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Preparation is key - Ep 8
684 Plays2 years ago
In this episode of Tea-break Time Travel, Matilda chatted with archaeologist Pir Hoebe all about his research looking at flint blade technology. The theme of the episode, as the title suggests, is preparation. How do you prepare a flint nodule to create a flint blade? How do you prepare for your own research into prehistoric technologies? How do you prepare for a PhD? To learn all these things and more, check out the latest episode!
Links
- Study looking at back-hafted blades
- The final masters thesis discussed in the episode is not yet published, but if anyone would like to learn more about it, Pir is happy to be contacted via the information below
- Pir Hoebe
Academia: www.rug.academia.edu/PirHoebe
Twitter: @pirhoebe
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Tea Break Time Travel'
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to Tea Break Time Travel, where every month we look at a different archaeological object and take you on a journey into their past.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to episode eight of Tea Break
Meet the Hosts: Matilda & Pierre
00:00:20
Speaker
Time Travel. I'm your host, Matilda Ziebrecht, and today I am savoring a black vanilla tea, very, very simple. And joining me on my tea break today is fellow archaeologist, Pierre Huber. And what are you drinking today? You're also on tea, the Dutch are famous tea drinkers, so I imagine you have tea. Yeah, I'm actually drinking Yorkshire tea, black tea as well. Even better, you're getting into the full spirit of things.
00:00:43
Speaker
Yeah, I visited Yorkshire this summer and I brought home some souvenirs, including a big carton of black tea. I found it really funny, actually, because to me, the British were always like the quintessential tea drinkers and it was a really big thing that like the British are tea drinkers and that's what it is. But then actually, when I moved to the Netherlands, apparently the Dutch are the largest consumers of tea in the world, which I don't know. Really? Yeah. I mean, you have a lot of teas.
00:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, I guess, yeah. We also drink a lot of coffee. That's true. So up there in... Hot beverages in general. Yeah, yeah, hot beverages in general, maybe.
00:01:25
Speaker
Okay, so we've established we're both tea drinkers, that's good.
How People Enter Archaeology
00:01:28
Speaker
And indeed, the Dutch just enjoy drinking hot beverages in general. But we are not here to talk about tea, even though I think that that would make a fantastic podcast episode. We are here to talk about traveling back in time or archaeology more specifically. And I always find people always ask, how do I get into archaeology? How does one become an archaeologist? And every single person I've had on so far has a different story. So to keep in line with that, what is your story? How did you
00:01:54
Speaker
get introduced to the world of archaeology. Yeah, so actually, as a child, I was already doing stuff like burying roadkill and digging up the bones. Really? Okay, sorry, I wasn't expecting that. Like, I was already interested in like, the history of things. Okay. Yeah, very specific, maybe a little bit dark, but no, it was archaeology. Was that just like,
00:02:21
Speaker
Well, the digging part was already something that I was interested in, apparently. And I think I was mostly inspired by things like Jurassic Park, which, of course, it's not archaeology. Let me stress that here again. That's paleontology. Yeah, so already had an interest in history for a long time as a child. And I remember visiting the hearts in Germany.
00:02:49
Speaker
With my parents, we went fossil hunting, we visited the Neanderthal, and also the Neanderthal Museum, of course. So I think that was an important spark for me, developing my interest. And then when I went on to choose my studies in university,
00:03:11
Speaker
I didn't really know very clearly what I wanted to do, but I looked around and archaeology was one of the options in Groningen and it just really clicked. It was combining a lot of my interests, like I was interested in history, sociology, these kinds of things, but also in, you know, like doing practical stuff, excavating, working with material. That really appealed to me. So that's why I chose it and I never looked back.
00:03:38
Speaker
That's true. Actually, archaeology is that fantastic combination of like it has all of the theory and you can just do theoretical stuff if you want to, but then it's also really practically focused as well. Yeah, exactly. And I remember going to these different orientation days at university when I was still in high school. Yeah, a lot of the things that I was interested in just involves
00:04:04
Speaker
only reading, a lot of reading. And archaeology does involve a lot of reading, but yeah, just combining that with some practical stuff really appealed to me. Out of curiosity, has your thoughts of what archaeology is changed a lot since that initial time when you first were interested in it? Yeah, definitely. It's a difficult question, actually. I really have to go back to when I was 18, which is 13 years ago.
00:04:34
Speaker
I don't really remember what I thought archaeology was at the time. I think I had quite a romantic idea about it, especially about commercial archaeology. I thought it would be very adventurous, but in reality it can be quite...
00:04:54
Speaker
How do you say it? It's adventurous, we'll stick with that. It was similar for me a little bit because I think I actually was reluctant to get into archaeology because to me it was very like classics focused and very kind of I had that view of it you know the sort of oh you have to know the Bible back to front and you know all of this kind of stuff that was sort of what I thought of as archaeology but actually
Exploring Archaeological Periods
00:05:21
Speaker
since I've realised that it's more about a way of thinking and a way of interpreting the world. And yeah, it's a lot better than I initially thought it was, which is nice. Yeah, I remember early on in my studies, or even when I started out, I already was interested mostly in prehistory.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah, also because you can really explore things that are not written down yet anywhere. You deal with stuff that's completely new to anyone, I suppose.
00:05:55
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like I'm biasing people's perception of archaeology through this podcast because I just realized that I think all of my guests have pretty much, we've talked about prehistoric objects, which there are lots of other very interesting, I need to make sure to get some medievalists and things on. Yeah, yeah. And I think particularly later periods are very interesting for archaeology because you can combine
00:06:21
Speaker
you know, like stuff from the written source material with findings from the field. And that, yeah, that can be very interesting, complimentary or contrasting. Yeah. And the, I mean, because yes, you have this written sources. And I always say, Oh, I love prehistory, because we don't have the written sources. So, you know, it's sort of more imaginative. But actually, the written sources are also very biased, right? Because they were written by people who had an opinion. So it's another form of interpreting objects, I suppose, in a way as well. So, yeah.
00:06:51
Speaker
Still, I love prehistory, but obviously historic period is very interesting as well, which leads nicely actually into my next question, which is, if you could travel back in time, as the podcast series suggests, is the theme of this podcast, where would you go and why? Yeah,
Mesolithic to Neolithic Transition
00:07:08
Speaker
I think this is a very difficult question, because every time period probably has its struggles, right? But I think just
00:07:19
Speaker
to satisfy my curiosity, I think I would like to go to the late Mesolithic, to the early Neolithic transition in the Netherlands to see how hunter-gatherers and early farmers interacted in this region.
