XXXIII. INCISING PROCESSES 



Pressure Ixcisixg 



(a) Cutting or shaving the stone to be shaped by pressure AA-ith a 

 sharp, hiterally-edged tool held in the hand as a knife. 



(h) Chiseling the stone to be shaped with a terminally-edged 

 implement, hafted or unhafted, held in the hand and pushed. 



Percusstox Incising 



(a) Chiseling the stone to be shaped with a terminally-edged 

 implement, hafted or unhafted, forcibly driven with a hammer or 

 mallet. 



(h) Chopping the stone to be shaped with a terminally-edged tool, 

 as an ax or adz, a chisel, hatchet, pick, or gouge, hafted or unhafted. 



THE incising processes shape material by means of a cutting 

 edge, which implies the use of a hard, edged implement and 

 a substance to be shaped of decidedly inferior hardness. 

 Generally speaking, stone is not well adapted for the making of 



cutting implements, yet edged tools of stone were of 

 Incising Tools iiecessity a cliief reliance of Stone Age peoples in 



their diversified manual activities. They included 

 knives, axes, hatchets, adzes, chisels, and gouges, and are much diver- 

 sified in form, ranging in each type from selected natural forms 

 to implements of wholly artificial conformation. The edge was ob- 

 tained by chipping, crumbling, or grinding, or by the one supple- 

 mented by one or both of the others. Simple fracture of glassy 

 stone, as obsidian, gave the keenest possible edge, and all the finer 

 grained stones were capable of taking an excellent edge by grind- 

 ing, as is well illustrated by the slate and jade knives of the Arctic 

 peoples. 



The grooved ax, celt-hatchet, chisel, and gouge were given edges 



by grinding capable of cutting and dressing wood and 

 Soapstone Working the softer stoues, but very ineffective as compared 



with steel tools of corresponding type. The flint 

 blade, sharpened by chipping, w^as in universal use by the tribes, but 

 was little adapted to the shaping of stone. Soapstone, the principal 

 and most generally available mineral readily worked by incising 

 methods, was hewn out of the quarry and shaped into implements, 

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