Bone & Antler Carving Workshop

Bone and antler has been used from the start of prehistory up to the modern day for making tools and ornamentation. People in prehistory had a close relationship with the animals these resources came from, what does that tell us about the past?

What were the first bone or antler tools? Which hominin added this material to their toolkit alongside stone? We’ll find out on the introductory talk to start the day. Once we move onto the making, we’ll use pieces of bone to carve bone points which will become needles, perhaps one of the most ingenious and important inventions of the Stone Age. You’ll use stone tools to carve, shape and smooth the bone point before drilling an eye for the needle with a flint drill. After needles, we’ll move onto working antler. A different material that was united to making different tools, and the focus of the afternoon…