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah. And also because I think this period in the Netherlands or in Northwest Europe in general was a period in which you know, like natural resources were very abundant. And, you know, I think I think if you would be able to join a group
00:07:53
Speaker
At that, in that time, you would live comfortably. Hopefully. Do you think that you would, you would survive well if you were put into, like, Mesolithic or Neolithic life? Not on my own, no.
00:08:09
Speaker
I would definitely need to join a group of hunter-gatherers or early farmers and make myself useful somehow. It's always my thought. I'd love to think that I could just go back and then, you know, slide seamlessly into society, but I'd probably be that, you know, person that they all have to look after and would eventually just be kind of left behind somewhere because they can't be bothered anymore.
00:08:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think your skill levels would be like that of a child at the time. Like you really have to get a tutor to learn everything. All of the practical skills that you don't know, you don't know any of the plant names and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Well, so then maybe later periods would be better for me actually, because I could just be, you know, a high born lady and not do anything or whatever. Just kind of live the easy life. But anyway,
00:08:58
Speaker
Which just shows how much I know about medieval life, because who knows if that was actually the case. Okay, well, thank you very much for joining me on my tea break today. And before we focus on today's object, let's first journey back, of course, around 7,000 years this time. The exact date is not very important, because the object that we're looking for on this particular journey was around for a very, very long time.
00:09:22
Speaker
And we are now in a very rocky landscape, cliffs and peaks sweeping up to meet the dusk street sky and down into the darkening valley below. The air is crisp and dry, but it's also filled with the scent of wood smoke.
Crafting Flint Blades
00:09:33
Speaker
We turn and see a small group of people, all of them gathered around a small fire. They're trying to make the most of these final hours of fading sunlight to finish off a couple of tasks.
00:09:42
Speaker
One is examining a piece of flint, turning it slowly in one hand and holding a large, slightly rounded pebble in the other. Fragments of flint are mixed in with the grass and stone around their feet. After a minute of examination, the figure grunts and settles the flint down against their thigh, raising the pebble in the other hand. The hand moves slowly up.
00:10:00
Speaker
and down, gauging the distance and force required, before striking suddenly downwards. There's a loud and beautifully pitched crack, and a perfect segment of flint breaks off. The hits continue, interspersed with many examinations, turning, grunting, until what's left is a relatively small, thin piece of flint, with a central ridge tapering down into sharp edges. By this time, the light is fading into dusk, and the figure decides to give up for the day, storing their creation carefully in a small leather pouch on their belt.
00:10:26
Speaker
Now, I, of course, may have got all of this completely wrong in terms of how you create these objects, but today we are looking at flint blade technology. And we'll get into the details soon, but as always, I had to have a look at the most asked questions on the internet, courtesy of Google search autofill. There were actually a surprisingly small amount of questions about flint blades. I guess they're not something that people look up a lot.
00:10:50
Speaker
But I came up with a couple. The first one was, what were flint blades used for? Nice and simple question. Obviously a very easy answer, right, Pierre?
00:10:58
Speaker
Yeah, actually, I'm not surprised that it's not a very popular search term, because this is quite niche. But yeah, flint blades were obviously used for their cutting edge, right? You already illustrated very nicely that a flint blade will taper down into a sharp edge. Yeah, you could use a flint blade for cutting anything, cutting plant materials, butchering animals.
00:11:25
Speaker
And you don't necessarily need a blade for that. You could use any flake. But preparing flint during the knapping process so that you can make blades will allow you to get a standardized form for all of your tool production as well. So we're often used as blanks.
00:11:46
Speaker
to make arrowheads out of them, barbs or tools like scrapers or burins, which were used to work hide or bone or antler. Okay. So they were almost like a starting piece to potentially be transformed into something else.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think in Flint's terminology, we usually talk about blades as just a specific type of flake, which is a flake that is roughly twice as long as it is wide. And we also imply with using the word blade that some type of systematic way of producing them was used. So you can sort of accidentally create a blade while napping flakes.
00:12:33
Speaker
But, you know, we tend to think of a blade production as a systematic thing, you know, like, you prepare a core, you know, piece of flint into a core, and then you nap it in a certain way so that you can create a series of blades, which you can then use as knives or as blanks for other tools. Yeah.
00:12:54
Speaker
Okay, interesting. So they really were just a very diverse and kind of multi faceted haha excuse the pun. Okay, that's very interesting. And I imagine them because they could be used for so many things. The next question is, are flint blades strong, which I imagine the answer is yes. Or are they not considered the strongest of tools?
00:13:18
Speaker
Yeah, they're very strong. They're actually the correct term is that they're very hard. So you have this scale of hardness called the Mohs scale. And that goes from one to 10, in which 10 is, you know, like very hard material such as diamond.
00:13:35
Speaker
And flint is about as hard as a steel nail, about six or seven on the scale of Mohs. But it is very brittle, so you can easily snap a flint blade or it can break when you use it to work antler, for example. If you put pressure on it, it can splinter. But it is very hard.
00:13:59
Speaker
is it the kind of object that you, because it's sort of a very specific shape, is it the kind of object that you also see it being like retouched a lot and kind of adapted to still be a blade, but just a different kind of blade? Or is it the kind of object that once the edges has chipped off or once it's broken in a particular way, it can't be used for anything anymore?
00:14:20
Speaker
you use a blade to create different tools. You are retouching it basically into the shape that is desired. So for example, you'll blunt one edge to make a scraper out of it. But once it's been bruised, you can't really use it that well for cutting anymore. It's the most sharp. If you want to use a blade for cutting, it's the most sharp just after it was snapped. And if you've been using it for a while and it's been bruised and it's been sort of
00:14:49
Speaker
Blunted, it's no use to kind of try to sharpen it again or something. You'll just use a different flake or blade to cut with. Okay. Which is nice though, that if you have your, you know, lovely blade that you've spent time creating, and then you accidentally break one edge or something, you can just make it into something else and that it's still useful, which is a nice, nice recycling, I guess.
00:15:14
Speaker
And then the final question, which I guess we've already touched on a little bit, but maybe you could go into a tiny bit more detail, is how do you make a flint blade? So you've mentioned the terms napping, flint napping. I assume that probably most of the people listening do understand what that is, but imagine for a second that I am a complete archaeological novice. I have no idea about flint. Could you maybe provide a very kind of simple overview of how you might create a flint blade?
