| Aren’t these simply beautiful artifacts, ones that you would just love
to come across in the field one day. I have been looking, and looking,
and looking and so far I continue to look to no avail......but I have turned
or dug out those rocks in the fields....only to start looking again.
One of these days I’ll find one of these and when I do, everyone is going
to hear about it.......especially my hunting buddy Claude Werner.
Meanwhile, Stone will add more informative text to this as he is much more
knowledgeable than I am concerning these.............for the moment anyway.
Margo Hupe
These fine tools are Celts--ungrooved axes, and were created to cut and
shape wood and wooden objects. Advanced wood-working techniques had
eclipsed stone-working technologies in the area of creating a secure hafting
for such tools--a wooden handle was made with a hole through it to accomadate
the Celt, rather than a groove being worked around the axe, and the handle
being bent around the axe. In such manner, a Celt would be forced by each
blow to become more tightly wedged into it's hafting (note the generally
tapering outline of each Celt shown). With the previous period's axes,
a hafting might need refitting and/or tightening up to several times a
day, depending on how much use it was put to.
Celts exhibit evenly convexed faces, and most are tapered towards the
poll-region to allow for secure hafting. The specimens at top-right
and
bottom both show signs of battering at their poll-ends--possibly indicating
that they had either become wedged into the wood they were meant to split,
or were used without hafting as splitting wedges. The more a Celt was polished,
the less the chance of it's becoming stuck in a log, unretrievable without
striking blows to the poll-region or sides, which could severly damage
a Celt beyond usefulness.
Stone Sweet
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