ABO tools.

[StevenT]

I'm a newbie and still in the process of making my tools. I keep seeing references to ABO tools. What does ABO stand for? Thanks

[n2everythg]

aboriginal tool. or how ever you spell it.

using tools the aboriginal people would have used.

Like rocks, horn, bone etc.

modern would be copper etc.

[jreb]

Aboriginal - the way the natives did it making tools and points with  moose / deer billits , hammer stones , deer tine pressure flaker's etc.

[sailordad]

now i would have to think at some point in ancient time
man found a natural out cropping of copper and fond that it was good for knapping
so i would think copper could be considered ABO too

[Hillbilly]

The term "Abo" as defined among flintknappers is used specifically to mean "no copper"- it means using only organic percussors and flakers like wood, antler, bone, or hammerstones. Copper was used some in ancient times, even in NA-but not much. First, it only outcrops in pure form in a few places, second, you don't need it to knap, you can't do anything with copper that you can't do with stone, antler or wood; and third-copper was waaayyy too valuable to most NA cultures to use for tools. There's been a lot of copper found in Mississippian mounds around here, but very little of it was made into anything but ornaments and jewelry. A modern analogy would be making a knapping billet out of 24 carat gold. I bet it would work great, but it ain't gonna happen.

[sailordad]

see,just like with knapping,i learned something new today

[SiletzSpey]

Copper was used some in ancient times, ...

On those rare occassions when copper was used in knapping, is there much known about the shape or form of the percussor or pressure flaker?

For example, was a percussor a rough copper nugget or a copper ball? I don't imagine a lead-filled copper cap mounted on an oak dowel rod.

--SiletzSpey

[StevenT]

Thanks all. I have been reading and watching video's for several weeks and following your threads here.  I have made all the necessary copper boppers, flakers, etc and have also gathered a fair amount of hammer stones and deer antlers. I have managed to shed a far amount of blood with both ABO and copper methods (now that I know what ABO stands for). So far I have learned that neither method is easy and it is going to take a lot more payment in the red stuff before I am able to do something other than make really cool step fractures. The only thing I have been able to product so far is one beer bottle point and one small obsidian point. The hardest thing right now is just finding time to practice. My other half doesn't understand why I want to "play with rocks". After stepping on an obsidian flake and driving a flint flake into the palm of my hand (yes I was wearing leather gloves), I was asking myself the same question. Anyway, thanks for the information and I am sure I will have other questions as I continue to "play with rocks".

As a side note, until I stumbled across this sight, I had no idea folks still actually used stone tools like our ancestors did. You guys (and gals) are amazing. As another side note. I did give Johnstone a try. (That is another term I learned here.) I learned real quick that beer bottoms are much easier to practice on.

[Hardawaypoints]

Copper was used some in ancient times, ...

On those rare occassions when copper was used in knapping, is there much known about the shape or form of the percussor or pressure flaker?

For example, was a percussor a rough copper nugget or a copper ball? I don't imagine a lead-filled copper cap mounted on an oak dowel rod.

--SiletzSpey

I remember seeing sort of a copper blob which was used as a billet that had chert fragments imbedded in the larger end and also had the telltale nicks associated with being used in stone reduction. If memory serves correct, there was copper in some abundance in Michagan (which may have been covered by glaciers in Paleo times).  I think wood billets were used more often than is known, because wood does not survive time like stone does.

Jim

[DanaM]

Jim the your right about copper in Michigan it was found here in the Upper Peninsula up in the Keweenaw Peninsula.
Its called float copper, chunks that are almost pure copper, used to be able to find it pretty easy not so easy now.
I would say that float copper shaped into a usable form by hammering it would be completely abo, I have to believe that
paleo man used whatever materials they had access to. Now as was said a copper plumbing cap isn't abo. Have to wonder
how many abo knappers use modern files and saws to make their tools, pretty hard to escape modern conveniences eh

[Hillbilly]

What few copper knapping tools that I've seen pics of were just pointy pressure flakers that were probably mounted in a wooden handle-pretty much the same as what you would make from copper wire.

[DanaM]

Here's a link about copper artifacts, if you Google "copper artifacts" there are many more


http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/collectors_corner/vft/mi3a.htm

[sailordad]

so maybe i was completely off base then about the copper eh

[SiletzSpey]

Thanks for the replies on historic copper.

In part I wondered, because I see so many copper-boppers starting into a rock by swinging the bopper from the wood handle, as one would expect, but when they transition into final shaping and thinning, many knappers grasp the copper dome with their fingers, and then do glancing blows off the side of the copper dome. In other words, they stop using the wood handle, and conceptually they're using the lead-filled copper dome like a nugget might have been used.

It's fun to blur the lines ;-)

--SiletzSpey