John L. Fagan 1984. Expert in the Traditional Knapping.Furthermore a lithics expert and archaeologist. By Ray Harwood


John Fagan. John
Fagan has has a major archaeology-lithics business in Oregon and been
flintknapping for 40 years. He began at the age of 10 years old. He
was interested in Indians as a child his grandfather how the Indians
went about removing the flake to create these artifacts. John's
father told him that they heated the stone and dropped cold water on
them to remove the flakes. His first experiments using the water
dripping method were performed on top of the wood burning stove in
the kitchen, it was unsuccessful, I remember trying it once and a
piece of exploding obsidian embedded in my kitchen roof. John, not
doubting his grandfather, assumed that something was wrong with his
prehistoric technique and continued to use his father's metal hammer
to break up obsidian into small chunks and flakes. He selected thin
straight flakes and pressure flaked them with nails. When he was 15
years old John met a man named Oscar Dobins who used deer antler and
pressure flaked on the palm of his hand which was protected with a
leather pad. This technique was more effective and John still uses it
today for pressure flaking small points. John Fagan's first 10 years
of stone working were essentially on his own with only an occasional
meeting with another knapper. In 1973, John Fagan attended the
Crabtree Flintknapping field school. Don Crabtree and his students
taught him more about flintknapping in a few weeks than he was able
to pick up on his own in 19 years. John went on to get his Ph.D. and
has influenced many modern flintknappers. The most prominent of
Fagan's students is that of Graig Ratzat. Graig attended monthly
sessions with Fagan and later with Errett Callahan. Graig eventually
started his own business called " Neo Lithics" from which he sells
excellent quality obsidian, master level lithic art and two videos he
has produces Caught Knapping and Lap Knapping. Graig has also
followed his master instructors Fagan and Callahan and holds a field
school of his own at Glass Buttes.
Since attending college John Fagan has focused on archaeological
issues and experimental archaeology and used both flintknapping and
experimental replication in his analysis and interpretation of
archaeological sites and artifacts. His dissertation gave him an
opportunity to use his knapping experiments in the analysis of
artifacts from 12 sites that he tested as part of his doctoral
project at the University of Oregon.
John lives in Portland, Oregon, he does most of his flintknapping on
weekends, in his back yard. He obtains his obsidian from Glass Butte
and agate and chert from road cuts and agate mines on the Columbia
River near Bigg's Junction, Oregon. John prefers non-obsidian but
does not have ready access to flint, chert ect. Fagan has used stone
and bone tools to conduct several experiments and he is impressed at
how effective they are. Recent experiments include: building a
chinook style plank house made of cedar logs and split planks with
stone, bone, antler and wooden tools. This project was done at a
State Park with several volunteers over a 3 year period. He has spent
years conducting experiments on fluting in an effort to understand
and replicate Clovis points from a site he worked on in south-central
Oregon. One summer John worked with Kim Akerman replicating 50
Lindenmeir Folsom points. John Fagan knaps about 10 hours a week in
the summer and about 1o hours a month in the winter.

Bob Patten, 1984. Master of Paleo Flintknapping
http://images.blogstream.com/i/userImages/61/61856_33681.gif,300x300]]

Bob Patten, High Plains Paleo Flintnapper, His new book. By Ray

Harwood





Like many others in flinknapping, Bob Patten is one of my favorites.
He dosn't care much for my loose cannon approach to things, but he as
always been kind to me and unselfish. Bob is a favorite because he
does things his was, no shortcuts ot cheats, that many of us lend
ourselves. He will not forsake his stone age ethic. Even Callahan and
Sollberger, perfectionists, held Bob in high regaurd, this can't be
said for many! Callahan said it best: " there is replicas and there
are sumulatio

ns in lithics. A true replica must me made in the same
manner as the original artifact. Same tools, same materials, same
knapping style. This is why pop is a replicator - not a simulator.
t This is why his new book: "People of the Flute ( a study in
Anthropolithic Forensics, isbn 0-9668701-1-5) is a must read .

