The writer attended a flint knapping workshop at the American Indian Archaeological Institute in Washington, Conn., and learned about the craft from Jeff kalin, part‐Cherokee “primitive technologist.”

Every flint worker has a unique style evolved over years of making tools that progress from rough utilitarian shapes to works of art by a seasoned craftsman. Every flake is a problem in physics and geology. What makes a shock wave travel in just the right direction to flake off just the right piece of material? Flint and other silicacious stone has different shapes and composition from piece to piece. A skilled flint knapper solves each problem with accuracy and speed: a complete arrowhead can be produced in five minutes. So they were made and used lavishly and are found in abundance along the waterways and in the fields of rural America.

The basic tool is a hammer‐stone, usually a round river pebble of sandstone, the right size to rough out the tool. A fairly heavy one is used to knock off the preliminary flakes from which an arrowhead or knifeblade can be made. A nodule of clear flint becomes a “core” from which is produced a series of flat flakes, “blanks,” each with one blow. In less than a minute the arrow‐ maker has made a head of a dozen or more of such flakes ready to be refined into arrowheads of various shapes and sizes.

Now a smaller hammer‐stone knocks one of these flake into a roughly triangular shape with a series of light taps. Occasionally a blow goes wrong and the nascent arrowhead is snapped in

half. Then it may be made into two smaller arrowheads or simply be discarded. “In the seven years it took me to learn,” says Mr. Kalin, “I produced a lot of gravel.”

The pressure flaking that refines the arrowhead into its final shape is simply a more controlled series of blows. A pointed bone or antler tool is applied to the right spot and a quick, grinding shove forces off a small flake. These are razor‐sharp and leave equally sharp grooves which make the cutting edge of the tool. This is when the point maker is likely to bleed for his art, and the blade is usually held in a leather pad for protection. The angle of pressure is what takes seven years to learn — the ability to lift a series of flakes from the edge of the tool across its face. As you crunch along the side you are freeing the blade of humps and bumps left when it was struck from its core. What remains is a flat, serrated, purposeful point.