Master Knapper's Guide to the Flint Technology of Scandinavia - Book 5

Into his 5th Knapper’s Guide book,  D.C. Waldorf has poured everything he has learned about Nordic flint technology over the past 40 years into a single massive volume! The combination of two earlier books and several CHIPS articles along with revisions and much new material it is divided onto 17 sections.

The first two sections are on the geography and flint sources of Southern Scandinavia and North Germany.

The third is an introduction to the prehistory and artifacts of the area’s Stone Age up to the advent of the Late Neolithic, or Dagger Period. This part was done early while DC’s wife, Val, was still alive and is mostly illustrated with her excellent line art.

Section 4 is an introduction to Nordic flint axes.

Section 5 goes into the details of how they are made featuring photo essays on thin-butted and thick-butted square sectioned axes.

In Section 6 is a Portfolio of Axes featuring many fine specimens in full color photos. Section 7 Nordic Flint Daggers 101 is quick introduction to the daggers followed by 8 and 9, scholars’ and modern knappers’ work on daggers.

Section 10 covers Dagger Typology, while section 11 deals with the technicalities of dagger manufacture with detailed accounts and photo essays on how D.C. made a Type III and Type IV dagger and a lot more tips and info for knappers wishing to duplicate them.

With an understanding of how daggers were made Section 12 discusses the dagger’s place in the Late Neolithic and the New Neolithic. Section 13, 'A Portfolio of Daggers' is the largest section in this book featuring 111 old daggers, many in multiple-view color photos with twelve illustrated by Val, and an additional fifteen made by made by D.C. that were also drawn by Val.

In section 14 and 15, more is to be found on blade and tri-sided points and Neolithic bifaces. These sections were lifted from CHIPS articles and revised for this book.

Featured in Section 16 are some strange things D.C. has made using the techniques covered in this volume. And, in the last section two extremely interesting discoveries are discussed from a master knappers point of view. These are four daggers from a unique burial mound in South Jutland, and a large flint artifact cache found in Sweden that contained sickles, halberds, and fourteen daggers! Beyond a dry scholarly work this book is fun, informative, and full of eye candy, the first of its kind written in English, and a must have for both knappers and collectors alike!

272 pages, comb bound, 8½ x 11, illustrated with over 480 line drawings drawn by the late Valerie Waldorf, and photos, many in full color.