According to lithic artist Grog Verbeck, flintknapping might be the world’s oldest profession. If you are drawing a blank, you aren’t alone.
Flintknapping is the term used to describe the ancient art of creating flaked stone points, arrowheads, and tools. A flintknapper uses special tools to flake the rock and shape it into a finished product. ‘Anyone who picks up two rocks and bangs them together to make a sharp edge is essentially a flintknapper,’ said Verbeck. ‘But I liken it to being a musician, where you spend your whole life practicing for a chance to play Carnegie Hall. A flintknapper spends his whole life just practicing.’ A successful flintknapper must know what Verbeck calls ‘the language of the rock.’ They must be able to select the proper rocks and work with them patiently, and slowly. ‘If you don’t listen to the rock, it’s going to talk back to you and bite you,’ said Verbeck. Only two classes of rock can fracture in the specific way needed to create stone tools such as an arrowhead. These are
volcanic rocks (e.g. obsidian, dacite, basalt, etc.) and crypto-crystalline silicates (e.g. flint, chert, chalcedony, jasper, and agate, etc.). When flaked into a point, these rocks are the sharpest in the world and, according to Vebeck, ‘sharper than surgical steel.’
Mastering this art form today is pretty rare, and Verbeck has been at it for nearly 20 years. Today, there are only about 1,000 flintknappers in the world, Verbeck being one of the best. Verbeck’s wife, Holly, remarked, ‘Grog is a chef, which creates an interesting parallel: He makes food in modern times and uses the ancient skill of flintknapping to create the very tools that were necessary to make sure his tribe could eat.’
Although there has been a recent resurgence in interest, many of these modern day flintknappers use a technique called ‘lapidary’ flintknapping. According to Verbeck, this involves the use of electric saws, power drills, and/or grinders to help shape the rocks. Verbeck, however, is completely old school and uses traditional tools. ‘This artform is completely reductionist sculpture — it only gets smaller, you can never add to it. During the hours it takes to create a single point, I may strike the rock more than a thousand times; any one of these strikes, if misplaced, can break the rock completely, leaving me with nothing but expensive gravel at my feet,’ writes Verbeck on his website, grogslithicart.com.
The flintknapper himself will be giving a demonstration of this primitive skill at the Artisans Marketplace in Truckee using only the traditional tools and techniques. Additionally, his arrowhead collections and sculptures will be on display and available for purchase.
Info: Artisans Marketplace, 10382 Donner Pass Road, Truckee
