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‘The Oldest British Industry’: continuity and obsolescence in a flintknapper's sample set

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

John C. Whittaker
John C. Whittaker*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Grinnell College, Grinnell IA 50112, USA.
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Extract

A set of gunflints and other artefacts produced by Fred Snare at Brandon is an example of ways in which craftsmen in a declining trade attempted to create new markets by introducing new techniques and forms, and finding new ways to sell traditional skills. Sample sets and artefacts made for collectors reflect how some gunflint knappers, drawing on romantic conceptions of their craft as ‘heritage’, assigned new meanings to the flint industry as part of a survival strategy for an obsolescent trade.

Keywords

Brandonflintknappingromanticismheritageobsolescence
Type
Papers
Information
Antiquity , Volume 75 , Issue 288 , June 2001 , pp. 382 - 390
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2001

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