Professional Flint Knapper Karl Lee gives us a demonstration of the art of creating tools from flint

This is a 'raw' fling nodule

He uses different hammer stones to carefully break of flakes

This enables him to shape the stone into the desired tool

There are different shaped tools from different periods of time

He can use hard stone hammers or soft antler ones to break the flint in different ways

These are 'mesolithic' blades

and this is the core they came from. It is similar to that found on the Broadway fieldwalk

view of all the waste flakes and hammers

We all had a go at making a hide scrapper

its not as easy as it looks, but we all produced workable tools

We then had an optional demonstration of how flint blades were used to skin and butcher animals. ( part of a munjack deer and a rabit were used)

The flint cut through the meat easier than a metal knife

Some WYAC members wanted to try ( we washed our hands afterwards!!)

We even used our scrappers that we made to scrape a real hide.

The flint blades were used to cut reeds too

An exersise in gathering resources from the woods was both fun and supprisingly informative

Look at our wonderful harvest, evering thing from hazel nuts to pine resin.

we even used waterside reeds and weaved them into mats and baskets.