I will be do a discussion on this text for the next few weeks. If
anyone wants to join in, I recomend you purchase the book. I feel a
"book club" type exploration of the book would inhance our lithic
membrains!

Bob Patten has been flintknapping for nearly 40 years and is self
taught. He uses as close to aboriginal methods as possible. He has
just released a book where he shares his extensive knowledge in a
concise, yet comprehensive, overview of flintknapping. He clearly
explains the principles and concepts required to make stone tools.
According to Dr. James Dixon, Denver Museum of Natural history-
archaeologist, "Old tools-New Eyes is the best book of its type I
have had the pleasure to read. Bob is one of North America's greatest
flintknappers." Bob's book contains these concepts on ; Appreciate
early tool making skills, Link appearance of an artifact with the way
it was made, understand and control fracture, receive detailed
instructions on how to make arrowheads, learn how classic artifact
types were made , view 200 carefully prepared illustrations and
acquire fresh ideas and novel viewpoints.

The biggest influence on Bob Patten's knapping was Indian artifacts.
At first, he tried to copy them by referring to standard typology
based on shapes. It wasn't long though before he got hooked on
tracing out the whole start-to-finish process. When Bob got access to
collections of workshop debitage through the Smithsonian Institution
his progress really took off. Since then, he has come to think that
only a few minor shifts in technology are responsible for the whole
range of paleo-style points. Bob also thought that it may not take
that much skill to match paleo-indian work. The trick is to focus
less on the end results and more on how you get there.

Many years ago Bob heard Don Crabtree remark that many areas of the
world lacked large antlered animals, so there must be different tools
which serve as well as antler to explain the artifacts which were
being found. Since that time, Bob has found that it is possible to do
the same things with many kinds of tools if one understands the
mechanics involved. Part of his work involves finding out how many
tools can create the same effect.

Bob patten's style of percussion work is very relaxed. Instead of
supporting the preform on his leg, he keeps his work as loose in his
left hand as is possible. He also swings his baton very loosely. He
has a strong preference for working against individually prepared
striking platforms. Even when he is pressure flaking, he usually uses
a copper "nibbler" to set up spur platforms.Most of Bob Patten's
pressure work is done with unhafted antler tines. He usually works in
a sitting position with his left hand on top of his leg and works the
tine with wrist and arm action. The exception has been when he uses a
table block for Eden flaking.

