Stone Age skill

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, July 8th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: “flintknapping.”

Long before metal or machines, there was flint and fire and patient hands.

EICHER: Flintknapping once meant survival. Today, it means community, history, and craft. WJI mid-career graduate Amanda Donahue meets some of the modern-day craftsmen still chipping away at the old ways.

SOUND: [Flintknapping]

AMANDA: Whatcha making?

NOBLE: Aww I don’t know, it’s probably gonna break, it’s got cracks in it…

AMANDA DONAHUE: Rob Noble is a flintknapper at the Osage Knap-in near Booneville, Missouri.

SOUND: [Flintknapping]

Layers of leather protect Noble’s left leg where he’s holding a piece of flint rock. He repeatedly strikes it with a tool held in his right hand. Now, 60 years old, he started knapping in his late 20s.

DONAHUE: Did you have somebody that taught you how?

ROB: Not until I started coming to knap-ins. I had one old guy that uh I used to sit and knap with him. He passed away now and uh he taught me quite a bit.”

Next to Rob sits Dale Miller. He’s working on a six-inch point.

ROB: Now Dale, he’s a traditionalist. He uses antler and stones.

Miller is much younger than most of the other knappers. But he’s not a newbie.

DALE: I started when I was sixteen, been doin’ it ever since. I guess I started earlier than a lot of people.

As Noble and Miller work, chips of rock start collecting at their feet.

DALE: When you work these stone tools you create debitage, chips of rock. Um some of the Indians would use to make scraping tools. Sometimes they just left them on the ground. You may find these in a field. If there’s a bunch of chips of rock, that’s where someone sat down and made an arrowhead.

It’s a tricky process. And the materials don’t always cooperate.

DALE: This rock here’s got a seam in it, but I keep removing material here. Hopefully it’ll go away. I gotta be careful. If I don’t hit it right it’ll just break.

While there are younger knappers like Dale Miller, many of the older masters have retired or died.

DONAHUE: I count about 14 people here, Is this a good turnout?

DALE: There’s knap-ins that draw hundreds, maybe even thousands of people. Just kind of depends on how popular they are, or where they’re located.

One knap-in regular is Earnest Jones:

JONES: I’ve always been interested in Indians and the pieces they made.

Jones is 85 years old.

JONES: Basically, it’s knowing how they did it that would let me appreciate what I saw. And I always thought that nobody today in the modern world made arrowheads.”

His interest in knapping began with his wife’s scout troop.

JONES: One year she took them to Fort Osage and it just so happened there was some guys sitting there making arrowheads. So I thought, ‘Oh wow that’s neat!’ So I went to a fall one just to see what was going on.

Jones doesn’t think of himself as an educator. But once he learned how to knap himself, he wanted to teach others how to do it.

JONES: After a while, once I got my courage up, I started attending historical craft events, anywhere that I thought what I did would be a benefit to the people who attended these events.

Passing on his knowledge gave him a connection to centuries of human experience.

JONES: I’m not an archaeologist, I’m not a geologist. I’m just a fella that likes to make arrowheads and I don’t mind showing people and telling them how I do it. Because I’m showing them something they’ve never seen before but it’s a progress of learning almost forgotten art, and that’s the neat thing. Is that you’re reintroducing something that’s been around for thousands of years.

Eventually, Ernest Jones had to put down his tools. He was unable to attend this year’s knap-in.

JONES: Basically it was my eyesight. I have macular degeneration. I have other things to worry about right now rather than me. On a personal basis, it’s my wife. She needs my help more than I need to knap.

But he misses the craft, and the camaraderie.

JONES: I still pick up my tool every now and then and look at it but uh it’s probably more than anything else, the fellowship of the people. Meeting all these people, you get not only knowledge of the flintknapping world, but of their background and their history which kind of enriches yours.

Despite his health challenges, Jones sometimes thinks about taking up his old hobby again.

JONES: I keep sayin’ one of these days I’m gonna get a rock and see if I can bang one out again. (Laughs) Someday, someday.

AUDIO: [Sounds of flintknapping]

Back at the Osage Knap-in, Dale Noble hopes people who’ve never heard of knapping will get curious enough to stop and ask what he’s doing.

DALE: It’s a great opportunity to see how stone tools were made and meet some neat people. Oftentimes we’ll have artifacts that we’ve found cuz we’re all interested in those too. It can be a really nice learning opportunity.

Reporting for WORLD I’m Amanda Donahue in Boonville, Missouri.

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