At this point, after five years of study. I have reason to believe that they were used as bits in larger tools, as pointed out on another thread.
Also, there is quite a difference between embracing a tool, and refusing to look at the boatloads of evidence, which indicates that the tool was used, by past flintknappers, for many thousands of years.
Fortunately for me, I never let the naysayers dissuade me, not even through banning. If I had ever stopped following the evidence, I would have lost the trail. Now, I know far more than I ever thought that I would be able to learn - even tine based fluting, and tine-based outrepasse. Antler drift is the tip of the iceberg, and something more visible, and easy to trace. And, it is all done with the exact same evidence that flintknappers tried to have banned from forums, between 2010 and 2014.
I have been short good stone for quite some time. That is going to change, though. So, we will see how things play out, once I get the stone that I need, for better experiments, with other technologies.
Also, the subject of "horizontal punching" was understood, and recorded, by past observers. But, it was not called "horizontal punching". What is happening today is that modern flintknappers are making the same exact mistake that the Europeans did, back in the 1930's. They bypass the known evidence, and then invent a process which coincides with a known process. But, since they are not familiar with the evidence (or ban people who try to put the evidence on the table), they do not realize that their "invention" actually coincides with processes that were already known, even just a mere century ago.
Meanwhile, they come up with new terminology that only obscures the fact that the processes already have names. Somehow, even when it comes to terminology, the flintknappers depart from long used archaeological terms. And, NEW FLINTKNAPPERS, end up getting INDOCTRINATED into stuff that puts them at absolute odds with well documented evidence. This is the worst possible recipe for perpetuating ignorance. Weirdly, the flintknappers can shout about authentic "point types" all day long, but then turn around and say that no one wants to known how the points were made. What the heck? EVERYBODY WANTED TO KNOW how flint tools were made. Pioneers wanted to know. Missionaries wanted to know. Farmers wanted to know. City slickers wanted to know. Even scientists wanted to know! Everybody wanted to know. The flintknappers are the first people in history who have proposed that no one wants to know how stone tools were made, in ancient times. And, they are also the first people who propose taking the evidence of the processes out of public sight. Then, they get offended when they find out that archaeologists do not take them seriously. But, there is a reason why archaeologists do not take them seriously. It is because of the total disregard for longstanding evidence, that has been around a lot longer than the modern flintknapping movement. All of the evidence that I cite is going to outlive myself, and every flintknapper alive. When we are all dead, it is still going to be on the books. It is not going to go anywhere. We are the ones who will die, and be forgotten, or maybe even laughed at, one day. The evidence that I cite will endure.
Here is one example of the "horizontal punch" technique being described by an author over a half a century ago:
"In the flaking of arrowheads of jasper or obsidian, the Hupa used a PEBBLE HAMMER-STONE and a species of COLD CHISEL of hard, HEAVY ANTLER. For the shaping of points the antler was lashed to a handle of wood in a manner almost identical to that of the Eskimo of Northern Alaska. In chipping arrowheads the flint was held in the palm which was protected by a pad of buckskin. The flakes were chipped off by pressing on the edge of the flint with the tool held in the right hand, the ball of the handle resting in the palm. The Apache WORKED IN A SIMILAR MANNER save that two men were employed on the task, one striking the flint with a mallet and a bone punch while the other cradled the flint in his palm. The natural elasticity of the hand enabled the chips to flake off where on a solid support the flint would have broken. Such work, exacting, skilful and requiring like genius, infinite pains, is all but lost today. One North American anthropologist noted twenty three varieties of arrowheads made in this way." It is a bird! It is a plane! It is a "horizontal punch"! No, it is not. It is the description of a common flaker being used in two modes - pressure and indirect percussion. What is the same? The use of a flaker. Holding the point in the palm of the hand. Holding the flaker in line with the edge, etc. What is different? Mainly, one mode involves force being applied via pressure, while the other mode involves force being applied via a blow. Wow. Big deal. What we call "horizontal punching" is actually the other side of the coin. Pressure flakig is on one side, and horizontal punching is on the other side. This was penned in 1959. But, Cushing explained the same thing, back in 1879. Somehow, all of the theories that came out of Europe involved pressure flakers. But, where is the other side of the coin? Oh, it was ignored, and the "soft hammer baton" was invented in it's place, around 1930 by Barnes, touted by Leakey in 1940's, further developed by Bordes during the 1950's, and demonstrated by Crabtree in the 1960's, which by the way is what appears to have triggered the modern baton movement. Again I ask, where is the other side of the coin, when it comes to pressure flaking? It seems to be gone. And, today, we invent "horizontal punching"? One would have to be oblivious to what was known fifty and one hundred years ago, to think that this is how it works.