00:15:43
Speaker
Yeah, so you need two elements. You need a piece of flint, obviously, and you need some kind of hammer, which can be a pebble, so a hammer stone, or maybe an antler hammer.
00:15:57
Speaker
And what happens if you just strike a piece of flint with a hammer, you will create a flake, which is just a broad piece of flint with a sharp edge, which is fine. But if you want to create blades, you will need to do a lot more preparation. And the main things you need to prepare is a platform that will have an acute edge. So you need something like 70 degree edge with the rest of the core.
00:16:25
Speaker
And then you will have to prepare some kind of ridge on the working face of the piece of flint because if you strike a piece of flint, the energy of the strike will sort of travel through the material because the material is very homogenous and it has the same properties in every direction. So basically every product from a strike to a piece of flint will sort of
00:16:51
Speaker
be, it will sort of follow the fracture dynamics, if you understand what I mean. So it will create a conchoidal fracture and then that will split off. So you need to prepare a ridge, which is called a crest.
00:17:10
Speaker
if you want to create a very long conchoidal fracture along this piece of flint. And if you've managed to get the first bit off, the first blade off, which will be a crested blade, then you will have two ridges from the negative of that blade. And then you can use those ridges as starting points to nab off your second and third blade, and then you'll have more ridges to work from. So that's kind of the
00:17:39
Speaker
process for blade production. And it involves a lot of corrections, you know, so you have to sort of keep that platform at the right angle, especially if you've been napping for a while, you'll sort of damage the edge of the platform. So you need to do a lot of work in between.
00:17:58
Speaker
which I admit is something that I just could never get the hang of while laughing. I think it's just because I'm so impatient and it would be like, but I don't like, you know, you have, like you say, you have to do 10 steps before you can do the first kind of preparatory thing. And I was just like, no, but I want to do it now. Which is, well, I think we'll talk about that a little more later. So I won't go into too much detail now. But yeah, so it basically, it's not,
00:18:22
Speaker
you mentioned before flakes sometimes being similar to flip blades or vice versa, or you can make a blade from a flake. But indeed, it's not just hitting it and hoping that something nice comes off, you have to prepare it a lot is what you're saying. So yeah, it requires a lot of insight into
00:18:38
Speaker
how fracture mechanics work and how this particular piece of flint has to be prepared because every piece of flint is different. It will have weird knobs or weird shapes and you have to nab off the right bits to create that pre-form.
00:18:56
Speaker
Okay, well, thank you for that. So, we know a little bit more about sort of basics of flint blades, but maybe you could tell us even more about this subject. I mean, it sounds like it's a subject that you could probably write volumes on, and I'm sure people have. But for this section, let's talk a little bit more about it.
00:19:16
Speaker
Flint blades have been around, I guess, quite a long time because they seem such a nice versatile object. But when do they sort of first appear in the archaeological record? What's kind of the oldest date that we have for Flint blades?
00:19:28
Speaker
Yeah, so I have to admit, I'm mostly focused on Northwest Europe, but I did do a little bit of research to prepare for this question. And I did see that actually the earliest evidence for flame blades seems to be in South Africa. That's around 500,000 years ago. Wow. So that's very, very early. Yeah. And this type of
00:19:55
Speaker
Flintnapping, this style of technology, was probably lost and rediscovered several times, right? So for example, in Europe, it appears with the early modern humans, the Aurignacian culture, but it's also seen on sites of the latest Neanderthals, so the Mysterian culture. And that's around 40,000 years ago.
00:20:22
Speaker
Okay, but so I mean, they've been around for nearly as long as stone tools then I imagine. Yeah, yeah, probably. Yeah. Okay.
Blade Technology: A Cultural Marker
00:20:30
Speaker
Well, it's probably not the earliest, like the earliest stone tools were flakes and they're not as old, like blade technology is not as old as hand axe technology, for example, but it's quite old. Yeah.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah, okay. Which is funny because I would imagine that... Don't worry, I'm not going to quiz you about hand axes now. Please don't. I'm just thinking about it because to me a hand axe seems like a much more complicated object to make. So the fact that they were around before blades, but then I guess, yeah, it's just what you need and what survives as well, I suppose, in the ground.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah, but I think that's interesting. I don't know if it is more complicated. I think both are kind of difficult. I think the preparation stage for making flint blades kind of resembles making a hand axe kind of, right? You have to do this
00:21:22
Speaker
alternating flaking to create this ridge that you can start the first blade from. But I think the point is really that these are
00:21:36
Speaker
Yeah, different styles of technology that you learn from your teachers, from your parents, from your kin. And if your group just doesn't do blades, then you won't learn about blades. Yeah, which actually is interesting that you mentioned that. So I mean, obviously, we've talked a little bit about, you know, how you would define a blade and that kind of thing. But indeed, if they if they're around for such a long time, and
00:21:59
Speaker
there in so many different parts of the world, can you identify almost like styles or kind of cultural development in blade technology or that kind of thing? Or is it sort of homogenous in terms of how you would define a blade kind of thing? Or how they appear, should we say? Yeah, so I actually did, this was kind of the topic of my master thesis research. Oh, would you look at that?
00:22:26
Speaker
Very specifically on the late Paleolithic of the Netherlands. Yeah, so the differences you'll see in napping, styles of napping blades are quite subtle, but you can see differences. And I think the assumption here is that since people learn things in like a social context,
00:22:51
Speaker
especially practices like napping, will resemble the practices of people that they are close to. Because at a certain time, you'll have a certain community of practice, which is just a fancy way of saying there was a certain way we did things. Right?
00:23:14
Speaker
Yeah, you learn how to make a certain thing and you will do it that way because you learned it's that way and you'll do it in the same way as your grandfather did or your grandmother did and you'll do it the same way as your cousins over in the next village did it.
00:23:38
Speaker
Yeah, that's kind of the big assumption there. And so in that way, you could use napping style or just the whole production process as
00:23:51
Speaker
kind of a marker to study cultural change over time. Because in the period that I was interested in during my master thesis, which is the late Paleolithic, as I mentioned, you have these styles developing in, for example, arrowheads, which we use to sort of divide the material culture that we find in North West Europe.
00:24:18
Speaker
I will have to go into what these arrowheads looked like maybe. So all of these arrowheads were made on blades. And there were different ways in which they were made. So some of the groups were using the arrowheads as like a barb. So they would make kind of like a triangular edge. And some of them were used in a, yeah, just as the point.
