00:00.45 John Connor Welcome back to episode 1 sixty life rooms podcast we have been discussing a paper by ah and by a person and we have beaten that horse dead and given our opinions but I wanted to ask an adjacent question to this kind of study. Ah. So thinking of like modern flintnappers and kids and getting people introduced archeology etc like what do you think is the appropriate age and or is there an appropriate age to start teaching students kids like flint napping. Experimental archeology things like that because I think they can be meaningful if you catch them at those young ages but there is like a danger to them. 00:45.45 David Howe My friends kid just graduated kindergarten and she like naps with him. She's napped with them for like 2 years like just tries. She just smashes it with a billet but not she's in there. 00:59.51 alifeinruins I Noticed like when I did the flint napping thing for those classes. The injuries occur when I'm not directly with a student. So like if I'm guiding an individual student like how to hold a hey watch your hands like if I like I imagine if. Like a parent to their child who's meticulously watching them to do it right? Those injuries don't Happen. It's like when I move down the line and someone's not paying attention and they bash they put their finger in between the core and the hammerstone. That's when the injuries Happen. So I think there's also kind of like a social like what's the situation. Um. 01:27.63 John Connor Yeah. 01:34.43 alifeinruins Like when I had a flitnapp at hell gap like walk me through how to make a clovis point I didn't hurt myself once because they're like hey you're holding this wrong. You need to hit it right here like you're going to slice your hand if you do it this way. So there is that like knowledge that's being passed down in a transformative way in an educational way versus you have 30 students and like. There's a bunch of hammerstones out and you're not paying attention. Everyone that's where the injuries happened and like the injuries that I've always sustained. It's like when I was fucking unsupervised and like not thinking like the Chaco incident or like and most of the time I slice my hand open. It's when I'm with obsidian it's not. 02:08.63 John Connor Yeah. 02:09.92 David Howe Now. 02:11.37 alifeinruins It's not like I'll get church stuck every now and then but generally it's the Obsidian That's really lacerating me and I'm wearing the goggles I'm wearing the gloves like generally wearing long pants as you're supposed to do um, granted is that did glasses and goggles exist in the Past. No So there is that danger. But generally people are wearing long pants and covered shoes. I imagine moccasins are some sort of where. 02:32.45 John Connor Something. 02:34.40 David Howe We discussed like those Inuit snow masks like like if it was heavy debris like with Obsidian maybe something like that or another guy and I were talking about just long hair put your long hair in front of you. Um, you have way less likely of getting a thing flown into your eye. 02:50.70 John Connor Yeah. 02:52.45 David Howe Um, but I mean no way to know. But I think they were good like ah modern apppers who are good just don't hurt themselves as often. Um. 03:00.75 John Connor Yeah I was just thinking of this like in the context so there's this thing every year. Um, called the wyoming archeology fair where they have a bunch of different stations and they have folks come out kids all ah adults old people. Um. And they teach them archeological stuff or different skills flint napping ceramics. There's soapstone carving just a variety of different things and I was thinking I mean so there's needs to be this ratio of like advisors supervisors to. Like novices kids going on. So I think that seems like a very important thing. Um, you can't just like have like you said like 30 kids smashing rocks together without some sort of supervision to kind of because I mean you want you want kids that age to get inspired to do archeology and have fun doing it like I think that's. 03:43.79 David Howe Yeah. 03:53.41 John Connor Important but safety is also important. 03:56.73 alifeinruins Yeah David if you have a colleague who's teaching his kindergarten or how to do it and they're doing it safely perfect I mean like for archaeology students. They are learning generally in their archeology methods course intro archeology I know there's community college that teaches it and sometimes even high schools in the southwest it all just depends on you know the level of the teacher. 04:01.47 David Howe Oh. 04:16.12 alifeinruins The willingness of the student to pay attention and also the class size. Um why I'm good at being able to show like I could show students how to make a flake pretty useless beyond that. 04:27.99 David Howe Yeah, but then it's the point though you just want to show them how how it works and you can infer from there. Um. 04:30.43 alifeinruins Yeah. 04:33.59 John Connor Are there a ton of but a bunch of kids at those napins or is it just kind of mostly. 