Stone Tools

[Napoleon North]

Stone tools?

[Kosmoceras]

I don't see any striking platform or bulb of percussion so I would not call these tools. Flaking as such is made by reworking tools but can be done naturally, you must look out for signs that a human shaped it.

Regards,

[painshill]

Hi again Napoleon

There are some folks on this forum who have knowledge of - or collect - lithic tools (me included). But posting these kinds of items here, with enquiries as to whether they meet the expected form for Neolithic Poland is really not likely to get you a satisfactory answer. In my opinion those are not tools. What makes you think they are? I also see no evidence of intentional, logical alteration or anything which convinces me they have forms which are conssistent with the cultures that occupied your area in those times.

If you're going to argue again that they are the same shape as items in pictures you find on the web then you really need to get a better understanding of lithic artefact production in Neolithic Europe. I have made a number of suggestions on your previous posts about how to recognise such artefacts (as has Kosmoceras) and also some suggestions on how you can gain such experience. I will repeat one of those suggestions:

[donckey]

Hi Napoleon,

I would like to see some better pictures of the one below. Enlarged and sharp!

Painshill,

How can you rule-out the bottum one from being a mesolithicum microlith or small late neolithicum scrapper without seeing a better and more detailed picture?

the color of 2 of them does not look erratic but rather fresh so they could be flakes.

peter

[RichW9090]

a couple could be broken flakes or other debitage - especially since the material, a butterscotch chalcedony, would be such nice chipping materail.

[Mr_ed]

I don't think anyone can say they weren't used for tools because back in those days whatever looked or felt or sufficed as a tool was a tool. I do think that one would have to have a vivid active imagination and stretch it pretty thin to say those actually are tools. Sure they could be, but they don't appearr to be so how does one know they are or aren't. I have several hundred North American made stone tools that are easily identified as a tool and would personally not collect or think twice about keeping anything that firstly wasn't obviously a tool and secondly hadn't came from a locality that I knew to produce artefacts. I don't see any sense in having a bunch of chalcedony and calling it tools just because someone used to make a tool. In my area the tools are black bassalt mostly. There is mountains of it and in places the ground is covered with the stuff from where the natives broke it up and took the pieces they wanted to work on. If one was to paw through those sights he could have an amazing collection of imaginary tools. Not cool.

Ed

[Napoleon North]

Next photo .

[Kosmoceras]

In Europe tools were made rather crudely, so when identifying them you need to look out for several things.

“An identification checklist

To distinguish between an artefact and a geofact (a flint that has been shaped by natural processes such as
frost) use the following checklist. Don't pay too much attention to the overall shape or possible function (whether it would make a good borer or spear point) but ask yourself:

• Is the flint uniformly patinated?
• Is there the remains of a striking platform?
• Is there a striking point (positive bulb of percussion)?
• Have the edges been retouched?
• Is there pressure flaking on the surface?”

Source: http://www.stoneagetools.co.uk/identifying-flint-tools.htm

I can see from the pictures that the ripples are at different angles along the same side which is not consistent with how they are knapped from a core. Attached are pictures of the ripples on your piece and a pictures of a confirmed stone tool with consistent ripples.

Regards,

[Napoleon North]

This is the last photo. I am a loser .... ehh

Edited March 3, 2013 by Napoleon North

[RichW9090]

Kosmoceras:

That list is practically speaking, useless.

• Is the flint uniformly patinated? Some tools may be patinated, and some may have no patina at all. And some tools often show two or even three different stages of patina. There may be the original patina of the material - the patina of the original piece or nodule, the patinea which appeared after the tool had first been chipped, and then a fresher patina when the tool was picked up in antiquity and rechipped.

• Is there the remains of a striking platform? In a finished tool, the striking platforms, both of the original flake, for flake-based tools, and of all subsequent bifacial thinning flakes, will be removed by subsequent retouch, etc.

• Is there a striking point (positive bulb of percussion)? Again, see above.

• Have the edges been retouched? The lack of retouch simply indicates that the piece was intented to be used as produced, without retouch. The presence of retouch does indicate that a piece has been flaked by a human; the lack of retouch does not indicate that it hasn't.