How about Ishi? Where are all of the Ishi batons? Ha ha ha. There are none. Weirdly, all flintknappers seem to know about Ishi. Yet, they fail to miss the most obvious mystery of Ishi's work. He switched from an antler point, to a steel point, in pressure flaking, because he said that steel remained sharper, whereas antler needed to be resharpened more frequently. As a result, his pressure flaked points almost look as though they were pressure flaked with a needle tip. There is no mistaking an Ishi point.
So, while Ishi worked on one extreme end of flaking - pressure flaking with an extremely pointy flaker - what did he say about making large instruments, and spearheads? He spoke of something THE EXACT OPPOSITE of what he did. He said that a small, stout, blunt piece of hard wood, or bone, was needed. In other words, Ishi spoke of blunt flakers - not pointy flakers. And, he said that sometimes they would be used like a lever, and sometimes like a punch.
There was another fellow close to Ishi, who learned to knap during the 1870's. This fellow was older than Ishi. He used both point tools, and he used blunt tools. I have a 21 point step by step description of how he used the tools. And, it appears that the blunt tools were used in a mode that we call "horizontal punching". But, actually, the tools are mode in a form analogous to the pressure flaking tools. Only, when the flaker is enlarged, and a blow is substituted for manual pressure, some other details need to be altered. Beyond that, it is the same type of process overall, not unlike pressure flaking. Here are the tools, minus the step by step written description, which I might post when I am unbanned, and other people self-correct their error.
Here is a "finished point", the type made with the tools:
Here are the sixteen flaking tools, with one of the flaking tools still hafted:
Flaking tool still hafted:
And, here are some other items that were shown in a display along with the points:
Since I have the private correspondences that outline how the tools were used, in 21 steps, I can say with fair certainty that the blunted tools were used as "horizontal punches". But, it was not understood that way. It was understood as the heavier end of a flaking process, with the lighter end of the process being pressure flaking. And, the heavier end of the flaking process, was driven by a direct blow to the flaker.
Also, while this fellow, and Ishi, and others, knew of the original flaking processes, right in to the early 20th century, what they did not appear to know about was "baton knapping". And, really, why would they need "baton knapping", when they already had something that looked analogous to a pressure flaking process, only on steroids? As Holmes put it, this fellow's work proved that flintknapping was not a lost art. It was only lost to those who did not know how it was done.
There are other cases of flintknapping processes that appear analogous to pressure flaking processes, only that are driven by a blow, instead of pressure. It is not difficult to see why some might have thought of the processes as "pressure aided by blow", since the process could have involved the same type of flaker, and the same type of setup. But, to create a similar process in modern times, and call it "horizontal punching" completely misses the point. The point is that the process was previously known as part of a larger process that ranged through pressure and indirect percussion - one overall process with different forms. And, unless a person understands this, he will not be able to understand either the nature of flakes, or the nature of flake scars. He might even mistake the "pressure aided by blow" flakes and flake scars as being "baton flakes", or "soft hammer flakes", when they are not. In fact, if modern flintknappers cannot understand technologies that were used just a century ago, then how will they understand technologies that were used over ten thousand years ago?
