IWSG: Wednesday, May 3, 2017 ~ Flint Knapping

It's the first Wednesday 
of the month ~ 
the day when members of the
Insecure Writer's Support Group
share their writing struggles
and offer their encouragement
and support to other members.







To visit the IWSG website, click here.

To become a member of the IWSG, click here.

Our wonderful co-hosts who are stepping up to help IWSG founder Alex J. Cavanaugh are:
Nancy Gideon,  Tamara Narayan,  Liesbet@ Roaming About, Michelle Wallace, and Feather Stone.  

I hope you have a chance to visit them and thank them for co-hosting.
I'm sure they would appreciate an encouraging comment!

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Every month the IWSG announces a question
that members can answer with advice, insight,
a personal experience, or story in their IWSG posts.

Or, the question can inspire members if they are struggling with something to say.

Remember, the question is optional!!!
This month's IWSG featured question is:
What is the weirdest/coolest thing you ever had to research for your story?

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I'm on the road again:  
This time in the Mojave Desert of Nevada and Arizona.
It's been a frustrating few weeks with way too many computer and connectivity issues.

Laughlin River Run Time

Aquarius, Laughlin, Nevada, USA

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

With regard to this month's IWSG question,
much of my writing throughout my life has been non-fiction
and centered on professional or academic pieces.

The weirdest and coolest thing I ever had to research was flint knapping
for a unit I wrote about the early people who lived in North America.

Flint knapping is the shaping of flint, or other stone
that fractures conchoidally, by striking it with a hammer stone
to produce edged cutting tools and weapons such as arrowheads.

At the time I was a volunteer at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science,
and I had the opportunity to take a flint knapping workshop.

So, so cool! 
After a background lecture,
we watched a demonstration of flint knapping
by one of the museum's employees.

A Man Demonstrates Flint Knapping

(Not DMNS's)

Wikimedia

Then we students struck flint with stone to produce sharp edges on our pieces of flint.
Finally we used our cutting tools to slice strips of meat off raw roasts.
Yes, it was weird, messy, bloody, and a little dangerous,
but it was beyond cool!

The Denver Museum of Nature and Science is an excellent museum.
I've found it and other museums to be wonderful resources for writing research,
whether through taking courses or viewing exhibits.

My research would not have been complete
without a visit to one of my favorite exhibits in the museum:
The Folsom Point.

An Exciting Archeological Find

Stone Projectile with Bison Bones

DMNS

This 1926 archeological find near Folsom, New Mexico,
proved that humans lived in North America
more than 10,000 years ago,  
hundreds of years earlier than previously thought.

Excavating the Folsom Site or Wild Horse Arroyo revealed
that it was marsh-side kill site or camp.  
It contained the remains of twenty-three extinct Late Pleistocene bison.

The Folsom Points,
found directly associated with the bison remains,  
were indisputably made by humans.  Wikipedia 

A Folsom Point

from the Folsom Site

Wikipedia

When conducting research for writing,

it is one thing to read about a topic like flint knapping,

but to have the opportunities to experience flint knapping 

and to see a famous and consequential exhibit

related to flint knapping is irreplaceable.  

Happy writing in May!