PATTEN AND THE PALEO KNAPPERS : The Late Don Crabtree, of southern
Idaho, is considered to be the "Dean of American Flintknapping" not
only for his fine publications, but also for the vast amount of
important information he uncovered in a life devoted to the study of
stone tools. Don was most probably the first flintknapper in
thousands of years to flute a Folsom point, as early as 1941 Crabtree
was employed at the Lithic Laboratory at the University of
Pennsylvania and the prestigious Smithsonian Institution. He had
experimented with fluting in the 1930s but became quite famous for
his studies into the Lindenmier Folsom in 1966 . Don Crabtree passed
away on November 16, 1980. Jeffery Flenniken and Gene Titmus,
students of Crabtree carried on the studies and are still considered
to be among the best flintknappers in the world. In Texas, The late
J.B. Sollberger was considered the master of Folsom and learned on
his own to create masterful fluted points with a methodology
involving the use of the fulcrum and lever . J.B.s replicas were
beautifully crafted out of the finest of Texas flints. Again part of
the Sollberger legacy is the vast amount of published works and
theories that he pioneered. J.B. passed away on May, 7th 1995. In the
Southern United States two knappers of quite diverse back grounds
were also working on the Folsom mystery: D.C. Waldorf of Missouri and
Errett Callahan of Virginia. Waldorf crafted his replicas in a large
part to sell in the commercial market place, and sold them as
replicas, but also to research the Folsom technologies for books he
would later write and market. One of Waldorf's books, The Art of
Flintknapping, sold over 40,000 copies. Waldorf is still active in
both flintknapping and the study of fluted point technologies and he
and his wife, Val, publish a magazine called Chips that is devoted to
flintknapping. Callahan also worked and studied in a social vacuum in
the 1960s, but he had the advantage of academia behind him, yet in
those days the published material was both sparse and, to a large
degree, incorrect. Callahan went on to publish perhaps the most
important paper written to date on fluted point studies, The Basics
of Biface Knapping in the Eastern Fluted Point Tradition. In the
American Southwest Circa the mid to late 1960s, the new Folsom age
was being revised by two additional notable experimentalists, Bob
Patten, of Lakewood, Colorado and Bruce Bradley of Tucson, Arizona.
Bruce Bradley worked closely with Crabtree and Sollberger as well as
French flintknapper Francois Bordes. Once Bruce Bradley's knapping
skills were well honed he began working with some of the world's best
known Paleo-archaeologists; George Frison, Vance Haynes, Rob
Bonnichson and Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institute. In 1980
Bruce Bradley was involved with these scientists in a PBS Odyssey
television special called Seeking The First Americans. In this now
classic film Bruce Bradley knapped two paleo type points. Bradley
also participated in "Clovis and beyond" and continues his
involvement in lithic research. Bob Patten learned the high plains
paleo tradition and became a master of creating Folsom points out of
tough unheated lithic materials. Ten Years after Bruce Bradley
appeared on the Odyssey special, Bob Patten was featured crafting a
fluted Clovis point in the PBS television special- NOVA: Search For
the First Americans, and like the Odyssey special ten years before,
the film featured Dennis Stanford and Vance Haynes. Nearly a decade
after the film Bob published a book on his flintknapping
methodologies called Old Stones New Eyes. Bob is often seen around
the country conducting Flintknapping demonstrations at archaeological
meetings and was recently featured at "Clovis and Beyond" and "The
Folsom Workshop" . Most of the knappers today are not part of the
1960s experimentalism movement, the new field of thought is
as "lithic art" and the points are created not with aboriginal
methods that add to the data base of experimental archaeology, but
with lapidary equipment, they contribute very little to the study of
stone tools or ancient artifact studies. The Folsom fluted lanceolate
point was named by J.D. Figgins in 1934 after Folsom, New Mexico.
According to the American Museum of Natural History the first Folsom
point was discovered near Folsom, New Mexico on September 1, 1927 on
a joint expedition by archaeologists from the American Museum of
Natural History and the Denver Museum of Natural History. This small
fluted dart or spear point stands among the most important
archaeological finds ever made on this continent. This artifact is
now displayed in a cast of the bones of an ancient extinct bison in
which it was embedded, thus re-creating the context in which it was
found by members of that original expedition. Folsom points tend to
date between 10,000 BC to 8,000 BC. Folsom points have a large
geographic range within the Americas. Folsom points are characterized
by their short lanceolate basic form, concave base and long flute
extending on both faces from base, or proximal end, toward the tip,
or distal end, of the point. The purpose of the flute has long been
the subject of great controversy. Some have postulated that the flute
is an artistic element and may represent a flame and others feel it
has a functional purpose and was for blood letting from the wound of
their prey, thus causing the prey to bleed and weaken and leave a
trail for the hunter to fallow. others feel it is simply a hafting
technique where the split shaft nicely fits into the fluted channel.
What-ever the purpose, it seems to have evolved and been accentuated
from the older Clovis points that were also fluted from the base, or
proximal end. According to Michael Waters (1999), from Texas A&M
University, archaeologists: in the early 1950s artifacts, later to
become known as Clovis, were found beneath the Folsom cultural
horizon at Blackwater Draw, near Clovis, New Mexico and were later
carbon dated to nearly 13,359 BP. Clovis appears to have highbred, or
evolved into Folsom and the point made more stream-lined and the
flute improved and accentuated, the technology changing with hunting
technologies that were closely intertwined with the available game.

