Star citizen tools5/11/2023 Our work aims to join Indigenous knowledge and Western-based scientific investigation to explore Australia’s diverse and rich past. Among these, the throwing stick known as “boomerang” sits high on the list. Preserving a diverse and rich pastĪboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples across the country made and used hundreds of multifunctional utensils. These experimental results allowed us to identify distinctive marks on boomerangs curated by The Australian Museum in Sydney, some of them collected as far back as 1890. A great number of micro-flakes were found to have got stuck within the retouching marks – another trait in common with the bone tools from Europe. To document these marks, we used a powerful high-definition microscope to get a closer look. They have previously been found on bone fragments recovered from prehistoric archaeological sites in Europe dating back as far as roughly 500,000 years ago. The impact of the sharp stone edge against the boomerang’s wooden surface left microscopic marks on the latter. During this process, small, thin pieces of stone detached from the edge – perfectly shaping the stone tool. These weapons were then put to repeatedly striking stone tool edges. Most archaeologists would have thought wooden items would not be suitable for such a tough task.Įxpert hands infused with Aboriginal knowledge manufactured four hardwood boomerangs to be used in the experiment. To investigate this idea, we designed an experiment to discover if boomerangs really could shape stone tools. If true, this would be a retouching approach thus far unknown elsewhere in the world. A deep dive into early European accounts of Aboriginal technologies suggested wooden tools – especially boomerangs – were used to shape their stone technology. Wood shapes stoneįor Australia, there is very little published evidence surrounding the retouching techniques used by various peoples across the continent. In modern terms, we can think about butcher knives and bread knives: their blades have different shapes – one straight, the other serrated – each used to effectively cut different materials.Īrchaeologists call the careful shaping of a tool edge “retouching” – repeatedly touching (or working) the stone edge until it reaches the shape we want. The ability to carefully modify the edge of stone tools was crucial not only to produce the variety of utensils designed, but to resharpen them when they blunted. Not unlike the contents of today’s kitchen drawers and garden sheds, human groups living in the deep past had access to an assortment of tools for all sorts of everyday activities. Manufacturing stone tools requires an advanced understanding of fracture mechanics, extensive planning, and years of hands-on practice to produce even the most basic of tools. When we think about stone tools, we associate them with “primitive” technology. We meshed Indigenous knowledge and experimental archaeology to produce scientific proof of a previously unrecognised (to science) use of these iconic objects: the manufacture of stone tools.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |