a functional comparison of stone and iron tools for the completion of expedient tasks

1
a functional comparison of stone and iron tools
for the completion of expedient tasks

• elizabeth severson
• anthropology 352
• august 2, 2005

2
stone tools in an iron age

• importance of stone tool technology
• artifacts are not collected, analyzed, or
  published
• analysis present for about 12 Scandinavian sites
• biases in iron age research
• lack of research interest, assumed to be
  intrusive, general perception of functionality

3
past research comparing metal and stone tools

• Carneiro 1979, Mathieu and Meyer 1997, Saraydar
  and Shimada 1971, Townsend 1969
• compare iron and steel axe heads to metal axe
  heads for felling trees
• argue steel axe heads work much better
• stone requires 6x more energy (Saraydar and
  Shimada 1971)

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problems with past research

• compare only highly specialized tool types
• no studies comparing expedient tools
• compare tools that were not available at the same
  time
• i.e. Neolithic axe heads versus 18th century
  steel axe heads (Mathieu and Meyer 1997)
• compared tools of different traditions and
  therefore, varying efficiency

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comparative studies

• use wear indicates that borers, cutting tools,
  and scrapers were used for drilling soft organic
  materials, and cutting and scraping hard organic
  materials (Knarrström 2001)
• production of tools
• research design
• drill leather
• cut wood
• scrape wood

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production of stone tools

• replica stone tools, consistent with those found
  at iron age sites, were produced
• method of manufacture inconsistent with that
  proposed by Knarrström
• tools were produced in a very short period of
  time (57 minutes) using hard-hammer and
  soft-hammer percussion on a bipolar core

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mode of production

• method proposed by Knarrström (2001)
• did not work well

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lithic borers
replicated borer
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lithic cutting tools
cutting tools from Annelöv (Knarrström 200197)
replicated tools
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lithic scrapers
replicated scraper
scrapers from Särslöv (Knarrström 2001111)
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acquisition of iron tools

• an iron knife was forge-welded with the intent to
  use it for this project, but was not ready in
  time to complete this project
• production of iron knife has taken, to date,
  approximately 8 hours
• tools were borrowed from Dr. J. Mark Kenoyer

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drawings of metal tools
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boring holes in leather

• drilled holes in leather with spare wood beneath
  until tool drilled through leather
• utilized tool until the task became too laborious
  or the tip was too dull to drill
• sharpened tool
• repeated trial

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cutting wood

• stakes were cut with a back and forth motion
  until tool fatigue
• cutting tool is re-sharpened and trial repeated a
  total of five times

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scraping wood

• tool used to scrape a stake until tool could no
  longer remove material
• tool is re-sharpened and trial is repeated for a
  total of 5 trials

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results of drilling comparisons
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results of drilling comparison
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results from cutting wood
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results from scraping wood
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comparison of stone and metal tools for expedient
tasks

• stone and iron tools have very similar durability
  for cutting wood and drilling leather
• within tens of seconds
• iron tools outperform stone tools for scraping
  wood
• iron saves minutes of time per re-sharpening cycle

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conclusions

• results are preliminary and must be corroborated
  with further testing and trials but
• stone tools work as well as those made of iron
  for most of the types of tasks for which iron age
  people used stone tools
• formalized iron tools generally outperform those
  made of stone (based on previous studies,
  scraping wood in this study)

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why stone?

• ubiquity of native flint, reusable lithic
  material from previous occupations
• production of stone tools is not controlled
• production of stone tools is much faster
• cost of going to a blacksmith when a stone tool
  works as well for the task at hand
• for some tasks, much time, energy is saved by
  using a stone tool

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acknowledgements

• Richard Furrer for his help in re-creating an
  Iron Age kvindes knive
• J. Mark Kenoyer for his continued support,
  supplies, and guidance

(Knarrström 2001)