Errett Callahan - Flint Knapping and Experimental Archaeology

Flint Knapping and Experimental Archaeology

Callahan first began flint knapping in 1956. He was completely self-taught for the first ten years, learning all he knew through trial and error and by examining the prehistoric artifacts he was trying to recreate (Callahan 1999). After his first decade of work, he studied with such Master-level flint knappers as Don Crabtree, Gene Titmus, Francois Bordes, J. B. Sollberger, and Jacques Pelegrin. Along with his continued experimentation and instructions from the masters, Callahan began reading everything he could get his hands on that pertained to flint knapping and primitive technologies. Over the first twenty years of his research Callahan worked his way through the lithic technologies of the European Paleolithic, Paleo-Indian, Archaic, and Woodland traditions of the Americas with another five years spent deciphering the technologies of the European Mesolithic, all the while voluntarily restricting himself to replications of prehistoric forms. Not content to stop there Callahan spent the next twenty years of his life working his way through the complex stone technologies of the European Neolithic. Only after that was Callahan ready to start his work on the Post Neolithic and Non-Traditional technologies where he was once again in uncharted territory, working by trial and error to produce forms that had never been seen before.