Prehistoric Woodworking by Rob Sands

Author:Rob Sands [Sands, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Archaeology
ISBN: 9781315422039
Google: xKgYDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-09-16T06:03:32+00:00

Figure 22 Knife marked stick

Although the use of axes is implied in the production of most of the portable artifacts clear evidence of their use is only found on one piece; the large hazel peg. This is finely faceted and signatures are apparent all over its surface.

Toolmarks on waste

The woodchips so far found at Oakbank Crannog all appear to be the product of axe use. Survival of toolmarks on woodchips can be very good but tends to be limited in size and number. All the waste material that has been brought up from the Oakbank excavations has been assessed for suitable toolmarks. From this material, a sample of several hundred, 150 pieces had signature traces. These pieces varied in size from 1.9 × 3.2cm to 22 × 11.2cm. Within the sampled set some 65% were between 3 and 9cm long. These pieces tended to have very fragmentary signatures and it was difficult to find matches between chips of this size.

Many of the Oakbank woodchips did not retain any signatures and it would seem that the production of chips is not necessarily conducive to good signature survival. To explore this further a series of oak stakes, 9cm in diameter, were pointed experimentally over a length of approximately 25 cm using a small modern axe with a blade edge of 8.5cm. Out of the 220 chips produced only 30 had useful signatures. Few useful marks survived on chips of 2cm or less in length; between 2 and 7 cm signatures could be found and matched together. However, if the sample was larger and mixed, finding matches between chips of this size would be difficult. Between 8 cm and the maximum size in the sample (12 cm) the matches were fairly obvious but only 15 out of the 220 chips remained in this subset.

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