Tools of the Old and New Stone Age

Jaques Bordaz

Natural History Press, American Museum of Natural History

New York, N.Y. 1970  Pp. xii, 145, 54 figs.

Reviewed by : John Heuser

PO Box 81, West Burke, VT 05871

Reviewed for : Biology 330; "Ecology of the Ancient Puebloes"

            This book is an expansion of material originally appearing in 1959 in Natural History Magazine,  and provides an archaeological overview of knowledge about stone tool structure and use throughout about 2 million years of prehistory. Bordaz divided the periods of toolmaking traditions into six chapters. His concentration is mainly European prehistory, with brief mentions of recent New World replicative studies.

             The introductory Chapter One presents  a historical glance at modern understanding of stone artifacts, which two hundred years ago were believed to be results of lightning flashes. Then in the eighteenth century, there was a recognition that tools still being made by aboriginals in the New World were similar to the European ceraunias. But it was only relatively recent that there has been a realization that the period in which these artifacts were made represent a vast span of human history.

            The chapter also includes an acquaintance with the geologic and archaeological periods used to divide human prehistory. Bordaz says that these divisions are not absolute and are still being revised as new evidence comes to light. He chose a scheme which divided the Pleistocene into four parts, instead of the three commonly used at his writing, in addition to the Holocene, or modern postglacial period. His Pleistocene divisions are Basal Pleistocene, Lower Pleistocene, Middle Pleistocene, and Upper Pleistocene. He describes three  main technological subdivisions: Paleolithic hunting, fishing and gathering cultures; Neolithic herding and agriculture; and Mesolithic transitional cultures. Rather than strictly adhering to time divisions, these are related to subsistence needs.

            Stone knapping technology followed periodic divisions with considerable overlap, according to the demands of social structure, length of time for spreading techniques, and food-related demand. Bordaz chooses to stick to the somewhat arbitrary archaeological divisions as a useful means of presentation, and the rest of the book hangs together on that structure.

            What were the qualities prehistoric people sought in their tool stones? Chapter Two specifies hardness, tenacity, and homogeneity as the three practical considerations. Tenacity is relative ease or difficulty of breaking, and low-tenacity was desirable for ease in flaking. Homogeneity is required to produce even, predictable "bulbs of percussion" which make flakes with razor-sharp edges. Non-homogenous rocks with large crystals, like granite and quartz, or foliate rocks like shales were not sought because of their tendency to break along faces of their layers. Also, large-crystal rocks and minerals produce edges not so sharp and more likely to crumble under the pressure of work than the glassy flints and volcanics such as obsidian.

            Later in Chapter Six, there is a discussion of modern replicative experiments which show the best materials for producing long, bladelike flakes are volcanic glasses. For this reason there is speculation that some of the finer quartzite materials like flint and jasper could have been heated artificially to fuse the material and imbue it with volcanic-like qualities; modern experiments show that doing so helps produce similar blade-like flakes.

            Chapter Three outlines in detail how the earliest stone toolworkers, probably Australopithecus, manufactured large, biface axes from cores. These crudest of all worked stones were thick as the original cores, and relied on a series of flakes removed from either side of the thinnest edge of a found piece of rock. Also found in these levels were some of the flakes themselves with evidence of use as scrapers and choppers, probably in food preparation.

            The use of flakes as tools, rather than being just waste byproducts of larger core tools, is inferred by three methods: 1. evidence of retouching the edge,  2. ethnographic parallels, and 3. microscopic study of trace wear on the cutting edges.

            Bordaz here, and frequently throughout future chapters, strongly suggests the value of trace wear study, which involves microscopic comparisons on cutting edges to infer actual use. He states that as of his writing, this type of study has not yet scratched the surface of its possibility. Ethnographic parallelism is the inference of function by comparison of archaic tool structure to currently extant stoneworking cultures, such as pockets of remaining Australian aboriginal culture.

            After a long tradition of the most primitive hand ax, the frustrating limitations of its design led  Stone Age people to two profoundly significant

innovations. They are the platform method, and the use of soft hammerstones or batons of material softer than stone such as wood, bone, or antler. These two methods in combination permitted the removal of shallower, longer flakes and much more acute cutting angles in the resulting edges. 

            Chapter Four begins with a description of a technique, named Levallois for its European discovery site, which improves on the platform and baton techniques by the preparation of a corestone by flaking the periphery and face, then flaking off the prepared surface into a ready-made tool. This technique, called the "prepared flake nucleus" was invented in the Middle Pleistocene, about 200,000 years ago, and offered the advantages of less waste, and efficiency of manufacture. It made the production of very large flakes possible, with extremely sharp edges, which were used in a variety of ways. Detailed figures show how to manufacture these tools, as well as all others in the book.