00:24:46
Speaker
of the arrow and they were sort of tanked in a certain way so that you could shaft them into the arrow shaft. I think that styles like that in the way you create something like an arrowhead is a bit more subject to change and you can change it more
00:25:05
Speaker
because it may be seen as like a cultural marker, right? So you can see like, oh, these this group that comes in from abroad, let's say they use arrowheads this way, we can do that as well, or oh, we want to be more like them. So let's
00:25:22
Speaker
you know, like do it in the same way, you know, like these kind of things can happen, which is called... About to say, now we're getting into proper theoretical vocabulary. Right. Yeah. So this is like, like lateral... Transmission? Yeah. Yeah. A lateral transmission. I'm trying to remember. I did this a lot. I can know this stuff.
00:25:44
Speaker
Which just goes to show people that are listening in. I mean, you can say things in a very nice clear way, but sometimes if you want to make sure that the theories and the concepts that you're talking about are universally understood, you have to use these slightly complicated terms such as lateral transmission. Yeah, which is just a fancy word of, you know, like, aping other people, right? Doing the same thing as your neighbor. That would be so much better.
00:26:12
Speaker
It would definitely cut down the word count, which would be great. And do you see, because with the arrowheads, I guess it's more like you say, you have all these different shapes and things. Different blades though, because I mean, at least in my mind, I'm seeing them as all roughly the same kind of shape, but do you also see variation in that sort of visual perception, typological kind of view of it, or is it more subtle than that?
00:26:38
Speaker
Yeah, I'll get into that, but first I'll have to sort of do a bit of a preamble about what I was trying to look at. Sorry.
00:26:51
Speaker
So my goal for my thesis was to kind of place a particular cultural group in the Netherlands in the context of like the groups that we have in at the same time in the Netherlands and in Germany and more to the south, because this particular group looked very much the same as like the German Hamburgian.
00:27:17
Speaker
When you say looked the same, sorry, what do you mean? Sorry, yeah. This is my own curiosity as well. So exactly in the way you just asked, like the shape of the blades. Just the shape of the blades and the way they were napping blades, similar to the Hamburgian culture.
00:27:40
Speaker
Okay. That we have in Germany and Denmark and Poland and also in the Netherlands. But this group in the Netherlands was making arrowheads in the way they did in England. Very similar to what was called the Kraswellian culture, which is now called the late Magdalenian. Again, good old vocabulary. Yeah, there we go. This is getting very specific.
00:28:09
Speaker
It is just funny because it is, I think, a perfect demonstration of why there are so many definitions and terminology in archaeology. It's just something that inevitably you have to come up with at some point. And actually the terminology, it's part of what's interesting here because
00:28:25
Speaker
the reason why it's now called the British Late Magdalenean in Britain and no longer the Crosswellian is because the sites in England at that time are so similar to the French material in terms of how they were doing
00:28:42
Speaker
you know, like the style of napping blades, that they were saying like, okay, actually, we, there is not enough reason to separate these as two different cultures. But the Dutch material doesn't have the same way of napping as the English or so it's not called the Dutch Magdalenian.
00:29:01
Speaker
No, but both the Hamburgian and the British late Magdalenian have their origin in the French Magdalenian or in like the Magdalenian of central Europe. So yeah, so that's kind of what we're looking at at that time is two different migration routes into the north.
00:29:22
Speaker
because these groups were sort of splitting up at the end of the Ice Age. So the last Ice Age sort of warmed up a little bit towards the end. So around 15,000 years ago, it started to become a lot warmer and the tundras were expanding
00:29:44
Speaker
So people that were up until then restricted to South Germany and France could now move into the North. So they could move into like North Germany, into Denmark, but first they moved into Britain, to the West around 15,500 years ago. And about a thousand years later, they moved also from the East of Central Europe into like the Northeast, so into,
00:30:12
Speaker
North Germany. And these two different groups, they sort of found each other, I think, in the Netherlands. But hey, you again. How was your trip? I thought it was great. Yeah, so I think that was kind of my goal to sort of understand this
00:30:35
Speaker
group of sites that we have in the Netherlands that have these British style of making arrowheads and this sort of Eastern style of napping flints. Right? Interesting. That's really fascinating and
Raw Material & Blade Production
00:30:49
Speaker
nice. It's a perfect example of how
00:30:51
Speaker
Yeah, changes in technology can show you not just development over time in one place, but indeed how people actually came into contact with each other. Because like you say, if people were learning from their grandfather, and you know, person A learns from their grandfather, and person B learns from their grandfather, if those two then meet up and have a kid, who will person C, you know, what will their style look like, you know, it will be, I guess, a sort of mix or something.
00:31:15
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And so this was quite difficult to do because it required a lot of statistics doing all of these little measurements on like a sample of blades from each side. So I looked at things that happen during the fracturing process, right, the way you hit a piece of flint.
00:31:39
Speaker
it will create different details on the platform and below the platform in the way. So looking at how each flint was made, basically, how each blade was made, I mean. Yeah, it's kind of an interplay of preparation, the hardness of the hammer, and also the way it was swung and the force that was used. This will all have some kind of effect on the way the flint blade looks.
00:32:09
Speaker
That's really cool, though, that you can see so much detail about that. Well, you can't sort of parse all of those details, but it will all have sort of an influence on the conchoidal fracture. The flake that comes off is the conchoidal fracture, right? Yes, good.
00:32:29
Speaker
As it sort of hits, it will create a bulb and a scar and maybe a lip at the start of the... So these three things can sort of be scored and you can sort of do statistics on the differences between assemblages in that way. And also it's a lot of refitting, which is just taking all of the
00:32:52
Speaker
blades and flakes and the cores from a site and putting them on the table and just starts puzzling. Because basically all of the stuff you find on a site, it probably all came from a couple of chunks of lint, right? If they were napping on that site, they should in theory all fit together if they didn't take a lot of stuff away, which they did. So usually it doesn't all fit together.
00:33:22
Speaker
Yeah, but this refitting, it does allow you sort of to follow the thought process of the napper. It allows you to see what kind of actions were done first and later and to see what kind of preparation they did. So that's kind of what I did to sort of characterize these different sites.