04:40.73 David Howe Yeah, like people who have their kids with them and then there's I obviously like parents that come like to just see it and they bring their kids and a kid sat down with my friend and he sat and taught him for a bit while the dad was watching and asking questions. Um, yeah. But I mean it's really hard to teach everything about fli napping for 5 minutes with the kid sitting right? like you know like hit this um bit. 05:05.84 alifeinruins I I do want to mention something because I because ah it's relevant when we did when I did the bison experiment with Devin in Montana and Donny you know we had stone tools that need to be resharpeen and like we relied on Devin and Donny to do that like they were kind of our sharpeners like in terms of like the group dynamic. Because they knew how to do it and I don't recall either that them getting injured. You know they were the designated sharpeners while we were the cutters and the slicers or like at there was a point where Lana in autumn they were. We would take the big hunks of meat off and they would process them by muscle groups. We had this assembly line of people like. 05:29.38 David Howe Mary. 05:43.40 alifeinruins Actively working within a stone tool environment in in an archeological context an ethnographic context of processing ah a killed bison that I think is as a meaningful like that's a different kind of context to La through production than like a nap in or like just sitting there flinapping. Right? Does that make sense like I don't know where I'm going with that but other than like we had 2 professionals that were doing it. No one was getting injured but like we weren't all flint napping but we were still using stone tools right? like. 06:04.28 John Connor Um. 06:08.80 John Connor I mean I think you're hitting you're hitting out like a division of labor thing and and that there's special specialties across groups. You have to specialize in something um and not everyone's going to be hitting rocks all the time So that's I think that is an important thing to talk about because not but how many novices will be actually hitting rocks. 06:15.54 alifeinruins Exactly. 06:28.58 John Connor Together in the past like fundamentally. 06:29.45 alifeinruins I up exactly or how many like if you're like a family and I got like my 3 my 3 young sons and my 2 varied beefy daughters out there am I the one making the stone tools while they're cutting. Do you know? that's that's the divisional labor that Connor just hit on like people are going to use their shrinks in those environments and so. 06:45.92 David Howe Ah. 06:49.67 alifeinruins Generally I wasn't even used like Devin and Donny they like Donny his fidget spinner is this like Cher point just his churt cutter that he's made that has this like beautiful like so crescent side notch in it and he was using that and he'd sharpen that I was using flakes. But if my flake got fucked up. Dullled. It wouldn't get fuck up like Devon and Donny would make me another good flake like specifically prep a flake that was good for slicing rather than me just whacking up, um, a core until I got something I liked. So even then just to make a flake that was good. They could do that and I would get in there and and do my thing right? so. Yeah, the division of labor hitting people's specialties and not everyone's going to be a fantastic stone producer when you're in even a hunting and gathering environment of like a band of what like a dozen to two dozen people if you're going to have your flintnappers. You know in part of that you also have your hunters. You also have. People that are more skilled for other things and in an actual environment where those industries are being performed. There is a division of labor. 07:47.20 John Connor Yeah, and I think that's something um we had a student here at the University Of Wyoming do that? Do that kind of analysis. Um using ah is it a orf human relation files or whatever it is um, kind of it's an ethnographic database looking at um. Fire and who use fire when they use fire what the method etc and you could do the same thing with stone tool production in the past or tool production in general and really get at these kind of specifics so is it is it a male dominated industry. What is the average age of someone doing this. Ah. When do they do this and is it situational. Is it always 1 person napping Etc I think you can do these kinds of analyses and really have something meaningful to add to our understanding in the past I know I think that's that's something that. 08:36.51 David Howe Ah. 08:39.50 John Connor That should be explored and could be done by these colleagues to kind of supplement this or these these folks. 08:42.26 alifeinruins No I mean David you're the one that goes into Nas I've never been to one I mean what's like the socioultural environment of a modern day napin like. 08:56.35 David Howe I just made a full video on that medicine. Get right now and I will say it's very white. Um and I didn't see and i. I look for this because I just wonder I don't see one female napper like maybe 1 or 2 knows how to do it I should say one who identifies as a woman like I've seen them sit down and do it with their husband or their boyfriend. That's there. But I've never seen one set up and sell napped stuff. Um, it's. 1 thing I have noticed though almost everyone. There did not know flint napping was a thing and they found an arrowhead on their grandfather or father's property as a kid and were very intrigued by it and wondered how they made it and then hit it with the rock and broke it and then realized. Oh. That's how it works and then they go and like figure it out from there and then when Facebook came around. They were all like oh this is like a whole thing people do and that's like when the napins really popped off. Um, which I find fun because like I mean I think Connor and I talked about this last episode but are few ah a few back. It's just like people have a fascination with stone tools and like that's not going to go away I don't think. 