Hello guys. Here I am at the Ancient Technology Center in Cranbourne and I'm
with Dave Stewart here who is demonstrating some prehistoric tools
here. Dave tell us what you've got here. Well what I've got is a red deer
antler which is used as a pick because obviously there were no metal tools for
a long, long time and we're digging a hole to recreate a mesolethic round
house or shelter and this would have been about the only thing they'd got to
pick holes in the chalk which is a very slow and laborious process. And then
of course, they hadn't got shovels either, so to clear up the mess they'd made,
they then used a cow shoulder blade scapula here and scoop it away. And how
long would it have taken to dig a ditch in this manner? They were probably far
more efficient at it than we are but even so yes it would take a long
time to dig a ditch, we have actually found these antlers at the bottom of
ditches later in the prehistoric period, so in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age,
they were certainly used for excavating. And you were saying that they've
actually found marks in the ground that have been used by these implements?
Indeed yes the spiky bit there leaves a nice mark in the edge of the chalk and
you can see that it's been used to lever out the chalk, this is a little boggy for
it, not it's ideal environment, but hey it works.
I was originally trained using
modern falconry techniques where you use a system called weight-control where you
reduce the birds weight, take its food away and when the bird's hungry enough,
it'll do what you want. I was always taught the birds don't bond with you,
they don't want to be with you, they don't love you, you should never think
that they do, they're only controlled through food and they're a tool. Then we
bought, a historical manuscript with our passion for history and we found that
historically they did it exactly the opposite; so instead of taking the food
away from the bird, you're giving the bird as much food as it could possibly
eat, you keep them on your glove, you carry them around with you 24/7, you
keep them in the banqueting-hall, you keep them in the bedchamber, you even
take them to church with you, eventually the bird learns; when he's on your glove
you don't harm him, you protect him from external stimuli, and also you give him
as much food as he can possibly eat; that way the birds can be flown in a
very very high condition without having to reduce their weight to make them fly.
You wouldn't really want to starve an athlete and expect them to perform in the
Olympics, and it was the same with history; people in history wanted them to
catch large geese, heron, crane, a hungry bird that's not feeling fit and strong
would never even think of taking those, they would go for a smaller target, which
would look bad on the king or the falconer, so they used these techniques
that were mainly came from the Muslim countries and were learnt during the
crusading period and brought back during the Crusades to Britain and used ever
since. So obviously you're dressed as somebody that's pre-Tudor, can you tell
us about the relationship between the bird and the age that you are dressed at?
Well yes, basically I'm dressed as in sort of Beaker period, late-Neolithic/
early Bronze Age period, now officially Falconry was started in the Roman period
according to the history books, we've been on a crusade for the last
twelve years to find research to prove otherwise,
and we think we've found enough evidence to prove, without a doubt, that falconry was
happening long before that in the UK. The problem is is the lack of equipment, it
rots in the ground, so you don't really get to find any from that period but
there's been lots of great finds of hawks skulls and various equipment, one
of them was a wrist-guard in a beaker burial and it had scratch-marks on it
and it was dismissed as not being falconry-related because people wear
gloves, but still in the Middle-East to this day they still wear cuffs.
Also there was a bone-toggle found that matches exactly what the Mongolian
tribe's people still use today, to tether Eagles to their belts, so this wrist-
guard, the toggle and the bird-skull in the grave seem, for us, is enough
evidence to suggest that this was a beaker-period Falconer that was buried
with his bird. So these were hunters then? Falcons, especially in the later period,
were used for political purposes; they weren't
really the best hunters to bring in food for the table, it was more of a
sport and an art to show off your wealth and power, whereas the goshawks and the
accipiters, the sparrow-hawk & the goshawk, they were used for hunting predominantly; now
this bird was a goshawk skull found in this beaker-burial so it stands to
reason that he was using that bird to hunt and bring in food for the table and
because they we came from the, they came from the Middle East at that time
and brought farming with them, did they leave Falconry behind, that they were
already practicing out in the Middle East at that time and forget it to come
to England? It doesn't seem likely.
So, James - what period are we talking about
here? So we're looking at the Neolithic here really. Flint axes appeared prior to
the Neolithic in the Mesolithic but usually people think of a flint axe as
perhaps a polished, finished example something like this, which, after being
flaked from a heavy thick piece of Flint and shaped into the finished article,
had gone through many hours working on a grindstone or a polis wire, as they're
sometimes known, but it'll take about 60 hours to polish, but it makes a huge
functional difference, it's not just for show, although it looks very beautiful
and it's very tactile, as you will see when we start working the flint, it does
actually have some very functional implications about how long the axe head
lasted. To start off with, rather than that large hammer stone I just showed you, we'll
go with a smaller one and you only have to work it on the sides, for these first
few flakes, you're only really taking off the skin of the Flint, so this area here,
this is known as the cortex. It's just the contact point between the Flint
itself and the country rock around that. Well I can tell that you you need some
help, okay would you like me to have a go for you? Do, so I'll show you a couple of
flakes to start off with, just to give you an idea of what we're aiming to do.
You saw me take that one off, you don't need a lot of power as I said just aim
for the edges and you can always just use your forearm just to get some flakes
off. It's not a test of power. So what I'll do is, I'll give you this piece of
leather for the hand that you're holding the Flint, it's just so
you don't get any flakes that's stick in your hand. So just relax and just let the
weight of the stone do the work. That's it, just aim for the edge, don't be
scared of it. Okay okay. And that's a good flake. Stronger
than I thought. It's not a test of strength at all, you don't have to be He-man to do
this, you just need relatively good hand-eye coordination. Okay and how long
would it have taken for it to go from this to this to the polished implement
that you showed me earlier? To make one of these polished axe-heads there is a
time investment and it's very noticeable; flint is incredibly hard, it's one of the
hardest stones that we can get in this country in any great availability, it
scores about seven, seven and a half on the Mohs scale of geological hardness.
The sandstone there is made up of quartz grains and quartz is a tiny bit harder
than Flint and that it's that that allows you to grind it, but that's had
about 60 hours to grind it, just shows you a small amount of work which is
quite intense, to a long period of time which is just as intense but very
repetitive.