Primitive Tools in the Windward Islands

The Windward Islands of the southern Caribbean have a lengthy history with primitive peoples. Moving out of the South American continent, they settled their way across the islands in a series of migrations. Much has been written already on these peoples and their interactions, but little appears to b be available on their ways of life, skills, and tools. It is well known that the Arawak were sophisticated craftsmen who produced high quality pottery, but as of yet I have seen little of their lithics. This leads me to wonder what the natives of these islands were using to cut, scrape, gouge, saw, and drill.
I have spent much of my time in the islands seeking out museums with the answers, as well as looking to the environment itself for those answers.


You can see that with relatively little difficulty, one could put together a very useful toolkit. This kit is entirely made of local materials and using basic primitive skills. With this kit you can produce fire, butcher game, hunt, carve, produce stone drills, and produce a number of other tools.


The stone found here comes in varying degrees, which is very useful to primitive people or the survivalist. All of the stones I found are razor sharp, but are obviously more suited for certain tasks. The caramel coloured stone is probably the sharpest, but would not stand up to working wood. The grey stone is far more robust and could easily carve wood. Much of the islands here are volcanic, though obsidian is rare, if not non-existent.


Fiber is readily available from the palm trees. Both the trunk of the palm and the husk have very strong fibers. It can be somewhat wirey which makes me uncertain of whether it would work for fishing line. It would be suitable for all other tasks and I am certain it was a staple for primitive peoples in the islands.

As for fire I have had good success, even with wood simply collected from the beach. The set picture has been used several times and produces coals quickly and consistently.

Glass-tipped Spear

Spears are some of the oldest weapons used by by humans, both for hunting and warfare. They are also what comes to mind when most people think of when they hear "primitive", "paleo", or "tribal". Though not necessarily the easiest of weapons to use, both on a day to day basis, or in an immediate survival situation, they are nonetheless a very versatile tool in the paleo arsenal.

This is really the meat of it. Without a good point, your lance or spear is just a pole. When is comes to putting the business end on your spear you can go two ways, either a stone/glass point (or some scavenged metal if your knapping skills leave something to be desired), or fire hardened tip. I find fire hardening to be a skill I have no yet mastered, as it takes a certain amount of intuition on my part to tell whether I am indeed fire hardening it, or simply burning it into charcoal. So being halfway decent with a rock and some glass, I settled on using knapped points for my spears. The points above are as follows: (left to right)

-Large glass point, I believe from an old window from an abandoned hospital I visited
-Obsidian point, Idaho, no notching
-Notched Obsidian point, very thin
-Raw Texas Chert point, small enough that it might be better suited for an arrow
-Bottle glass point, I really like this one, I was able to flute it on one side
-Raw Texas Chert point, the overall form of this one is very nice, quite a robust point. I used it as an atlatl dart point for awhile

I used pitch to hold the point in place, then wrapped it with sinew I had soaked in the nearby creek. I finished that off with a strip of rawhide to secure everything and protect the hafting. I used a beech sapling for the shaft.

The finished product. It's not as long as some spears can be, but I feel it's size suits the sometimes dense woodlands of the east coast.

Oetzi's Knife sheath

Last night I stripped some basswood (American Linden) fibers from some basswood branches I scavenged, and made a replica of Oetzi's lime bast knife sheath. Its holding up well, and looks nice. I simply made a ring of basswood, then looped vertical strips on the ring, then twined it together and tied off the end. Fairly simple and easy to make.

Skills in Montana

I'm in Missoula now, so I've been doing skills out here.
I don't have any pictures right now (two reasons, 1. I don't have my connection cable and 2 haven't really taken any.)

I'll summarize a few things I've done so far:

-Taught a few friends how to skin and elk leg and remove the sinew, as well as tan the hide from the leg.
-Knapped a few arrow points and spear points
-Taught some friends how to make willow baskets
-Taught several people I didn't know how to make willow deer effigy's
-Explored the Blackfoot river, found some interesting knappable stone
-Stalked a doe and two fawns on campus for a couple of nights

Update:
This picture shows the bone and sinew from the elk leg, raisins made from grapes found locally, a squirrel pelt from a dead squirrel on campus, obsidian projectile points, and a deer hide tanned early in the season.

Knapping Texas Chert

I went about spalling and knapping some chert today, and created a small, crude, but still useful blade/spear point. I'll probably end up using it as a knife. It has a rather thick spot towards the base, I was able to thin it slightly with an antler punch but it got to the point where I couldnt thin it anymore, plus I was causing some damage to the side.

It does have a nice edge though, so I'll test it by cutting notches in my hearthboard later to see what it can do. Normaly I use a Basketmaker II Sand Dune Cave Knife hafted into a yucca stalk with some pitch, using the same type of stone for the blade. This works well, although it is a short blade. I'll post later how well it works.