Tools of the Hunt In the hands of a skilled hunter, the stone-tipped spear was a deadly weapon. Lightweight yet powerful, the spear predated the bow-and-arrow by thousands of years and enabled just one or two men to kill a caribou weighing as much as 400 pounds. For hunting large animals such as caribou, our ancestors used stone spearpoints 3 to 4 inches in length. They preferred a fine-grained stone such as chert, flint, or jasper that could be flaked to a razor-sharp edge. The Art of Flintknapping, Noel Grayson, Cherokee It’s really just carving.  It’s all you’re doing.  Using rock as your medium.  You have to use a variety of tools to do it.  After using a rock to break off a piece of flint that's about the right size, I’ll use an antler billet (hammer) to get the rough shape. And once I get it thinned down I’ll start pressure flaking it. This gives you the exact shape you want and creates a razor sharp edge on the sides of the point. Considerable skill was required to knap, or shape, these points. A good stone point could be sharpened more than once, while chipped or broken ones could be converted to other tools such as knives. Stone spearpoints from 11,000 years ago were usually fluted, or thinned, at the base to assist in fitting them to a shaft. Pine resin or other sticky substances may have been applied to the point base to serve as a glue. The base was attached either directly to a long wooden shaft or to a foreshaft, a thinly carved length of wood or bone. The advantage of the foreshaft was that it easily detached from the shaft, allowing the hunter to thrust his spearpoint into an animal, withdraw the shaft, and quickly attach another foreshaft with the point already affixed to it. The tendon or sinew of a large animal such as a caribou was used to wrap around the base of the spearpoint, providing a firm binding to the shaft or foreshaft. The base of the sharp point was often ground down to prevent the binding from being cut. Archaeologists believe that the people here may have thrown their spears with the assistance of a device known as an atlatl.  Hooked to the end of the spear shaft, this spearthrower in effect lengthened the arm of the hunter and thereby provided additional speed and power.