Strange cases of domestication

Tag: archaeology

  • Stone Axes of the Neolithic

    “If you could only have one tool?” growing up around many woodsmen, hunters and fishermen this simple phrase was the source of many heated debates between men in my circle as a kid. Some said a machete, others a knife or multi-tool and some claimed it was an axe or hatchet. In Texas where I grew up any of these tools could have certainly proved useful in the woods and each had their pros and cons. But in the Neolithic I doubt there was much debate on the utility of a good polished axe.

    Hafted axe from Neolithic Denmark, discovered in Stormose near Borum, Aarhus, during peat digging in 1946. Photograph by R. N. Johansen, Moesgaard Museum.

    The Neolithic Package

    Complex and time consuming products like polished stone axes were pointed to by archeologist Vere Gordon Childe as part of his “neolithic package”. Technological and cultural tools that he believed arrived in Europe from the East creating the neolithic revolution and urbanization. The specifics of this are now heavily debated but the axes themselves remain an example of the craftsmanship of ancient peoples and prehistoric long distance trade.
    A photograph taken of the noted archaeologist and socialist V. Gordon Childe, circa 1930s. Swan Watson, Andrew – The National Library of Australia (http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an23815428)

    How they were made

    While there was likely many methods to make stone axes for various purposes or variations by different craftsmen in regions Dr. James Dilley showcases one of the most well researched methods of crafting stone axes. This was done by flaking large pieces of flint or porcellanite into blanks that would be further shaped by grinding the blank against a rough, wet stone until it slowly reached the desired shape.

    How they were used

    Use of stone axes in practice can be much less forgiving and even a bit dangerous for the untrained user, especially when compared to modern steal axes. A bad chop or “side-slap” can easily break the axe so the cuts much be more direct, stone axes also seem to throw chunks of wood more often then steal axes. Larry Kinsella experimental archeologist and woodmen demonstrates how a skilled user can work the axe almost as effectively as a modern axe. Even going so far as to organize events to “chip-a-canoe” to build a canoe from scratch with stone tools.

    How they were traded

    Dr. Peter Rowley-Conwy in his 2011 paper “Westward Ho! The Spread of Agriculture from Central Europe to the Atlantic” discusses how the movement of trade goods like polished axes was extensive especially between settled farmers and hunter-gatherers. With the farmers migrating into Northern Europe with these stone axes, continued trade between the of stone axes between the two groups for thousands of years before the widespread reliance on agriculture in Europe.

    Sources

    Roberts, Patrick, and Mark W. Moore. “Hafted Axe (Replicated).” Museum of Stone Tools, https://stonetoolsmuseum.com/artefact/europe/hafted-axe-replicated/5664/.

    “V. Gordon Childe.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 May 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V._Gordon_Childe.

    Dilley, James. “Porcellanite Axeheads: Neolithic Tools in Northern Ireland.” YouTube, uploaded by AncientCraftUK – Dr. James Dilley, 15 June 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTnu0n11JKY.

    Kinsella, Larry. “Chip-A-Canoe and a Few Blisters Too.” YouTube, uploaded by Cahokia Archaeological Society, 17 Nov. 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT3N0_20d30.

    Rowley-Conwy, Peter. “Westward Ho! The Spread of Agriculturalism from Central Europe to the Atlantic.” Current Anthropology, vol. 52, no. S4, 2011, pp. S431–S451. The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/658368.

    Kinsella, Larry. “Rabbitstick 2012 Axe and Celts.” YouTube, uploaded by Leland Gilsen, 11 June 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvEp6aTZbLk.

  • Why we Need “Primitive Hunters”

    Lithic analysis is one of the most important tools paleo archeologists have in understanding the distant past. This is primarily due to the issues in preservation when looking at human artifacts going back tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years.

    On such large timescales very little remains, bones, stone tools, pottery, occasionally some wood or other biological material but the further down we dig the less we find. This has forced researchers to get creative to make sure we really get the most out of every piece of napped flint we find documenting even the tiniest chips of stone flaked off and discarded by our Paleolithic ancestors. Developing a wide range of methods to study and categorize lithics.

