Fig. 48. (S. a little over 1–2.) Knives with curved blades. Materials: black flint, slate, and jasper. Dr. T. B. Stewart, Lockhaven, Pennsylvania.
Fig. 49. (S. 2–5.) Three flake knives; four ordinary ovate knives; one peculiar knife. S. D. Mitchell, Ripon, Wisconsin.
“Bryce Wright in his description of the Scandinavian knives or daggers refers to them as being most beautifully dentilled with parallel flaking and serrated edges. He says: ‘These knives or lances are true marvels of prehistoric art, and show an amount of skill and workmanship which cannot be imitated in the present age, the art of fashioning them having been entirely lost.’ Sir John Lubbock, on page 104 of ‘Prehistoric Times,’ says: ‘The crimping along the edge of the handle is very curious.’ As to parallel flakings with serrated edge, I have endeavored to show (from a mechanical standpoint) that the refuse of the great flint quarries points to a mode of working that must leave the dentilled markings parallel, and the edges worked from, serrated. What Lubbock speaks of as curious crimping on the edge of the handles is but the natural result of the mode of working. I have examined these Scandinavian dagger-handles, and find the same appearance on the blades of large-size broken piercers, numbers of which I have found among the rubbish, picked up, examined, and thrown away as imperfect specimens. Some of them have a spread, flat end or handle of over one and a half inches, with nearly square blades, evidently having been worked by down pressure from the edges corresponding to the spread end, these forty-five degrees flakes meeting form angles and produce the square. The interlocking of the flakes at their meeting causes the crimped appearance, in some cases not unlike a row of beads, very beautiful, but not made with any such view, but simply the natural result of the mode of working.
“Here also are found massive flakes or chips of fine-grained quartzite, that teach another lesson to a seeking practical mechanic, nosing about among the accumulated refuse. These flakes are often rough on one face, showing them to be an outside scale from the stone; occasionally, fragments of large flat implements that have been classed as agricultural (hoes or spades). These fragments have not been broken by want of skill in the workman, but from undiscovered seams in the stone that did not show until the outer surface was thrown off. None of these fragments shows any sign of use; in fact, some of them have not been wrought to an edge. I have several specimens of hoes from the same ridge beyond the settlement where it would naturally be cultivated, that from their highly polished working ends show long use. The lesson is that they are not made from great flakes, but rather represent the core from which flakes have been thrown off. Finished hoes and spades frequently have portions of natural stone partings that have not been worked off, and show them to have been worked from thin slabs. These slabs are a metamorphic thin bedded sandstone, belonging to what our state geologist, Professor A. H. Worthen, calls the Chester group. They occur near the Saline, about eight miles above the flaking-ground, in an upheaval that has brought them to the surface with the upturned edges of the carboniferous limestone through which the salt springs flow. This is probably the source whence this quartzite was obtained, as slabs from one inch to two inches thick are found there; but there are many other locations stretching across Southern Illinois to the Mississippi River where they also occur.
Fig. 50. (S. 1–2.) War or triangular points; straight and concave bases. Material: quartz, chert, obsidian, argillite, jasper, and porphyry. Phillips Academy collection. (See page [86].)
“It is the large agricultural implements that I refer to as having been made from quartzite slabs, some of which are as much as sixteen inches long by six inches and seven inches wide at the spadeblade end. There are many smaller specimens of the same form and character that have been regularly flaked from chert, white waxy quartz, yellow and brown jasper, that do not exceed six or seven inches in length, their working ends highly polished by long use in digging. It is the large hoes and spades flaked from quartzite slabs that to me are evidence of a much higher degree of intelligence and skill than the most highly-finished spear- and arrow-points evince. Take an edge view of one of these large spades, and observe how accurately straight and free from wind the edge has been carried entirely around the implement, the flattening of one side and rounding the other; then observe that the long, flat, very slightly depressed, flakes have been thrown off at right angles to the edge, even to those curving around its digging or cutting end, which appear to have radiated from a common centre. If these flakes have been thrown off by blows so struck and directed as to preserve the cleanly lined edges, as the operator had carried them in his mind, a skill must have been acquired that we cannot approach.
“In all the experiments that I have tried with a hammer, whether of stone, steel, soft iron, or copper, they have failed to produce the desired result; the seat of the flake is more conchoidal, shorter and deeper depressed, whereas the direct percussive pressure throws off the shape of flake that we find has been done in making these spades. If this mode has been resorted to, it necessarily required considerable ingenuity in devices for holding the stone slab firmly, while the pressure was being applied in the right direction. The wooden clamp described by Catlin may have been used. The simplest device that occurs to me that will answer the purpose is a block of wood planted in the ground, with its end grain up, cut on top into steps, the lower step having grooves parallel with the rise of the upper step; in one of these grooves the edge of the implement is placed, its back resting against the edge of the higher step as represented by the dotted lines showing the form of a spade. (See Fig. 18.) When in this position, presenting the proper angle to the operator, a man holds it firmly while another applies the pressure. A lower step and the back edge of the top are hollowed out to receive the work, while its lower end rests in an indentation in the lower step. In this manner a spade can be firmly held while its cutting end is being flaked. I do not present this as a mode that was practiced, but as a device that answers the purpose, and I judge to be within the capacity of the ancient flint-workers, of whom there is nothing left but their chips and finished work.