• Is there pressure flaking on the surface?” Pressure flaking indicates that something is an artifact, yes. But the lack of pressure flaking does not mean it is a geofact. Many tools throughout the ages were finished with nothing more than percussion flaking, of which there are several kinds - hard hammer, soft hammer, etc.

The application of simple rules like these almost always will give misleading results. One only has to rmember the old "Chapeau de Gendarme" flakes once taken to absolutely indicate human agency. The work of Jellinek, Bradley and Huckel in 1971 (American Antiquity volume 36(2):198-200), showed that these flakes could be produced by entirely natural processes. The flakes had all of the above attributes with the exception of pressure flaking, but could be produced, for example, in colluvial fans.

Edited March 3, 2013 by RichW9090

[Kosmoceras]

In no way does it say x means it will not or will be a tool. It is just a list of some things to consider and look into.

@ Napoleon, you are not a looser, I am sure you will come across something sometime.

Regards,

[RichW9090]

Absolutely, they are things to consider, along with an intangible gestalt of the piece as well. That is what I was cautioning against, applying any one, or all, of these criteria as an absolute determiner. Many of us here know the tentative nature of identifications, but many do not. That especially seems to be an obstacle for the newer folks, who just haven't seen very many flakes, or fossils, yet. There is a great likelihood that our pronouncements are taken by our newer members as authoritarian and absolute, even if that is not our intent. One of the important concepts we need to get across to people in reference to the nature of science (which is behind all that we do here) is its provisional nature.

Napolean, anyone who looks, and questions, is never a loser. I think that some of your pieces, at least, are the result of human activity. Remember that any really nice tool is only the end of a long process which involves the production of all kinds of pieces, chunks and flakes, many of which are pretty plain and ugly, but all of which were touched by human hands in antiquity. If you can sense those hands in the past touching the same flake you hold in your hand, you've captured the mystique which for me is part of the allure of artifacts as opposed to fossils. Fossils capture an equal, but different kind of connection to the past - an identification with something which no human, perhaps, has ever seen, but which none-the-less lived, and ate, and fought and reproduced - and you can hold that history in your hand.

Keep looking.

Rich

Edited March 3, 2013 by RichW9090

[Kosmoceras]

One question: Where were these flints found?

[Napoleon North]

One question: Where were these flints found?

On the pile of gravel in the construction of universities

[Auspex]

In the absence of any compelling features to indicate purposeful alteration by man, context becomes the most important thing. If the pieces in question are not from a known paleo site, in association with clearly altered objects or other remains, it is neither prudent nor scientifically possible to call them artifacts.

[donckey]

I don't think anyone can say they weren't used for tools because back in those days whatever looked or felt or sufficed as a tool was a tool. I do think that one would have to have a vivid active imagination and stretch it pretty thin to say those actually are tools. Sure they could be, but they don't appearr to be so how does one know they are or aren't. I have several hundred North American made stone tools that are easily identified as a tool and would personally not collect or think twice about keeping anything that firstly wasn't obviously a tool and secondly hadn't came from a locality that I knew to produce artefacts. I don't see any sense in having a bunch of chalcedony and calling it tools just because someone used to make a tool. In my area the tools are black bassalt mostly. There is mountains of it and in places the ground is covered with the stuff from where the natives broke it up and took the pieces they wanted to work on. If one was to paw through those sights he could have an amazing collection of imaginary tools. Not cool.

Ed

Ed

I don't agree with you.

Real artefacts made by man can be recognized on features like Thomas and Rich say. It is the same as with some fossils you have to know what you see or what your looking for.

Even artefact as old as a million years can be recognised. By the way the material Napoleon shows is not chalcedony but (erratic) flint

Auspex is right too. The flint shown by Napoleon in the new pictures do not show any signs of human handling and when not find on locations with real evidence of human activities they are just flint.

The little thin peaces probably shipped of by contacting other stones or because of frost.

Napoleon keep looking, go to musea, read books about artefacts, and when you think it could be something keep show us pictures. Poland is full with artefacts .

Peter

Edited March 4, 2013 by donckey

[Mr_ed]

• Peter

So what is it you don't agere with me about?

Ed

[painshill]

I’ve been collecting and studying lithic artefacts for more than 40 years… mainly from Europe, but actually all over the place.

