The Girl with the Homemade Spear

Katie D.

November 30, 2008 - 3:01 PM

That first day of class I walked in and was handed a chunk of obsidian and a hammer stone. Not exactly the normal for a literature/sociology major, and I knew right away that I'd like the class.

It was spring term of my freshman year, and I was in an advanced archeology class. The stated purpose of the class was to study and learn to replicate ancient technologies, such as the chipped stone technologies we worked on that first day. We were making projectile points (a.k.a arrowheads if you're not an archeology buff). That first day was slow going: you essentially bang rocks together, and if you know what you're doing you create something completely beautiful. But knowing what you're doing requires a huge amount of skill, including an assessment and understanding of angles, pressure application, and the shock fragmentation patterns of glass. Knocking one rock against another either gets you: a) a rock-on-rock sound with no change in either rock; b) tiny rock fragments flying everywhere; c) a large and unhelpful chunk of obsidian breaking off along with tiny rock fragments flying everywhere; or d) very, very rarely a thin and shapeable rock flake strong enough to survive further percussions and secondary pressure flaking.

This kind of activity can easily become a sort of obsession. After all, if cave men did it, shouldn't I be able to? It's amazing humanity came this far, and probably a good thing that I wasn't a key player in the rock-to-tool stage. I had a hard time with that first projectile point, but worked it from hunk of obsidian to useable flake, and then used careful pressure flaking techniques with an antler tool to finish the piece off to something resembling an arrowhead. I left that first class bleeding a little (this stuff is sharp: you try it without slicing yourself up a little!) and very, very excited for the next class.

Over the course of the term we learned a great deal about different technologies: when stone tools were first developed and how, the progression of simple stone technologies to the development of composite tools, and eventually the transition to different mediums for shaping tools. I learned a lot from those lectures, but it was the lab classes that caught my attention: it's one thing to learn about pre-homo sapiens making some kind of tool, and quite another to do it oneself.

Aside from my dubious mastery of obsidian work, I also learned the basics of ground stone technology (basically grinding stones for a long, long time. I still wear the necklace I made), shell bead making, wood working, basketry, and reed weaving. In this process I made myself the aforementioned soapstone bead necklace (two large beads with a leather string), several projectile points, a grass bracelet, and a reed duck that sits on my bookshelf even as I write. The duck was really cool: we had a visiting scholar come demonstrate the proper process of making a duck decoy out of tulee reeds, that one could theoretically float out on a lake and then wait for live ducks to join the reed fakes, at which point they would be easy targets. My duck wouldn't fool anyone, but I'm still pretty proud of it.

The idea behind this class was twofold: to teach us to appreciate the process behind archeological artifacts, and also to get a glimpse of a world before everything was manufactured for us. Everywhere you look there are the basic components of tools. Sometimes I find myself looking at a tree for promising straight, slender limbs that could be turned into spear shafts. And I went on a short expedition looking for chert in the Colorado mountains last summer, with the idea of doing some flint knapping. I can make bracelets out of grass and coconut fiber, and have also completed a less-than-elegant basket. The world is full of material that was once looked upon as such: as an opportunity for innovation. It is an interesting exercise to walk in the woods and imagine what you can create from the raw materials there.

But I haven't told you about the final project yet. It was something else, let me tell you. We were supposed to research and replicate some kind of ancient technology. One student made a blow gun and darts out of bamboo. Another made a complete small animal snare. Others worked with more advanced wood working techniques or carved pictographs in stone.

My friend and I worked together on an atlatl. Again, for those who are not archeology buffs, I'll explain myself. An atlatl is a precursor to bow-and-arrow technology: it is a light spear that is launched from a throwing board using the same principles of leverage applied in lacrosse sticks and Chuck-It tennis ball throwers for dogs. So you basically have a lightweight spear that you place along a throwing board as long as your forearm, which you then use to throw the spear twice the distance it can be hand-thrown. Atlatls were used in most areas of the world, from the Inuit of Alaska to Aboriginal Australians. Some studies found the atlatl to actually be more accurate than a bow and arrow, although less efficient in terms of spear manufacture and usability. But the basics of an atlatl is that it is an advanced piece of technology requiring a large degree of preliminary work in order to create a highly accurate piece of hunting technology.

We worked together with another student and managed to put together quite the impressive atlatl. We used all handmade tools in the process. We made obsidian scrapers to carve out the throwing board and a saw to cut down the spear shaft. We made an obsidian spear point and used pine pitch and fake sinew to fletch the spear. We did a large amount of research into atlatl technology, both ancient and modern (yes, there are people out there who still make and use atlatls in hunting). We documented the process of the atlatl making and recorded all tools used and decisions made.

The final product was pretty darn impressive. And we took it to a local park to try it out, and found that we could, in fact, throw the spear much farther with the throwing board than we could with the spear alone. We took turns throwing it, which was impressive and hilarious by turns. This kind of thing is not intuitive, you know.

I suppose the basic lesson of this blog is that the UO offers some pretty awesome non-traditional classes for those students brave enough to try them. I gained a cultural understanding of cultures I had studied in other archeology classes. A student can only learn so much from a power point presentation: there is something transformative in witnessing processes, seeing things first hand, maybe bleeding a little. And besides, it's fun to be a literature student with a handmade basket on the bookshelf and a home-made spear in the closet.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to practice my flint-knapping. You never know when that might come in handy.