Flint-knapping finds its way into the Wall Street Journal in Arrowhead Case: Knapping Hits a Spot For Flint-Stone Fans:
More than 10,000 years ago, prehistoric Americans attached sharpened stone ‘points’ to spears and hunted woolly mammoths. In the 1960s and 1970s, a handful of archeologists made basic, often clumsy arrowheads in order to better understand ancient tool making. Since then, knapping has taken off as a surprisingly popular American pastime and art form.Hundreds of modern-day Stone Agers now gather at weekend ‘knap-ins,’ where they chip rock, swap techniques and trade arrowheads. Novices eager to learn the skill pay $500 or more to attend workshops. Dozens of books and videos — including one called ‘Caught Knapping’ — tout the craft. A glossy magazine for knapping devotees, Modern Lithic Artists Journal, launched last year and featured Mr. Spears’s work in the first issue. Another quarterly bible of the trade is called Chips.
‘It’s a manly hobby, because of its association with hunting and weapons,’ says John Whittaker, an archeologist-knapper at Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa. Indeed, some knappers make practical use of their handiwork, hunting deer and other creatures with the carefully honed points.
Prof. Whittaker estimates that there are at least 5,000 knappers in the U.S., mostly men, who churn out 1.5 million pieces a year. Replica arrowheads sell on the Internet for $10 to $100 or more apiece, and are increasingly turning up on eBay. One 5-inch ‘turkey tail’ arrowhead, for instance, recently sold for $202.50 at the site, even though its pedigree was unclear. (The seller said it ‘looks old.’)