    Archeologists have also developed a many theories on how these stone tools were used for hunting, crafting, and foraging. Among the hunting methods proposed there is a significant amount of scholarship devoted to the concept of “cooperative hunting”. Often this means large groups of hunters driving game, relying primarily on team work, planning and knowledge of the landscape to hunt their query. And this certainly happened, whether it’s a buffalo jump on the great plains of America, corralling gazelle in Jordan or a modern deer drive in Arkansas. Humans tend to be very corporative when hunting big game. But were we always?

    Ryan Gill, Hunt Primitive

    Back home in Texas when we say someone “hunts the old way” we usually mean they don’t use four wheelers and automated game cameras. Sometimes this might also mean they use a muzzle loader or bow. But when I say Mr. Gill “hunts the old way” I mean Paleolithic rock art old! Ryan Gills is the owner of Hunt Primitive, a company aimed at educating and inspiring American to take up hunting by primitive methods. He is part of a growing community of American hunters that are trying to get back to basics so to speak by reviving ancient stone tools, traditional bows, and even atlatls.

    This hobby goes beyond bagging a few rabbits. Two years ago Mr. Gills was able to bring down an American Bison with an atlatl. To my knowledge this is the first time anyone has brought down an animal that size with a Paleolithic toolkit on film. He then went on to process the animal entirely with stone tools.

    For me this really changed the way I look at ancient hunters, if Mr. Gills was able to bring down a bison entirely using Paleolithic tools. What could our ancestors have done. Could they have hunted megafauna solo? Mr. Gills claims they could have, the tools themselves seem perfectly capable of it as his atlatl dart punched right through both sides of the bison.

    Spears, Pikes and UC Berkeley

    Researchers at UC Berkeley suggest that mammoths could have been hunted with long pikes braced against the ground so that charging mammoths would impale themselves. Similar to how pike formations fought off cavalry in the middle ages (Jason Pohl 2024). The idea is that making clovis points took so much effort that it would have been very costly to waste them by throwing unless you could guarantee the kill (Byram, Lightfoot, and Sunseri 2024). And their lab testing indicates they certainly could have killed a mammoth this way, similar methods may have been used in Europe. But possible doesn’t make it practical, we can test these theories in the lab all we like but without real world hunts it’s difficult to know for sure. And without wild mammoths this will likely always be impossible.

    But hope is not lost, in the United States alone we have 3.7 million bow hunters as estimated by the Archery Trade Association. That is 3.7 million potential research assistants that experimental archeologists could draw on. Very few hunt with Paleolithic tools like Mr. Gill but by teaming up with guys like Gill archeologists could help create a small army of experienced woodsmen, armed with Paleolithic toolkits, to go out into the woods and see what works. We might never know how our Paleolithic ancestors hunted whooly mammoths. But we can find out how they hunted whitetail.

    Sources

    Pohl, Jason. “To Kill Mammoths in the Ice Age, People Used Planted Pikes, Not Throwing Spears, Researchers Say.” Berkeley News, 21 Aug. 2024, https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/08/21/to-kill-mammoths-in-the-ice-age-people-used-planted-pikes-not-throwing-spears-researchers-say/.

    Byram, R. Scott, Kent G. Lightfoot, and Jun Ueno Sunseri. “Clovis Points and Foreshafts under Braced Weapon Compression: Modeling Pleistocene Megafauna Encounters with a Lithic Pike.” PLOS ONE, vol. 19, no. 8, 21 Aug. 2024, e0307996. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307996.

    Gasaway, Cassie. “2021 State-by-State Hunting Data, 3.7 Million Bowhunters in America.” Archery Trade Association, 16 Mar. 2022, https://archerytrade.org/2021-state-by-state-hunting-data-3-7-million-bowhunters-in-america/.

    Gill, Ryan. “Meet Ryan Gill.” Gill’s Primitive Archery, https://gillsprimitivearchery.com/about/. Accessed 10 May 2025.

    Gill, Ryan. “Clovis Bison Hunt & Butcher (Newer).” HuntPrimitive, 13 Jul. 2023. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2egufzDHok.