10:09.21 John Connor On the social wet networking aspect of that too is kind of cool how that stuff spreads. 10:15.66 alifeinruins I sorry edit that out Chris Rachel was just changing volumes I did not mean to click that. 10:15.79 David Howe What was I guess not relevant. 10:22.85 John Connor Yeah, um, have you only done these nap napins in like ah, kind of the East Coast south so far or you did a little bit bit of midwest stuff too right. 10:25.50 David Howe Were you saying kind of. 10:35.26 David Howe Oh there in Ohio of napa people in Colorado um, like based on like the people I'd know that do Youtube videos and like that flintnapp and stuff. It's all pretty much either survival people or like country guys I would say um. But I mean I don't I don't know every flint napper in the world. 10:54.19 John Connor I thought on David you asked Carlton an interesting question. Our group chat is there like an indigenous napping group people, societies, etc. 11:05.70 alifeinruins But not that I know of I had to think about that like I know indigenous people that do flitnap but like there's kind of a culture of even at powows I've seen like these mountain men show up and shut up stuff and. 11:07.13 David Howe Not that I know of either. 11:23.35 alifeinruins My experience with them has always been like not great because they they state say shit like you know if it wasn't for us white people indians would have forgot this kind of skills and it's like I don't know if that's the same at nap-ins but I do have heard horror stories of tribes sort of bring in nappers and these whatever nappers they brought in in whatever context haven't been the most like. Polite or respectful guests and kind of have have perpetuated this like well I'm teaching you your lost skill type of shit. Um like I haven't seen a huge interest like I know like my Tippo and people my driver are like interested in it. But they're very wary of trying to find some white dude that's going to teach him because of that same attitude and like it's like well what are we going to just find another dickhead. Um, who who knows you know at the end of the day. It's also like there's other shit for indian people that need to work on you know. 12:11.22 John Connor Yeah. 12:11.78 David Howe Kind of. 12:13.10 alifeinruins It's it's like 1 of those socioeconomic things like who can afford to to go and look for rocks and then bring them home and and create them when there's other other things. 12:16.44 David Howe Yeah,, that's another thing too like you have to have private land that has a source on it to get rock or you have to order flat rate boxes by like $100 each to get rock unless you just use. Flakes you find or bottles like glass you know. 12:39.25 John Connor Yeah, yeah, there is. There's an ah economic angle to that and having the time to teach yourself something like this is. It's a significant investment. Yeah. 12:48.71 alifeinruins Um I would love. Yeah I would love to go to these napins and just ask nappers like what their interaction has been with like indigenous populations I have you reached out to indigenous groups like what do you find fast look I think there's a whole nother survey that I could you know just put a bunch of fucking tables together and publish an american antiquity. Um, and you know do something real with that that math without curating. It was so fucking ever. Ah because that that would be interesting to me is like because I actually really don't know when David asked me that question like I don't I really don't know but I'm actually kind of fascinated to learn like go to nappping and just like. You know what's your relationship with the digital culture is like how did you find this? okay have you, you know like what's what does this look like. 13:25.15 David Howe Yeah, it's exactly what I was asking in the video because a guy I mean talk about in the video but they get into it last year a guy came up and said like with his kids he was indigenous and he was like that's our heritage like to his kids. And I kind of sat there and was like I talked to him and I was like oh I have a pawe friend and it's just like it's basically like saying like oh you're english I have a ukrainian friend like it's like the same thing. Um, but ah and I sat there for like a year was like what did he mean by that like was he. Was he sad was he remorseful was he angry at me and like or is he just proud to like teach his kids that and I didn't know and I was talking with a friend a few weeks ago about this and she said like um maybe don't like be as defensive and like wonder. And like I can't remember how she phrased it but essentially like that's him processing his trauma and like explaining that to another generation of children whose heritage is now being performed by white people on the land that they used to call home and I was like oh god damn and she was like yeah it's like that. And I was like oh fuck and like it's just weird and this year when I went back to the nap-in I was like I don't see a single indigenous person like 1 guy said he had some choctaw in marriage grandfather is Cherokee but like no 1 outwardly identifying as indigenous and that's their napping thing and I was just like that is a bummer. 