different purpose. This approach works well on the Paleo-Indian sites of Folsom in Great Plain, where such a reconstruction was carried out and where individual flakes found from their cores at a distance of 3.6 meters fit well with their cores.
Usage and wear analysis. Analysis of use and wear includes both microscopic examination of the working surfaces of the artifact and experiments with the use of stone tools in order to try to interpret the characteristic scratches and changes in the gloss of working surfaces resulting from the use of tools (Hayden - Hayden, 1979; Keeley - Keeley , 1980). Many researchers have experimented with both low magnification and high magnification, and they can now distinguish polishing wear associated with interaction with various materials- with wood, bone and leather (Philips - Phillips, 1988; Vaughan - Vaughan, 1985). Now this technique is quite reliable and allows us to state whether this tool was used for processing wood, cutting vegetables, separating meat from bones. But relatively few archaeologists are trained in the microscopes and photographic techniques needed to analyze wear. Kahen and Keely's study of stone tools from the Meer II site in Belgium showed that two people used the tools they made to drill and carve bone. In such cases, analysis of tool wear provides exciting opportunities to study the actions of individual stone cutters thousands of years ago. There are many patterns of distinctive micro-wear patterns, among them polishes, that can be identified using high power microscopes. One example is the flint sickle, which was used to harvest wild and cultivated herbs. This use often results in a sheen caused by the presence of silica in the herb stems.
Marvin Kay of the University of Arkansas uses Nomarsky's 3D optics, which can examine the surfaces of artefacts using polarized light of different colors and focus on polishes and microscopic grooves that result not only from the attachment of points, but also from blows to the animal's head. Nomarski's optics also make it possible to distinguish between such uses of the tool as butchering carcasses or working wood. Kay compares the wear and tear of prehistoric artifacts with the results of modern experiments, when bones of elephants and other animals are processed with copies of artifacts. He found, for example, that clovis points from North America had micro-scratches near the base that occur when the point absorbs a shock wave while hunting. And not only this. There are clear indications that many points, once no longer useful as such, were recycled and reused, often as knives. Kay's methodology is so perfect that he can even detect traces of smoothing on hard stones like quartz, smoothing resulting from carcass use. This research will allow archaeologists to reconstruct the histories of individual artifacts as part of large-scale analyzes of human activities at archaeological sites (Kay - Kay, 1996, 2000). An important point in the analysis of stone is not just the study of the tools themselves, but the understanding of what these tools mean in terms of human activity. New multilateral approaches to stone analysis offer a real chance that such wear analysis will provide clear methods for classifying stone tools in terms of their original function.