The question here is not “are these artefacts?” The question is “do these pieces have sufficient characteristic intentional knapping features to distinguish them from naturally broken rocks of similar shapes?” The answer to that is “no”, and so I feel completely justified in saying that they are not artefacts.

The burden of proof requires that they are justified as artefacts on the basis of such features rather than that they have to be proved to be geofacts. Context can also be an important part of that process and I groaned inwardly when Napoleon revealed these pieces came out of a gravel pile on a construction site. Previously posted items came off a road or track if I remember correctly.

Features that resemble artefacts arise from mechanical damage, stream-rolling, frost shattering and a whole bunch of other reasons. If you can’t reliably determine intentional and logical alteration from those kinds of features then you can’t claim “artefact” because the truth is you just can’t tell. In those cases “maybe” means “no”. Those are the archaeological rules.

If those were artefacts, they wouldn’t correspond to Palaeo styles in Europe. Microliths are characteristic of Mesolithic cultures in Europe. But “microlith” does not just mean any old small chip of stone with a sharp edge. Microliths were produced to specific and recognisable styles with a functional purpose in mind. Mostly composite tools like harpoons, multi-barbed points, saws, grain-threshing boards and many other uses. I posted some examples here a while ago:

http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/29918-prehistory-tools/page-3?hl=mesolithic#entry335890

Larger (but still small) flake tools are mostly characteristic of the Neolithic to early Bronze Age in Europe. Again, these have recognisable styles. They aren’t just sharp pieces of flint, whether the edge looks serrated or not. Again, I posted some examples at the link above.

On that thread, Napoleon was making suggestions for tools from Palaeo cultures that existed in his area (such as Mickocka and Pradnicko) without any regard for whether the pieces conformed to any of the known tool patterns for those cultures… they didn’t.

We then jumped to Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures such as Strzyzowska, Lubelsko-Wołynska, Trzciniecka, Luzycka and so on… but the tool forms were not characteristic of those cultures either. And they still aren’t. They might or might not be pieces of debitage, but if they came out of a gravel pile on a building site that’s not a good context for identifying them as such.

Napoleon, you are not a loser. I have been trying to encourage you to look more critically at what you are finding and learn about the diagnostic features that are characteristic of the way in which artefacts were made, how they were used and which cultures produced what types throughout the stone ages of Europe.

Kosmoceras is quite right, but so too is Rich. Using checklists of features is a dangerous route for someone starting out in this field without substantial experience of having seen (and handled) the real thing.

For what it’s worth though, I have attached my own checklist for determining artefacts from geofacts – developed over the years and compiled from many sources. This is designed for core and flake tools, not chipped and pecked items. It’s not conclusive and still very much work-in-progress, but the more you can answer “yes” to these questions, the more likely you have an artefact. You don’t need a “yes” in all cases, some of the questions are mutually exclusive and for some of the questions a couple of “no” answers can knock the ball out of court. But I find it’s a disciplined approach, rather than just looking and musing.

The questions are numbered for reference, but not in any particular order, although I have tried to maintain a logical sequence.

Artefact or Geofact Checklist - Flake & Core v8.doc

Edited March 4, 2013 by painshill

[Napoleon North]

And this tool?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SPEAR-HEAD-THEORIC-FLINT-Paris-Basin-MIDDLE-PALEOLITHIC-MOUSTERIAN-FRENCH-PREHIS-/150984257589?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item23275cf035

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BLADE-SCRAPER-FLINT-Paris-Basin-MESOLITHIC-NEOLITHIC-FRENCH-PREHISTORY-/150983656302?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item232753c36e

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SCRAPER-FLINT-Paris-Basin-Middle-Paleolithic-MOUSTERIAN-FRENCH-PREHISTORY-/160736423922?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item256ca32ff2

Edited March 4, 2013 by Napoleon North

[painshill]

And this tool?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SPEAR-HEAD-THEORIC-FLINT-Paris-Basin-MIDDLE-PALEOLITHIC-MOUSTERIAN-FRENCH-PREHIS-/150984257589?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item23275cf035

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BLADE-SCRAPER-FLINT-Paris-Basin-MESOLITHIC-NEOLITHIC-FRENCH-PREHISTORY-/150983656302?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item232753c36e

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SCRAPER-FLINT-Paris-Basin-Middle-Paleolithic-MOUSTERIAN-FRENCH-PREHISTORY-/160736423922?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item256ca32ff2

What about them (3 tools)?

