American Flintknappers by John C. Whittaker, University of Texas Press, $29.95, ISBN 0292702663
WOULD you believe that we are in the golden age of flint knapping? Skills that most of us assume to have been lost are, it seems, alive and thriving.
In what at first looks like an esoteric tract, anthropologist John Whittaker draws you into the weird but compelling world of the American hobby stone-tool maker. There are half a dozen truly skilled flint knappers in the UK, and their insights are essential to our understanding of this key ancient technology. But what Whittaker found when he encountered…
