An Experimental Analysis of Water Content on Stone Raw Material Quality

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

It is well known that heat treating chert and other cryptocrystalline silicates improves the stone’s quality for knapping. However, ethnographic texts report that Indigenous knappers from around the world evaluate a stone’s moisture content as a marker of the stones’ quality for flaked tool production. Contemporary Euro-American flintknappers make similar claims. Despite the shared discussions by Indigenous and Euro-American flintknappers on toolstone moisture content, previous studies of flaked stone materials have not been conducted to evaluate the proposed relationship. This study utilizes a flintknapping experiment to quantify the impact of moisture content on raw material quality for tool production by measuring the length of pressure flakes removed from materials with varying moisture content. This poster provides an experimental evaluation of the role of moisture content in flaked stone tool production and integrates Indigenous perspectives on stone into lithic studies We find that added moisture increased the length of pressure flakes removed of knapping. These findings are particularly important for experimental knappers who use raw materials which were previously extracted from the ground, and who may wish to rehydrate the toolstone before knapping.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38422.0