Practicing Primitive: A Handbook of Aboriginal Skills

Practicing Primitive: A Handbook of Aboriginal Skills

"Practicing Primitive" collects two decades of aboriginal skills research, connecting readers with our Stone Age heritage through hands-on practice of ancient techniques—a pathway to understanding our shared human story. Practicing Primitive: A Handbook of Aboriginal Skills is a collection of information and images put together over a twenty-year period in a search for hands-on communication with our shared Stone Age past. The story of the Stone Age is our story, and primitive technology is a way for anyone who wants to understand that shared history. Watts makes the case that the learning and practice of aboriginal skills helps us connect with our remote past, encourages us to participate in the shared inheritance of primitive ('first') skills. Practicing Primitive includes detailed instructions on how to make or perform over 65 Stone Age objects or skills, covering primitive basics such as making axes and food utensils out of stone, bone, shell, and plant material; bark and reed shelters; bags and ropes made of bark and leaves; watercraft out of reeds or bamboo; and much more. Watts covers the environment, lifestyle, and tool kit of three different stages of human evolution: the Lower Paleolithic of 2.5 million years ago, the Middle Paleolithic of 60 thousand years ago, and the Mesolithic 9 thousand years ago. "Practicing Primitive" collects two decades of aboriginal skills research, connecting readers with our Stone Age heritage through hands-on practice of ancient techniques―a pathway to understanding our shared human story. "At long last Steve Watts has put together the book we've all been waiting for--Practicing Primitive: A Handbook of Aboriginal Skills. For years we've been treated to a tantalizing, trickling stream of Watts' tidbits of aboriginal skills. They have been scattered far and wide in various publications and handouts. But now, he has assembled them all under one cover. With this book, Watts has laid us a trail we will be following for years to come. And so our ancestral skills and values are passed into the future." -- Errett Callahan, PhD Primitive technology can help us explore the world of our prehistoric past. Insights into our ancestors may provide insights into ourselves. Practicing Primitive: A Handbook of Aboriginal Skills is the result of more than 20 years of one man's thinking and writing about the stone-age heritage we all share. It's a book designed to inform and inspire Prehistorian Steven M. Watts directs the Aboriginal Studies Program at the Schiele Museum of Natural History in Gastonia, North Carolina. He is a founding board member and current president of the Society of Primitive Technology. Steven M. Watts , has directed the Aboriginal Studies Program at the Schiele Museum of Natural History in Gastonia, North Carolina, since 1984. Steve is currently president of the international Society of Primitive Technology, which publishes a biannual journal, The Bulletin of Primitive Technology. He is the author of many articles dealing with culture and technology, and served as a consultant on the 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment movie Cast Away. Steve has an undergraduate degree from Appalachian State University and a master's degree from Duke University. Pre Face You and I are related. We share a genetic and technological lineage which began deep in Mother Africa many millennia ago. Our bodies, our brains and our behaviors bear the marks of htis long journey through time. In your hands you hold a bundle. Practicing Primitive: A Handbook of Aboriginal Skills is a collection of words and images put together over a twenty-year period in a search for hands-on communication with that stone age past. These words and images are artifacts of my attempts to share that connection with others. Some were meant for publication at their conception. Some were designed specifically for use by my students. And, some were simply the results of self-expression and instrospection. Gathered together here, they are yours to open and use-skills to be practiced and ideas to be pondered. Yet, like relics removed from their archaeological context, they have little meaning in and of themselves. They are tools meant to point beyond themselves to a greater understanding and appreciation of our shared prehistoric heritage. They are signposts on a journey-markers on a trail.