00:33:44
Speaker
Okay, very interesting. Which I guess is also a nice way to see indeed how, like you were saying, all the different preparation and everything. This is reminding me, I can't remember who it is. Someone makes beautiful like little arrowhead displays, but they frame the arrowhead, but then they also include all of the flakes that are created through creating the arrowhead, like all of the tiny little, you know, not retouch. What's the word when you're pressing with an apple a bit on the edge to make it nice and sharp? Yeah, the pressure flakes.
00:34:14
Speaker
Yeah, pressure flakes, like all of those bits that come off and everything. And it's so interesting because you have this relatively small little arrowhead and then just like 100 flakes around it which came off during the whole manufacturing process, which I think is a really nice way indeed of kind of visualizing that idea that we were talking about earlier of the fact that these relatively simple looking objects actually need a hell of a lot of preparation to create. Yeah, that's really cool. I think I've seen that before, but I don't
00:34:41
Speaker
Don't remember who did it. Oh, Ancient Craft, that was it. Oh, okay, Ancient Craft, yeah. It's your UK-based... Yeah, right, I follow them on Instagram, I think. Yes, exactly. For the listener, this might be a little bit confusing because you're referring now to pressure flaked arrowheads, which were nuts.
00:34:57
Speaker
True, which is something different. Yes, in this period, they're made out of flakes. Yeah. But these are just simply blades that are retouched in a certain shape. Yeah. Although, yeah, which you then also, I think in Leiden they did one, someone did an example, they had a big glass core and then they made a bunch of blades out of it and then stuck them all back together to show the original core shape. Obviously you had like,
00:35:23
Speaker
it wasn't perfectly together because you had all these smaller edges that had been removed during the blade creation process. But that was also really interesting to see this idea that you were talking about earlier of preparing the core. And then from that, as long as you hit the first one correctly, you can just go doo doo doo doo doo and create a bunch of little ones, which is cool.
00:35:42
Speaker
That's really cool, yeah, because it's so translucent, you could see all the way through the refit. That would be really nice to see. Yeah, it's very cool. Is it a display cabinet somewhere in Leiden University? Oh, OK, yeah. So if you ever doubt. Not seen it.
00:35:58
Speaker
But yeah, okay, no, very cool. So what was your result? I mean, did you see that there was indeed those same similarities, not similarities, the kind of evidence of the, what's it called? Lateral transmission that we had?
00:36:13
Speaker
Yeah, so I think it was quite difficult to argue either way what happened because what I found basically is that the biggest difference was between the Magdalenian side that I looked at from the southern Netherlands and between the Hamburgian and Creswellian together. Okay.
00:36:37
Speaker
And my theory for what's the biggest factor in the difference in napping style is just the availability of raw material. So in the Northern Netherlands and in North Germany as well.
00:36:53
Speaker
All of the flints that's available comes from secondary deposits. So it's flint that has been transported during the ISH by the ice sheet. So the ice sheet sort of pushed all of this material from Scandinavia into Northwest Europe.
00:37:11
Speaker
including like huge boulders that were later in the Neolithic used to make grave monuments, you know, like the Hünebergen, the Dolmen, but also lots of flint. But because of this very slow transporting process, these
00:37:28
Speaker
flints were sort of banged around and you know like they were also in permafrost which was thawing and then freezing again thawing again so there's lots of little ice cracks in there so it all of the material that's available in the north
00:37:46
Speaker
is just a lot smaller than what you can get in the south where the flint is in its primary context. So in the in the chalk layers where you can just get a huge bit of flint out of there and you can prepare it any way you want.
00:38:04
Speaker
And you can make use of like a very long piece of flint to make very long blades. And that's what they were doing in the Magdalenian and also in the Magdalenian in Britain. They were using these very big chunks of flint and they were working them from two sides to make very long blades. And they were preparing for each blade. They were preparing sort of a platform in a very specific way. So it sort of jutted out in a certain way. You could use that.
00:38:34
Speaker
to sort of make sure that the force of the blow would just travel in a straight line down through the core. So you got very long, very straight blades. And that's what's very characteristic of the late Magdalenian. But they were also using other strategies for smaller pieces of flint and
00:38:55
Speaker
that didn't involve a lot of platform preparation at all. And that's what you see in North Germany, in the Hamburgian, and also in the Cross Valley and in the Netherlands. So I think that, yeah, just raw material is just the biggest factor. Yeah, because it's funny, you sort of think about it, I was just trying to think and it's like, oh, if you have like a plentiful supply of good quality Flint, you know, from the kind of raw deposit, the primary deposits rather than stuff that's already been banged around a lot.
Continuity of Flint Blades
00:39:24
Speaker
then maybe you'd be kind of less care, you know, you wouldn't worry as much because it's like, ah, but it's, it's bound to be fine if I hit it in this way, because it doesn't have these fractures and everything. But then at the same time, you have this really nice big bit of flint, you don't want to mess it up, you know, not do it correctly. So yeah, I guess both both sides would have an argument of how much careful preparation you would want to do for each thing.
00:39:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So the whole enigma of the Dutch cross valley and is unsolved still. And it probably would be very difficult to solve it because it's already been discussed for, you know, like 70 years or something longer. So well, if anyone listening, you know, feels inspired to start their own project on this subject, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of things. But I did find some, you know, like,
00:40:17
Speaker
the way of flint knapping and some sites that are later, at the end of the hamburian, for example, you've got some sites where they have good raw material and they are using this kind of classic Mackelanian way of knapping. So it doesn't seem like this knowledge was lost. Yeah. So this is kind of interesting. But yeah, so that's kind of...
00:40:42
Speaker
A very, very long answer to the question. No, no, it was really interesting. Well, I think this is nice because it shows indeed how, you know, just looking at something as allegedly simple as a flint blade can already show stuff like people moving around in the past and how people were learning new things and how people were transmitting knowledge to next generation. So I think that it's nice to go into more detail about this kind of thing with something like this technology.
00:41:08
Speaker
But I'm curious, so, I mean, Flints, we know that they were around for a long time, if they kind of, the Flintblades, I mean, if the sort of earliest examples of them come from these African sites, so long ago, 500,000 years ago, did you say? Yeah, yeah, apparently. Wow. I mean, when would they used up until, I mean, they sound like a great tool. Are people still using them or sort of when did they start falling out of fashion, shall we say? Right. I don't think they ever went out of fashion.
