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Possible Copper Pressure Flakers in the Archaic Era in Minnesota

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Hummingbird Point:
To begin with, I agree with Zuma that we know very little about how things were done pre-contact.  Trade preceded colonization by about 100 years, so in in general by the time any Europeans came along to record how things were done, they had already changed.  The only flint knapping the Jamestown colonists recorded observing was pressure flaking small arrow points, probably because by 1607 the Powhatans had had access to metal knives and hatchets for at least a few generations.  Add to that the utter upheaval caused by European diseases and subsequent wars and you have a sitution where a huge amount of long accumulated knowledge was erased in a flash.

Here's what I find interesting about copper knapping:  If you were to ask an economist he would consider modern knapping to be a free market, capitalist system.  That type of system is very good at finding the best way of doing something.  Based on that the economist would have to conclude that copper boppers and copper pressure flakers are the best way to knap, because that is what most modern knappers use, and (perhaps more importantly) that is the tool set that dominates commercial knapping.  Of course we know that the stone age knappers weren't using copper boppers, and the use of copper pressure was likely fairly restricted, so that leaves two possibilities:  One is that the overall model is correct and it is a matter of trying to match abo materials and tool designs to the economical performance given by the copper tools.  The second is that the model is wrong, and it is just a matter of two roads on opposite sides of the mountain that just happen to both lead to the top.  I think future experimental knapping needs to explore both of those possibilities.

Keith

Zuma:
Some copper artifacts from Wisconsin and Michigan.
Featured in the Ancient American Magazine
Zuma

PeteDavis:

My IRA has fallen flat

So I knap with a baseball bat

My copper tools I cannot see

Covered there in verdigris

Huxley said love's good as soma

But my tools cause a hematoma

If you use boppers-bop them good

I'll just smash my knees with Wood


PD

Chippintuff:
Don't you just love it!!!! Let's get to chippin!!!!

WA

JackCrafty:
Non-metal knapping  (NMK) sounds good.  It's self explanitory.

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