According to Paleo specialist, Bob Patten, of Lakewood, Colorado
(1999) when mammoths went extinct, spear points went through a re-
engineering, from the large Clovis to a more delicate form dominated
by the central flute scar. Instead of the mammoth the new quarry was
Bison Antiquus, a larger and more formidable game than the modern
bison.Even with the past few decades of Paleo point replication
studies the true production methodology is not completely understood.
According to Patten "it is likely that it will be some time before we
can say we know with assurance how Folsom points were made". Patten
prefers a method known as the rocker punch method. Patten's response
to the aboriginal flute method is this "My answer is that aboriginal
flute flake scars have distinctive attributes of flatness, rippling,
thickness, and so on. The rocker punch method seems to most closely
match original results" (Patten, 1999). At this time in
archaeological circles the theories on the first peoples of the New
World have been changing, rather than crossing the Bering land bridge
from northeast Asia to Alaska theories, they have come up with
theories of "paleo-notical", a Paleo ocean migration from Europe
along the edge of the polar ice cap into the northern most tip of
North America. Clovis-like Solutrean projectile points found in
Europe help support this hypothesis . If Clovis man indeed came to
the New World by boat, then it is my theory that the fluted point
technology was originally one that came from stone age harpoon tips.
In Alaska there is a fluted point type known as the Dorset point
which is characterized by two precise flutes or harpoon end blades
removed from the tip or distal end of this small flint triangular
harpoon point type. These paleo-eskimo points were part of a
specialized material culture based on northern marine exploitation
(Renouf, 1991) The first big game brought down by fluted points was
possibly not Pleistocene mega-fauna but large sea mammals, and the
altatl may have first been a harpoon launcher and later adapted to
land use as a spear thrower.

Bob Patten, known to all for his knapping and writing won this years
SAA Crabtree award. Below the SAA discribes sais award and past
awardees. Thanks for the dedication and contributions Bob.
Crabtree Award
Established in 1985 to recognize significant contributions to
archaeology in the Americas made by individual who has had little if
any formal training in archaeology and little if any wage or salary
as an archaeologist. The award is named after Don Crabtree of Twin
Falls, Idaho, who made significant contributions to the study of
lithic technology and whose dedication to archaeology was a lifelong
personal and financial commitment. The awardees have been:

1985 Clarence H. Webb, MD
1987 Leonard W. Blake
1988 Julian Dodge Hayden
1989 J. B. Sollberger
1990 Ben C. McCary
1991 James Pendergast
1992 Stuart W. Conner
1993 Mary Elizabeth Good
1994 Leland W. Patterson
1995 Jeff Carskadden
1996 James H. Word
1997 Sidney Merrick Wheeler (posthumous)
and Georgia Nancy Wheeler Felts
1998 Reca Jones
1999 Gene L. Titmus
2000 Richard P. Mason
2001 John D. "Jack" Holland
2002 Richard A. Bice
2003 Dr. Guillermo Mata Amado

Apache Dancer with Large Obsidian Blade

Harwood: Distant relative of Cochese. With large blade or sword.


My Time In Heaven. Ray Harwood Part 1
I see the past summers through a fish bowl dream-like fog. Swirling little dust devils swirling dry leaves and light tan dirt particles around and round. I had a great journey in life with many good friends. Like all of us I had triumphs and tragedies. Wonderful baseball games in the neighborhood street, football on Kenny’s lawn next door. We found a baby tortoise on the lawn and played British Bulldog with Robert and Ted. Burning tinny plastic soldiers with extremely fulfilling passed time, napalm drips from a flaming Hot Wheels tr

ack provided hours of quality entertainment.