00:41:38
Speaker
what did happen is there were different ways of different snapping styles that sort of developed. So for example, in the Mesolithic, you'll get more indirect percussion, which they would use like, they would take the piece of flint and they would use like a, an antler
00:41:58
Speaker
time, like a bit of antler to place it where they want to strike it. And then they would strike that instead of like a chisel kind of thing rather than right? Yeah, exactly. So they would use like a kind of like a chisel and sort of strike the the core indirectly. So you could so you could control
00:42:20
Speaker
more precisely where you want the force sort of to enter the flint chunk. So that's indirect napping. And then you have pressure flaking, which you already talked a little bit about. But you can also use pressure flaking in a very weird way to create very small blades.
00:42:43
Speaker
And this is where you would put like a piece of a very small core, you would put it in like a vice.
00:42:51
Speaker
And you sort of use a very long stick and put the pressure of your upper body onto it. I've seen someone do this and it's incredible. I don't understand how you can take such a small piece of fli- and like a long stick. I mean, it's like, I don't know, it's like threading a needle from a meter away using a, like a long straight bit of thin wire or something. Like to me, that's how it seems.
00:43:20
Speaker
like it's so you have to yeah that I was amazed when I saw that it is quite amazing how they do that and I that's the Mesolithic and still in the Neolithic of course that we're using flint blades as well and I think even up until the Bronze Age right yeah and
00:43:42
Speaker
Yeah, even in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in the Netherlands, they were still using flint sometimes. But what's more popular in these later periods, at least in Northern Europe, is this pressure flaking that we talked about earlier. So they make these very elaborate daggers and flint arrowheads by just pressure flaking all over the surface of the object, right?
00:44:10
Speaker
Which one of the theories around that is that it was to sort of show off how good you were at flint working, right? Like it doesn't necessarily have to be a functional object. It was just a, oh, look how gorgeous this flint object is that I've made. This is something you see in every period. I think there's some very interesting examples of that. So there's this one example of a hand axe where they sort of
00:44:34
Speaker
flaked it in such a way that this fossilized piece of shell is just in the center of the hand axe, right? So that's something from in the ender fall site, I think. And I think in the Upper Paleolithic in France, they were doing these very unnecessarily long blades, so they were making flint blades that were up to 50 centimeters long or something. Wow.
00:45:02
Speaker
And that's not functional at all. It was just to sort of show off. Be like, look at me. I can do this without breaking it. Yeah. Of course, it's functional in the sense that you can break them up. Yeah, yeah. Make it some mini mini blades. Well, because I think it's Mitchell of Web, which are British comedy duo, did this whole comedy thing about like the Bronze Age has arrived now.
Stone Age to Bronze Age: A Comedic View
00:45:23
Speaker
And it's like, what do you do? It's like, I'm a flint mapper. Oh, sorry. We don't need to be in the Bronze Age. What else can you do? It's like, I don't know.
00:45:31
Speaker
Obviously, it could happen that quickly, but it is funny to think of all these Neolithic flip nappos and it's the Bronze Age and they're like, but look, I can make a pretty dagger. Yeah, I love that sketch. That's incredible. And the other one is like, oh, does bronze still need tying to sticks? He's like, yeah, of course. Great.
00:45:56
Speaker
There's also an art of an animations film that came out a few years ago called Early Man or something, I think. And it's sort of similar. It's like they have a Stone Age tribe and then the Bronze Age has arrived and you've got like the evil Bronze Age people moving in and trying to cut down their woods. And it's very funny. Well, they got that part right. The Bronze Age people were evil.
00:46:23
Speaker
So we did already introduce you and sort of your background in archaeology in the first section of this episode. And we heard a lot about your thesis and the research you've done now. But maybe we can go into a little detail about sort of your own personal experience.
00:46:35
Speaker
experience with this technology and flint blades in general because we've talked a lot about how you looked a lot at like the different napping techniques and the methods and all of that kind of stuff. So were you like already experienced in napping before you started your own research? Like how was your approach in that respect?
00:46:55
Speaker
No, unfortunately, I was very inexperienced with napping. And I did do a little bit of napping in one of the courses that was offered during the bachelor. And my thesis supervisor does a bit of napping.
Hands-On Archaeology
00:47:10
Speaker
So he showed me in preparation for my thesis, he showed me like the different types of napping blades. And so I had his materials to sort of practice refitting with with as well. So that was very nice. And I did
00:47:23
Speaker
sort of see him work, and I read a lot about napping, so I thought, okay, I'll kind of understand what's happening in the napping process, right? But having learned to nap a little bit better since then, yeah, that sort of really developed my thinking about creating sense. Do you go back to your thesis and go, oh, man, if I'd known then what I knew now?
00:47:52
Speaker
Not necessarily, but I think with the experience of napping, I would have come to conclusions a lot quicker probably. Which is interesting though, because I mean, I think a lot of people assume that in order to research the technology, you do need to be really experienced, like academically, I mean, from an archaeological perspective, you need to already be very experienced in it. And I mean, I work a lot with the Experimental Archaeology Society, and there's so many people who are
00:48:20
Speaker
already, for example, they've been tanning skin since they were five years old, or they've been, you know, working with words since this age, and they just sort of automatically fall into that. But then you have the other side, which are people who maybe aren't very, I mean, they might be crafty, but not particularly prehistoric technology
00:48:37
Speaker
if that makes sense or this type of thing or have that understanding, but still want to look at it. I mean, what are your thoughts on kind of that then having come from, I guess, a little bit that side of things? What would your kind of suggestions or advice be for that? Or, you know, what are your thoughts on that side of things?
00:48:53
Speaker
I think it really, really helps if you have some experience with at least trying to do the thing you are trying to study. Technology, yeah. Just trying for a couple of afternoons.
00:49:09
Speaker
will already give you such a better sense of like what's possible with this material, what makes sense with a certain material. An example of how I sort of developed my thinking in napping flint is that when I was writing my thesis, I was doing this, you know, with mostly a theoretical background. And I was thinking of every piece of flint as an individual action.
00:49:35
Speaker
as like a conscious, a reflection of a conscious action. So each flint is like strike, which someone thinks about, right? Right. But in the process of napping, it's much more like muscle memory, much more sort of unconscious, kind of already knowing where you want to go, what you need to do. It's not very, very conscious at all, right? It's just sort of, yeah.
00:50:04
Speaker
You just know. Well, you don't necessarily know. You just do, kind of. Not everything that's snapped, not every blade or every flake is like a result of a conscious action. Sometimes even one strike will create like a bunch of material at the same time, which you didn't think of.
