Michigan TodayOnline . . . Fall 1996

LESSONS OF THE STONE AGE By Jared Blank

he best teachers I've had have been dead for 10,000 years," says archaeology graduate student James Payne, who spent many childhood afternoons digging for arrowheads in the yard of his northwest Ohio home. Soon, he was flint knapping-chipping away at stones to form primitive tools and creating his own arrows, knives and hammers.

Payne shared his enthusiasm and skills with 15 undergraduates, his "modern Stone Age family," last summer when he taught Anthropology 296, "Stone Age Technology: Crafts of Our Ancestors."

Visitors to Payne's class would find students using tools and goods that were available during the Stone Age to chip away at rocks, shape wooden implements, fashion homemade arrows and knives and decorate various objects. The classroom exercises show students that the people of that era had a strong grasp of some principles of physics and geology.

"It doesn't matter who your ancestors were," Payne said, "everyone was doing this. I'm interested in how people used these tools to make a living."

The first class periods cover the methods archaeologists use to interpret the history of tools uncovered during digs. Payne likens the process to trying to complete "multiple three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles all mixed together."

Once students understood how archaeologists determined the age and uses of tools, they spent weeks learning the skills to create rather complex arrows using 10,000-year-old-technology. An arrow is a composite tool-it's made out of multiple parts-so it serves as a way to learn different skills.

The first classes were spent with everyone grabbing a piece of a broken toilet bowl and practicing chipping a sharp point out of the porcelain with a deer or moose antler. The skill was later transferred to sharpening stones to make the tip of the arrow.

The arrow is tied to a wooden shaft using deer sinew-tendon that Payne described as "kinda grody." When cut and dried, Payne said, sinew makes excellent string.

Finally, students fashioned crude knives out of stone flakes to split feathers, which are then placed on the end of the arrow. The feathers make the arrow spin, like a bullet shot out of a rifle.

Personalized markings were painted on the arrows with a water/iron oxide/rabbit-hide glue mixture. Payne says that this was done so the owner of a kill could be easily identified. "It's interesting," he said, "that a hunter gained status from the amount of fat in his kill, not the size of the antlers like people think of today."

Students' individual interests also helped to guide the direction of the course. Art student Angela Dregansky '97 of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, taught a lesson on her specialty-ceramics. Other students' interests ranged from paleo-Indian technology to crafts, and Payne encouraged students to create projects based on their interests.

Senior anthropology major Susan Charlesbois of Stockbridge, Michigan, appreciated the freedom to be creative. "This is an involved, sincere approach to education," she said. "I've been pleasantly surprised."

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