Knapping

Knapping is the controlled striking of stone to detach flakes and shape tools or other objects. It is a subtractive technique whose results depend on fracture mechanics, raw material, and the knapper’s force and angle.

Conchoidal fracture: A curved, shell-like fracture that propagates through brittle materials such as flint and glass. Knapping exploits this fracture pattern to detach flakes with controlled shapes.
Flint: A hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock that fractures conchoidally and was widely used for stone tools. Its predictable fracture makes it a classic material for knapping.
Acheulean handaxe: A large, often symmetrical bifacial stone tool associated with the Acheulean industry. Its shaping shows how repeated flake removal can produce a standardized form.
Lomekwi 3: An archaeological site in Kenya with stone tools dated to about 3.3 million years ago. Its tools provide the earliest known evidence of deliberate stone knapping.
Bipolar percussion: A stone-working method in which a core rests on an anvil and is struck from above. The anvil supplies counterforce, unlike ordinary freehand percussion against a held core.
Percussion flaking: A technique that detaches flakes by striking stone with a hammerstone or percussor. Direct blows are the basic way knappers initiate fractures and remove stone.
Obsidian: A naturally occurring volcanic glass that breaks into sharp, conchoidal flakes. Its glassy structure permits exceptionally sharp edges and controlled flake removal.
Clovis point: A fluted projectile point associated with Paleoindian sites in North America. Its distinctive channel flakes demonstrate highly controlled stoneworking.
Oldowan: An early stone-tool industry characterized by cores, flakes, and simple chopping tools. Oldowan assemblages preserve basic strategies of striking flakes from stone cores.
Ground stone technology: The shaping of stone by pecking, grinding, or polishing rather than primarily detaching flakes. Ground stone tools are shaped through abrasion instead of knapping’s fracture-driven removal.

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Lithic technologyBroader topic: It is the main method for producing sharp flakes and shaped stone tools.