00:50:28
Speaker
Especially if you're inexperienced. Which could be, you know, a pleasant surprise or a really annoying one.
00:50:37
Speaker
And what's very interesting, because since like last year or something, I've gathered some flint from Germany, and I've learned a little bit of napping from a teacher. And I've been using the napping product as well, like using the flakes and blades to sort of work antler. And that has really made me realize some things about stone tools that I didn't really think about before, right? Because if you just use
00:51:06
Speaker
just take a piece of flint and you want to cut something with it, you definitely don't want a sharp edge cutting into your own skin. Right. Makes a lot of sense. So what you would do then is kind of make that part of the blades blunt.
00:51:24
Speaker
so and that will create a certain shape which we would identify as like a type in archaeology, right? So I think a lot of these types that we find that we define in archaeology are very much just a product of their use which
Reassessing Archaeological Assumptions
00:51:46
Speaker
I mean, that's not something new or anything. But there was this kind of recent, yeah, it was, it just came out like last month, right? This paper about backblades. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, by Justin Pargeiter. I don't know how to pronounce this last time. Pargeiter probably. That's what I would say. Who knows? Yeah. So Justin Pargeiter and colleagues,
00:52:12
Speaker
2022 in Journal of archaeological science reports. And they found through experimental studies that backblades which were often assumed to be hafted that the sort of the blunted bits of the blade was made it better to haft it into like an arrowhead, sorry, into like an arrow shaft.
00:52:34
Speaker
okay so and then it's almost like a long blade along the side kind of thing yeah yeah or like a barb or yeah yeah something like that but they found that that that actually makes it a lot more difficult to halve it
00:52:50
Speaker
having this back bit. So and having a back blade, having this blunted bit at the end, and will make it a lot more easy to sort of use it with your bare hands. Yes. And a cut with it. So I think
00:53:07
Speaker
I think experimental archaeology in combination with use-wear analysis will really make our understanding of material culture a lot better, hopefully. Let's hope so, because that's what I've decided to specialise in. Exactly, yeah. I hope the funding agencies agree.
00:53:29
Speaker
Yeah, no, and I think that's really interesting also that you mentioned that indeed, there's a lot of, I guess, tool types, or, you know, categories and typological categories that have sort of been created over the years of archaeological research that actually could have just been people having a flake that came off a flake module and they were like, oh, but I don't want to cut my finger, you know, like it's, there's so many
00:53:52
Speaker
parts of archaeology that have been so kind of official and I mean we've talked I guess a little bit about that today as well right about the definitions you use and the type of logical categories and the terminology and everything and sometimes I do wonder whether it would be a good idea to just get rid of all that and just look at it in terms of right this this is an item you know like this is an object what could it have been useful why could it have been made and maybe we would actually get very different perspectives on it because of that if that makes sense
00:54:20
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And also just seeing the object as like a combination of things that were done to it to make it useful. So the way it was hafted, for example, if it was sort of retouched to use it for hafting, and the bit that's used for, you know, like cutting or
00:54:43
Speaker
using it as a chisel or something, these kind of elements can also change independently from each other, right? So they might still be the same object, but they change the way it was backed or something, you know, like, so these, these kind of things.
00:54:59
Speaker
different elements can change over time on like the same tool. Yeah. Well, and even the opposite of that, that certain elements that you assume are like, oh yeah, but of course it was like this because of this. And then when you try and use it, you think, huh, actually that doesn't make any sense. Like why on earth, I don't know, I'm doing all of my research on needles at the moment.
00:55:19
Speaker
And there's some things about these bone needles and it's always just been said like, yeah, cool, they were needles and they were probably using them in this way, similar to how we see in the ethnographic study, you know, analogies that we have and all this kind of thing. But actually, if you try and use it in that way, it doesn't work. And, you know, it didn't work for me, but it also didn't work for like the experienced
00:55:39
Speaker
people. So I'm working with paleo-innuit needles for people who don't know already. I think I've mentioned it already in this podcast, but I'm not sure. And I was working this summer with Inuit seamstresses who are very experienced and who maybe haven't used bone needles themselves, but their mothers did and they're the same technique they're using. And yeah, we basically found that there's a lot
00:56:00
Speaker
of assumptions that have been made about these needles that don't really make sense when you try to actually use them yourself. So I think, yeah, I mean, I'm a big advocate of experimental archaeology, but I think that it does. It gives so much more insight into the materials you're using than a purely kind of theoretical understanding of it. Yeah, exactly. And these kind of ideas of how a certain type of tool was used, they usually are just
00:56:27
Speaker
copied and pasted throughout the literature, right? Someone says like, Oh, this is, this is a burent and it was used to sort of, you know, like work bone in this kind of way. That's usually an assumption from the 1950s or something that has just been sort of repeated ever since. Yeah, because they needed an extra hundred words. And now it's the data left.
00:56:53
Speaker
And people will say like, oh yeah, this guy said it was used for this. And yeah, so, and then, you know, it starts to live its own life. But if you actually will start to try things, you might come to very different conclusions. Or if you do use wear. So there's this other example from the Hamburgian, where they have this kind of Buren, which is called a Buren or Zinken in German.
00:57:18
Speaker
And it's, you know, like it's retouched in a certain way on the end. And use where studies actually showed that this end wasn't used to work bone or antler at all, it was just used to halved that bit of the blade. So it was actually just a half the blade probably.
00:57:38
Speaker
But if you would just look at it from a purely typological perspective, then you would say it was a buret. This is basically my thesis. If you want a summary of my thesis, this is it, basically. There's a lot of assumptions, but if we use microwave analysis and experimental archaeology, actually, we see it. I'll bend all of the assumptions.
00:58:02
Speaker
which I think is important to do, though. I don't know. I feel like archaeology is very... I think that there are changes. Obviously, there are changes that are being made, and it is constantly in a bit of a state of development, but I think that a lot of things seem to be still very much stuck in assumptions that, like you say, were made in the early 1900s, and it's just kind of like, oh, yeah, but this is a theory that we use, or this is the...
Adaptability in Academic Archaeology
00:58:29
Speaker
I don't know. I'm trying to think of theoretical examples now, but I can't think of any. But there's sort of all these theories or ways of looking at material and all this kind of stuff, and it's sort of assumed, oh yes, but you have to use one of these theories or one of these approaches, because that's how we've always done it. And then it's like, well, but maybe there's actually a lot more that we can say if we look with a lot fresher perspective.
