Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T02:00:46.885Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘The Oldest British Industry’: continuity and obsolescence in a flintknapper's sample set

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

John C. Whittaker
John C. Whittaker*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Grinnell College, Grinnell IA 50112, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A set of gunflints and other artefacts produced by Fred Snare at Brandon is an example of ways in which craftsmen in a declining trade attempted to create new markets by introducing new techniques and forms, and finding new ways to sell traditional skills. Sample sets and artefacts made for collectors reflect how some gunflint knappers, drawing on romantic conceptions of their craft as ‘heritage’, assigned new meanings to the flint industry as part of a survival strategy for an obsolescent trade.

Keywords

Brandonflintknappingromanticismheritageobsolescence
Type
Papers
Information
Antiquity , Volume 75 , Issue 288 , June 2001 , pp. 382 - 390
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Blacking, J. 1953. Edward Simpson, alias ‘Flint Jack’: A Victorian Craftsman, Antiquity 27: 207–11.Google Scholar
Clarke, R. 1935. The Flint-knapping industry at Brandon, Antiquity 9: 38–56.Google Scholar
Evans, J. 1897. The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments of Great Britain. 2nd edition. London: Longman, Green & Co.Google Scholar
Forrest, A.J. 1983. Masters of Flint. Lavenham: Terence Dalton.Google Scholar
Goodwin, C. 1983. Norfolk Museums Service information Sheet: Flint. Norfolk Museums Service.Google Scholar
Gould, R.A. 1981. Brandon revisited: A new look at an old technology, in Gould, R. & Schiffer, M. (ed.), Modern material culture: the archaeology of us: 269–82. New York (NY): Academic Press.Google Scholar
Lotbiniere, S. 1977. The story of the English gunflint: some theories and queries, Journal of the Arms and Armour Society 9: 18–53.Google Scholar
Lovett, E. 1887. Notice of the gun flint manufactory at Brandon, with reference to the bearing of its processes upon the modes of flint-working practised in prehistoric times, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 21: 206–12.Google Scholar
Lovett, E. 1889. List of Specimens Illustrating the Manufacture of Gunflints at Brandon, England, and its Connection to the Stone Age. Handwritten manuscript, Davenport Museum of History and Natural Science, Davenport (IA).Google Scholar
Mason, H.J. 1978. Flint: the versatile stone. Ely: Providence Press.Google Scholar
Rogerson, S. 1927. The oldest industry in the world, Blackwood’s Magazine 221: 525–34.Google Scholar
Ruhe, B. 1995. Making gunflints in Brandon, England, Chips 7(2): 4–9.Google Scholar
Ruhe, B. 1996. Last Brandon gunflint maker dies, Fred Avery, April 24, 1996, Chips 8(3]: 8.Google Scholar
Shaw, A.B. 1981. Knappers’rot: silicosis in East Anglian flint-knappers, Medical History 25: 151–68.Google Scholar
Skertchly, S.B.J. 1879. On the Manufacture of Gun-flints, the Methods of Excavating for Flint, the Age of Palaeolithic Man, and the Connexion between Neolithic Art and the Gun-flint Trade. London: HMSO. Geological Survey Memoirs.Google Scholar
Stevens, E.T. 1870. Flint Chips: A Guide to Prehistoric Archaeology as Illustrated by the Collection in the Blackmore Museum, Salisbury. London: Bell & Daldy.Google Scholar
Tomlinson, C. (ed.). 1852. Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts and Manufactures I. London: Virtue.Google Scholar
Wilson, T. 1897. Arrowpoints, spearheads, and knives, Report of the United States National Museum 1897: 861–4.Google Scholar
Whittaker, J.C. & Stafford, M.. 1999. Replicas, fakes and art: the twentieth century stone age and its effects on archaeology, American Antiquity 64(2): 203–14.Google Scholar
Woodward, A. 1960. Some Notes on Gunflints, in Hamilton, T.M. (ed.), Indian Trade Guns, Missouri Archaeologist 22: 29–39.Google Scholar
Wyatt, J. 1870. Manufacture of gunflints, in Stevens (1870): 578–90.Google Scholar