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.