January 30, 2012 Miniature Arrowheads

[CaliforniaMama]

I was going to start off the week with a "Monday morning" kind of image. Then, I remembered I promised footfootfoot that I would post the arrowheads.

Meet Dan White and his art form of miniature flint-knapping (shaping stone by breaking off chips).



My favorite is in the upper left corner, 2nd one from the left, that looks kind of like a tree.

Over the last few years Dan has made over 100 miniature stone arrowheads. He uses a stereo microscope to reproduce the stone-age technology of flint-knapping in miniature. After months of experimenting, headaches, and stabbing himself in the fingers, he has been able to develop a technique where he can make miniature stone arrowheads the size of a grain of rice that have all the same proportions and flaking as the full-size originals. Each miniature takes between 1 and 2 hours to complete.

Arrowheads have always fascinated me. My dad did some archeological digging when I was small and saved a display case of arrowheads for me (which my father-in-law proceeded to break every single one of them on "accident"). When I was a child, I played around with flaking some obsidian, a common material around here. I never got into precision flaking, but can definitely appreciate the work Dan put into making these arrowheads.

Many thanks to 3foot for the suggestion.