Are you asking what distinguishes them artefacts, as opposed to the broken stuff you posted? Are you asking if they are genuine? Are you asking if the dating and typology and cultural assignation is as claimed? Are you thinking of buying them and want to know if the prices are reasonable? What?

[Napoleon North]

So I want to know if they are genuine and are great value.

[donckey]

• Peter
• So what is it you don't agere with me about?
• Ed

1. "I don't think anyone can say they weren't used for tools because back in those days whatever looked or felt or sufficed as a tool was a tool."

I think that people who collected thousands of artifacts from different timeperiods and places are very well capable to tell if stones are really tools or artefact of human activities or are just stones.

So I just disagree with this one. No problem for me.

2."I do think that one would have to have a vivid active imagination and stretch it pretty thin to say those actually are tools."

The first reactions were on the first pictures Napoleon posted. I think nobody could rule-out the possibility of some of them being non-artifacts without seeing better and more detailed pictures.

Painshill,

I did not see the topic posted in the summer of 2012. After seeing that I can understand the reaction of some of you

Napoleon,

The artefacts from E-bay are real artifacts. However, the first one is NOT a moustriénpoint and the third is NOT a scrapper!

About the value? Come to my place and you can have hundreds like them for free. I made a nice "flintrockgarden" in my garden

Peter

Edited March 4, 2013 by donckey

[Mr_ed]

I have a five gallon bucket fulll of stuff that came from known hunting and fishing sites of the local natives that look more like something of value than those e-bay ones and all have ancient chipping on them and all are of no value whatever but may be of some signifigance to someone doing a study of those ancient people. I think the origin of the piece is more important than the type of stone or the shape if it cannot be clearly distinguished as a tool. Lots of the pieces in the bucket qualify as artefacts but only the origonal owner who gathered the piece and carried to his camp or home can really say if it was used even slightly as a tool. Every piece of that kind of stone in those camps was packed in because that is the only way it could have gotten there. Since the natives never had a lot of spare pockets to put useless things in I would have to assume that they went to the trouble to bring them home for a reason.... to use or to make something wiith would be the reason I suspect. I also suspect that many efforts to make something were abandoned or the something didn;t work well, or the owner died, or for some reason it was not used enough to be able to tell 1000 years later if it was indeed used at all. I believe that , as I said one can imagine all kind of things.. but the ones that show use or have been shaped with considerable effort are the ones that I keep for tools. The rest mostly I leave on site on a pile so I know I have looked at them.

Peter.. when you say you can tell if a stone is an artefact of human activity or just a stone you are not talking the same language as I was. I was talking about artefacts of human activity that are or are not tools. Where I collect there are many stones that appear to have been there naturally. I don,t call them artefacts without good reason.

Its interesting how many views one can get about what makes a tool or what qualifies as an artefact. I would never have guessed that it could get this inolved.

Cheers

Ed

Edited March 5, 2013 by Mr_ed

[Napoleon North]

Natural ?Ever found in the gravel near the university building. He was in a bag with other flints.

size about 15-16 mm.

The 97 is similar - patinated.

http://muzeum-zamojskie.pl/z/archeo/index.php?page=2

http://www.izba.centrum.zarow.pl/index. ... &Itemid=71

Edited March 5, 2013 by Napoleon North

[Mr_ed]

Keep looking Napoleon.. you are finding chips that very well may indicate that there was stone tools produced in that site or in that gravel where ever it came from. But the ones posted are just pieces of the type of stone typically used by ancient prople to make tools and if there are lots of them there then maybe there will be a tool or a part of one there too. The small chips that are present on the sharp edges are only made by shuffling of the gravel or being driven over, not likely by ancient man but the whole piece may be a chip produced in the making of an ancient tool. I used to keep them for luck until I found something better. Keep looking and good luck.

Cheers

Ed

Edited March 5, 2013 by Mr_ed