Why Kenny and I got involved I “doing Nelsons” I will never know. Doing Nelsons involved sneaking through the darkness of Haines Street down to the second house from the eastern corner and pressing our faces in contorted figure onto there clean well lighted kitchen glass and snorting like pigs. “Run Kenny here they come!” and under Mr. Dean’s V.W. Bug. Then if it was a good fall night it was leaves of many colors through the mailbox into the living room entry way. One night Greg Nelson came over to my house
To sleep over and Kenny and I played Three Stooges on him all night- he was Curly and we were Moe, what the hell were we thinking, he was probably scarred physiologically for life!

There was that time we were throwing paper airplanes at cars passing in the night; Claude got the idea to light one on fire and through it. Next thing you know the night was alive with flaming paper air ships. Then the roar of a supped up GTO and into the grille went a blazing vision of fear, screeching brakes loud words I had never heard, it was a blur of side walk cracks and street light until I dove under Mr. Deans V.W. I don’t know where the others ended up, but Kenny ran into the house of our arch nemesis “Melody Do-Pot”. He ran right in like it was his own little sanctuary. I saw these large stomping boots, ankles down; back and forth through Mr. Dean’s drive way.

The morning walk to Lemay Street School was an adventure in itself. Our mascot was “Snozzola” . Aw Snozzola’ I have such fond memories of him. I have searched for decades for a facsimile thereof of Snozzola , but to no avail – he is lost to the ages. Snozola took turns sleeping over at the various neighbors’ homes and most of us had little Kleenex box beds set up for him. I was the lucky one, the actual owner of the holly “Snoz” . Snozzola . Mrs. Sinko had been giving out Robert’s old toys and I got Snozzla, I can remember Robert in our back yard playing with Ted with Snozzola. Snozzola was about the size and shape of a baseball, he was light olive green with gold eyes on raised antenna, He had pressing in swirls on his back to look like hair with a dog shaped tail. Snozzola’s feet were one large suction cup; he could stick to the wall while we were splashing about in the tub. Snoz would look on while we put little tablets in the back of those little self propelling scuba divers and watched them swim around. On the way to school Snoz would give us orders, “step on a crack you’ll brake your mama’s back or you got to kiss “Melody Do- Pot” . Snoz was always under attack, Jerry Zellidon , better known as “Pig Face” , alonf with fellow Haynes Street bully Jimmy Wilson, would set up an Ambush from an otherwise inert looking trashcan trying to gain Ownership of Snoz.
My fist exposure to flintknapping was on a deer hunt with pop. It was a cold September morning, the dark of night was
still well upon us, my ghetto feet were burning from the cold within
my boots, a flash of light and thunderous roar, and my fathers voice,
not a voice that was heard unless good cause was about. Good cause
was about, a large buck lie there in the Monache sand. There in the
damp sand I witnessed something that has transpired a million times
here, the sounding of men butchering game. The crushing sound and
smell of sage, the smell of fresh blood and the broken sound of
morning. " See son this is the way your granddad showed me", a shiny
stone flake graced the enormous palm. This was the start of my
flintknapping obsession. This probably to gain respect from my
father, a hunter and warrior, W.W.II Vet descendant from an Apache
war chief. I knapped flint ever since, joined the Army, went to
college, hunted, fished had sons of my own. I published hundreds of
articles, became a Karate champion (1982), and a bluegrass banjo
State runner up (1974). I never did gain his respect, but there, just
before his final journey he told me he was proud of me. If he had
said that earlier I would never have done all these empty
accomplishments: The World Flintknapping Society, Martial Arts
Tournament Society, Fig-Ficus Society, Flintknapping Digest (1984) ,
Arrowhead Types of California (1985), C.S.U.N Knap-in (1983),
California Flintknapping Rendezvous (1984-1989) . It was my drive for
acceptance from my father that made me do it, something , like most
men, I never got. But like Hendrix said "I still got my Guitar" , In
my case, my knapping kit. Here is a look at knapping from my world,
enjoy!

Sollberger/ 1st California Knap In.
Sollberger, Titmus, Flenniken, and
Callahan. April 19th 1980.
First California Knap-in. Little Lake,
California.

Ted Orcutt, Rare book