            Chapter Five is devoted to the Upper Paleolithic blade tools, which were formed by a refinement of the prepared nuclei technique. this tradition may have had its beginnings among a group which may have been a transition between Neanderthal  and modern people. There was a striking surge of variety and specialization in the typical Upper Paleolithic tool kit. The significant improvement in knapping involved preparing a long nucleus and use of punches to detach blades and bladelets in a systematic way to use up the flint resource most effectively. There also appeared much more  use of smaller flakes for a great variety of points called microliths. The size of this new class of tools allowed people to travel in wider ranges, farther from the flint source. This may have had something to do with the development of certain nomadic cultures.

            Microliths are the focus of the final chapter six, along with tools which were ground upon sandstone to create the working edge. These ground edges offer durability and sharpness competitive with steel, and Bordaz tells of one modern demonstration in which a fir tree more than two feet thick was felled within twenty minutes! Grinding eliminates the small variations on the edges of knapped tools, which break easier because of unequally- distributed stress.

            The last chapter also offers evidence of, and speculations on, ax hafting methods. The worst problem in hafting axes is the stones' tendency to split handles which are perforated to accept blades, and the problem was evidently addressed by premodern people by three methods. One was to insert the blade in a shock-absorbing bone or antler socket which was in turn inserted into the handle. Another was knee-shaft hafting, in which a branch of a small tree or branch served as the handle, while a portion of the trunk was left on and planed flat, to give a surface on which the blade could be lashed with hide or fiber. The working angle of the resulting tool resembles that of modern adzes and hoes. The third, and least practical, was to bore the blade with a hole in which the handle could be inserted, like modern axes. This process was an extremely tedious one in which sand was mixed with water and turned on the end of a piece of wood inside a hole which had been started by pecking or pressure flaking. after several days' work, the tool probably often broke, as the hole necessarily weakened the blade. nevertheless, the technique was used to some extent

            This book reads with the ease of popular introductory science nonfiction, and its roots in magazine journalism are evident for that. The intended readers range from interested laypeople to serious students. These include any who would enjoy an in-depth tour of the archaeology wing of a natural history museum. In addition, there is considerable methodology with clear, step-by-step illustrations of knapping technique. Along with the repeated call throughout for more trace-wear studies, this suggests an audience including working archaeologists.

            Thus, Bordaz is offering a "...resume of our knowledge concerning the manufacture and use of prehistoric stone implements..." as well as a purposeful vision for future studies. He is intrigued by what is still unknown and would like more focus, again, on trace wear, and on the stone waste at knapping and quarry sites.

            In the clarity and simplicity of its prose, the book will appeal to the range of people who would be attracted by the subject matter. One can imagine the publishing context of the American Museum of Natural history as the appropriate one for its style. For the casual lay reader, the text makes  clear transitions between the toolmaking traditions and discrete divisions among them which make their functions easy to assimilate. The figures are well done black-and white photographs by a professional named Lee Boltin, who is liberally, and justifiably, credited.

            But the book does not insult the more advanced reader who may want reference for more in-depth study. For example, there is considerable discussion of how tool structure and function related to social life as tools were developed to answer the needs of slash-and burn agriculture, and nomadism. Another useful feature is the use of contemporary replicative work as well as acknowledgement of modern practical use, such as Turkish wheat threshing and stone age cultures still extant among  remote reaches of Australian aborigines.

            For modern knappers and replicators, there are well-drawn illustrations and suggestions for different materials and hammers, and the book could be recommended as a primer for the craft. There is a series of figures which illustrate a hypothetical tool kit of the Upper Paleolithic period, which stimulates the vision of a comprehensive replication project.

            One imperfection of the book is in the undetermined purpose of the second chapter, where the transitions of technological advancement are not as clearly defined by period as in the rest of the book. It wanted to outline the various types of tools for several periods, but then went back to talking about Lower Pleistocene without a totally logical coherence. But, the weakness is overcome in later chapters.

            I read this book as a rank beginner whose familiarity with stone tools consists of what I have gleaned from childhood visits to museums, and the odd discovery of flakes in various areas of the Western United States. I found the book to be amazingly easy to read in proportion to its chock-full content. I also found it particularly useful for learning the nomenclature, classification, and technique for my beginning attempts at knapping. I don't know that archaeology for me will amount to more than an interesting once-in-a-while hobby. But if I were to pursue this aspect of archaeology vocationally, I would surely find myself intrigued by the need for trace wear study, since Bordaz so convincingly outlines the need for it.