00:58:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. In a way, this is its own like, entrenched community of practice, right? Right? Yeah. This is the problem. This is the way you do theoretical approach. So eschewing all the theoretical approaches. That is the new theoretical approach.
00:59:10
Speaker
I don't know, I think that this is something that also a lot of people, we were talking at the very beginning about the kind of assumptions of what archaeology is and how our idea of what archaeology is has changed since we started potentially doing archaeology. And this was also a big thing for me was that there's so many, yeah, all the terminology that we've used today, you know, there's kind of so many
00:59:33
Speaker
classificatory terms that need to be used, which makes sense, because it's such an international discipline. And, you know, if everyone used a different term for something, then no one would have a clue what anyone was talking about. So at some point, you have to have these theoretical terms. And I understand that. But that was one thing that really
00:59:50
Speaker
struck me when I started doing it at a further level of research, so we say. So when I got into my masters and when I was reading a lot more papers and all that kind of thing that really got to me. But yeah, which I guess I don't know if you had a similar experience.
01:00:06
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. By the way, for those who are listening, so Pierre and I actually work at the same university. This is how I managed to corner him in the cafeteria one day and say, hey, you know about Flintblades, right? Do you want to come on my podcast and talk about them? And we're both currently conducting our PhD research, although your PhD research is not on Flintblades, right?
01:00:30
Speaker
No, no, not at all. I don't have any material that I look at myself. So that's kind of a bummer for me. My PC is on, it's kind of like a big data approach to the late Paleolithic and Mesolithic. So I'm still focused on the period that I was interested in, but I'm sort of gathering legacy data of all these different sites and sort of bringing that together.
01:00:58
Speaker
Okay, yeah, nice. Which I always find quite interesting. And like people, a couple of people I was talking to recently who are sort of still, they're basically trying to work out what to do for their undergraduates or their bachelor thesis. I was saying like, oh, but you know, I don't know if I want to go in this direction. And I basically said to them, don't worry, like you can change relatively easily, actually, in archaeology, I find as long as you have something that's linked
01:01:23
Speaker
to the topic, you know, where you have some experience in some sort of related concept, be it theoretical or the material or the method, or like you say, the time period in the culture, you know, you can actually change quite a lot. Like, you know, you said your PhD is now in a very different area of study. And I think a lot of people worry about that. So about sort of changing topics during the academic career, or that they might be interested
Advice for PhD Students
01:01:44
Speaker
in something else. But yeah, so do you find, I mean, you said, do you find it a shame that you're not working with Flynn? But I mean, how, how do you find the experience otherwise?
01:01:52
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's been good. I think it's not a problem at all to switch topics, even to switch radically to something like a different period and a different method. As long as you sort of, you know, like find the right literature and sort of do your reading and do your courses and you'll get there.
01:02:14
Speaker
And yeah, for me, for example, I got into this kind of data science-y kind of PhD, which, yeah, it required me to sort of learn programming in R, which, yeah, well, which has been a lot of fun for me. Oh really?
01:02:40
Speaker
It's been fun and it's been frustrating at times, but yeah, it's been fun and I think people would probably worry if they would go into something like this, that they would have to already know how to do that.
01:02:55
Speaker
But I think when you do a PhD, developing those kind of skills are also very much part of the process. Yeah, which, yeah, I think is good to know. I mean, like experimental archaeology, right? You know, it's it's it helps if you already have some knowledge and maybe you will have to develop those skills as you're doing your research in order to better understand it, but you can technically develop them alongside. Yeah, in that respect.
01:03:21
Speaker
which, yeah, I feel like doing, yeah, we don't have to get too much into this, but I feel like doing a PhD is quite seen as quite a sort of elite thing still by a lot of people. And it's sort of seen as, oh, but I have to be really specialised in something in order to do a PhD, or I have to be really kind of dedicated to a particular topic, which I do think you do in some respects. But I mean, I think I wish before I started that I had kind of
01:03:45
Speaker
understood that actually, like you say, it's just a further part of your training in archaeology, right? It's a further part of making you a researcher or making you an archaeologist or making you whatever it is you want to be, basically. But do you have any anything that you wish you'd known before you started? Actually, I'm going to sort of counter what I said earlier, I would have been better if I already knew how to do programming.
01:04:08
Speaker
But it's definitely not an issue that I had to learn it during the PhD. But yeah, otherwise...
01:04:17
Speaker
I would definitely recommend people who start out to just take the time to do your reading because I often felt like very rushed and thinking like, oh, I have to get onto the analysis, you know, like I have to do this and do that and sort of get my data. And then I would not spend enough time preparing, you know, like
01:04:38
Speaker
getting the ideas into my head, you know, like reading what other people have done. And so I really have to sort of keep telling myself like, okay, take your time, just read some, read some articles, you know, read some books. Yeah. I think if you're a PhD like a flint blade, you have to do the preparation, you know, in order to create that perfect. Oh, look at me go. Wow.
01:05:03
Speaker
What an analogy. That's great. And on that note, I think that looks the end of our team right today. I think I'm not going to get any better than that. No. So yes, probably time. We have, yes, a lot of reading to do. So we should probably get back to that. But thank you very, very much, Pierre, for joining me today and telling us all about your research. It was fascinating.
01:05:25
Speaker
And yeah, if anyone wants to find out more about peers work, is your master's thesis like available to read somewhere? Is it on the university page or? No, it isn't. Very sorry to say no, but I have been sort of trying to rework it into like a publication. That's hopefully forthcoming next year. Okay.
01:05:48
Speaker
Okay, hopefully. So maybe we, at some point, you might see the show notes updated with a link to the lovely paper about, yes, not the cliv, clivlandian or whatever they were called, but the Magdalenian and not this, but yeah, I can't remember the terminology. I'm sorry.
01:06:05
Speaker
the people moving around in the late Paleolithic and taking their flint blades with them. There we go, there's your title. But yes, if you'd like to find out more about that, then keep an eye on this page. You can also find out more about Pierre's work now. I'll post some links to his current page and academia, et cetera. And if you want to find out about flint blade technology, I'll post that paper that you mentioned as well. You can check the show notes on the podcast homepage. So yeah, I hope that you all enjoyed our journey today.
01:06:34
Speaker
and see you next month for another episode of Tea Break Time Travel. I hope that you enjoyed our journey today. If you did, make sure to like, follow, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and I'll see you next month for another episode of Tea Break Time Travel.
01:06:53
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.