2015 International Community School Flintknapping Demonstration Report

October 2nd

Barry Bonnell, Jim Keffer and Jim Smith

Photos thanks to Jim Smith

On Friday, October 2nd, 2015, PSK members Barry Bonnell, Jim Keffer and Jim Smith spent two hours with eighty 7th graders demonsrating flintknapping and discussing Paleo stone tool technology at the International Community School in Kirkland, WA.

Special thanks to the valiant and tireless effort of International Community School (ICS) teacher Ted Over, who provided members of the Puget Sound Knappers with this unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate and discuss flintknapping and stone technology at this prestigious school. Unprecedented because it was the first time, to our knowledge, that a live flintknapping demo was permitted at a school in King County, WA.

Providing a live demo and discussion of flintknapping and stone technology at ICS, which was ranked #22 out of the best U.S. high schools by 2013 U.S. News and World Report, is also a challenge. The students of ICS are not only very intelligent but they also highly motivated to learn and understand everything the come into contact with. They kept up a continuous stream of insightful questions that kept all of us on our toes! It was a real treat to be able to provide these students with a real world perspective of what it might have taken to create stone tools.