15:00.37 David Howe So something I miss out on and I'm wondering is like I can learn the physics and how to nap from different people. But what about like the spiritual stuff behind napping or like what times of year you use certain rock or just shit like that or like what kind of spirit is in the rock like things like that or. All that kind of stuff in those traditions and oral stories of napping are not taught at a ah white napping I would say. 15:25.73 alifeinruins I mean it made me reflect when you asked that question like looking at the different people in my community at large that are engaged in some side of some sort of crap production of like one pipemaker. Ah, we have 1 traditional bowmaker. 15:43.70 alifeinruins We don't have any potters. We don't have any lithicists and like we know pot like we were farmers you know and we've we've just seen within the past Decade a huge resurgence of growing of ancestral crops that are we using like bisoncapula hose yet. No. But we do have a lot of people that are engaged in beadwork silversmithing and like engaged in contemporary regalia production like that's where a lot of that effort goes to now I would find it fascinating and but part of some of those traditions. It's like. 16:07.25 David Howe Yeah, yeah. 16:19.44 alifeinruins Our ancestral stone tools that we've used would have come out of um, you know s smoke ah sokky hill jasper in Kansas heartville uplift in Eastern Wyoming and and the black hills like those were gutter stones. 16:32.34 David Howe Ah. 16:34.81 alifeinruins And we're also not using like the ancestral dogwood from our home like there's there's like another part of it where it's like we're kind of displaced so we can't actually engage in that practice because we're no longer in Nebraska and Kansas and have access to those raw materials which are a very important part of that construction as you were saying or even like the flechings that we use you know like a lot of pawny fletchings were eagle. 16:48.95 David Howe Yeah. 16:54.59 alifeinruins Like Golden Eagle feathers like we can't really get our hands on those anymore and if we do it takes like 7 years from the eagle repository and I don't and usually those go to Regalia like we don't actually use those I guess now would be turkey feathers but like I was always fascinated in trying to make golden eagle fuding. 16:55.62 David Howe Yeah, and. 17:02.94 David Howe That was a thing. 17:11.46 alifeinruins So there's like a whole aspect that you were hitting on David of like well what is how do how do a displaced people engage in a practice in which locality and geographic culture or cultural geography is very important to that industry right. 17:23.15 David Howe Yeah, and you you bring up the thing about like bead work and regalia and like ah another thing I thought of while I was there and Jacob brought this up too a while ago that he he wouldn't sell points that he makes. Um, because it's appropriation in a sense and like when I was there I was like while flint napping is and that's what I I talked with um, that friend about was like flint napping's a world heritage. So like it's not like white people can't do it but I wouldn't sit there and sell indigenous bead work or like indigenous. Cherokee regalia and like profit off of it. So why would I sell a clovis point or a turkey tail or an archaic point and if I was wondering and wrestling that whole time at what point is it just a craft just like you're selling a hat or you know pants that like doesn't necessarily have to be indigenous. What at what level is it are you crossing a barrier into this is indigenous culture and I'm profiting off of it or at what level is it just you're making and a point out of rock. You know it's hard. 18:24.71 alifeinruins I right? Yeah I mean that's a huge like I I don't even know how to process that kind of stuff like you know we've had um people engaged in indigenous culture in one way shape or form on the show I mean that fuck we archaeologist. That's all we do for the most part we've had some european folks on but like. Yeah, like if someone came up with like ah a levois point or like that those like European Industries Neanderthal industry like yeah, that's like a huge bag of you know can of worms that it's you know, end to segment three I don't know if we can process but those are like really good questions for our audience. To wrap grapple with and you know send us an email life rooms podcast at Gmail.com with your thoughts over like are is selling ah pale indian points in the Americas by non-indi people some form of cultural appropriation send us your thoughts. Let us know how what your thoughts are on that on that topic. 19:14.50 John Connor And that same sort of thing leave us a review on Itunes by our merch to all the things that we tell you to do every time at this part of the of of the episode. 19:26.30 alifeinruins So yep, if you're listening on the all shows feed please subscribe to our podcast individually. 19:32.69 David Howe And yeah, with that we're out Connor do you have a joke. 19:40.30 John Connor Yeah, it's bad. 19:42.17 alifeinruins And that are all not great. 19:44.64 David Howe I hope. 19:45.47 John Connor What did Yoda say when he saw himself in four KHDAm I 19:52.58 David Howe I Mean that's pretty good. 19:55.57 alifeinruins So that's good. Thank you Connor.