Description
An introductory course to working with flint and making ancestral tools.
A craft day course at our meadow in West Lothian learning how our Mesolithic ancestors made flint knives, arrowheads, spears, awls, drills, burins, saws. Learn the basics of flint and stone working techniques. Presentation of suitable tools, breaking open the flint nodule, preparing the striking surfaces, cutting off the first blades. Discussion of where you can progress to next to advance your skills.
Topics covered
Discussion: Flint knapping, its history and techniques.
Practical: Flaking flints for cutting edges.
Practical: Make a flint tool to take home.
Monica ‘Mo’ Wilde is a passionate ethnobotanist who teaches the traditional uses of plants, seaweeds and fungi for wild food, medicine, craft, and the old ways of being and doing. Her experiment of living on only free wild food for a year, recorded in her award-winning book ‘The Wilderness Cure’, gave rise to The Wildbiome® Project – a fascinating ongoing research study into the health effects of a foraged diet.
Mo has a master’s degree in Herbal Medicine. She is a founder member of the Association of Foragers, a member of the British Mycological Society, the Society for Ethnobotany and a Fellow of the Linnean Society. Brought up in East Africa, Mo now lives in a wooden eco-house on a small rewilded patch of Central Scotland.
Werner Pfeifer was born and raised in Namibia, mainly in the bush, which fostered a lifelong love of wild things. Originally studying biology and geography, he once worked as a professional hunter, then a game ranger before becoming a tourist an
d bush guide in Namibia. He helped the Ju/’hoansi of the Kalahari set up their Living Museums and continues to work with them to preserve their traditions and ancestral skills. Werner has taught primitive and Stone Age skills for many years, being a leading specialist in everything regarding the North European Mesolithic period – the last hunter-gatherer time here.
In 2013, he built a Mesolithic settlement in the Steinzeitpark Dithmarschen (Stone Age Park) in North Germany where he currently works as a Stone Age teacher. Each year he also hosts the annual European Stone Age Gathering. Werner truly loves everything about nature, tracking, trapping, fishing, primitive skills and foraging. He is a patient teacher and an incredible source of ancestral knowledge.
