Obsidian blades as surgical tools

In my recent post on #hipsterscience, the quote that struck closest to home was the one about the obsidian blade. See, most of my analytical work has been focused on stone tools (aka lithics) and how they were manufactured, used and managed by people in the past. Whenever it was available, obsidian seems to have been one of the preferred materials to make sharp flakes of, mainly because it is incomparably sharp among lithic raw materials!

Just how sharp is obsidian? Extremely damn frikkin' sharp! I often regale students about the first time I knapped stone myself, a sad, sordid story that ends with a fountain of blood gushing from the tip of my index finger (not that I would ever exaggerate for dramatic effect or anything). Well, that bloody geyser was unleashed by a flake of coarse flint - and obsidian is much, much sharper than that. When I've given knapping demos using obsidian and inadvertently nicked myself with little obsidian flakes, they're so sharp that I usually didn't notice I was bleeding until I smeared blood all over myself - this made knapping look pretty bad-ass to at least one group of sixth graders I once gave a demo to.

But don't take my word for it! Lithic specialists often refer to the story of Don Crabtree (one of the people directly responsible for the rebirth of knapping in the 60's and 70's) insisting that he be operated on by surgeons using scalpels tipped with obsidian blades he had expressly knapped for the purpose. Buck (1982) reports some observations on this episode, as well as on experiments comparing the obsidian to steel scalpel blades, concluding that, at 30 angstrom (i.e., 3 nanometers; that's three billionth of a meter) obsidian is much sharper than even the sharpest steel blade, the cuts it produces heal just as well if not better than those made with a steel surgical blade, and contrary to some concerns, it doesn't chip or leave residues when employed to operate on soft tissue. Specifically, he observes that

In most fields of surgery, of course, a modicum
of sharpness suffices, and one feels comfortable
with the convenience of the modem disposable
steel blade. However, in many specialized areas,
scalpel blades and razor blades leave much to be
desired. Examples that come to mind are the
debridement of nerve ends for repair, microvascular
surgery, fine plastic work on thin skin (blepharoplasty,
for example) and ophthalmologic surgery.
Though one with faith in modem technology
cannot imagine that instruments equal to these
various tasks cannot be produced today, the fact
remains that no honed metal edge has matched
that of the glass blade to date. (Buck 1982: 269)

Since the results of that brief experimental study were published almost thirty years ago, however, there hasn't been much of a push for obsidian tipped surgical instruments. My guess as to why this might be the case, beyond inertia in surgical equipment trends, is that some of the practical aspects of making obsidian blades might have been underestimated by Buck, especially those concerning standardization in shape and thickness, along with the properties of various grades of obsidian.

Edit (03/03/2001, 10:45AM): Hey! This post was included in this week's ResearchBlogging 'Editor's Selection' for the social sciences! Sweet!

References:

Buck BA (1982). Ancient technology in contemporary surgery. The Western journal of medicine, 136 (3), 265-9 PMID: 7046256

Prehistoric ballistics, or Mythbusters meets archaeology

Nicole Waguespack and a bunch of others (including four of the Mythbusters gang, which leads one to wonder whether this will be the basis of a future episode) ask the question: "Given that so many hunter-gatherers use/d stone-tipped projectile, what are the advantages of a stone tip relative to one whose point is simply sharpened wood?" This is a good question to ask, since crafting an projectile point from stone consumes more time, effort and resources than simply sharpening the end of the shaft that you'll be making anyway. Hell, one could even argue that knapping a stone point incurs some additional risk since you risk slicing up your hand as you do so, as anyone who's ever tried their hand (eh!) at flintknapping knows all too well. These costs are all the more important to keep in mind given the frequency at which stone points break during use (Waguespack et al. 2009:787).

As the authors argue, it's generally assumed that stone makes for a more effective projectile point, though this has rarely, if ever, been tested empirically. As they state:

"Numerous ‘common knowledge’ explanations appear to be generally accepted regarding the superiority of stone, and to a lesser extent, osseous point tips relative to sharpened staves (e.g. Guthrie 1983; Arndt & Newcomer 1986). Assumptions concerning performance (e.g. durability of the tip), lethality (e.g. length of cutting edge, depth of penetration) and aerodynamics (e.g. weight distribution, flight paths) abound. Unfortunately, few of these assumptions have been verified experimentally (Waguespack et al. 2009:787)."

To test whether stone is actually more efficient, Waguespack et al. (2009) (available as a free pdf here)made replicas of six wooden and six stone-tipped arrows and shot them at a human torso-shaped block of ballistic gel, draping it with caribou hide in some cases to simulate the arrow having to pierce the thick skin of some animals. They conducted two tests. The first, designed to see whether stone and wood tips penetrate a target more or less deeply, had the arrows shot from a compound bow 1.1m away from the target. The second, designed to see if the two types of arrowheads have different degrees of accuracy, had the arrows shot from the same contraption but at a distance of ca. 16.75m.

Picture of the experimental set-up used by Waguespack et al. 2009.

(from Waguespack et al. 2009: Figure3, p. 794.)

The results of these experiments indicate that both arrow types bestow equal degrees of precision to their users and, most importantly, that stone-tipped arrows provide only marginally higher degrees of target penetration (about 10% more), especially considering that both arrow types penetrated more than 20cm into the target. These observations lead the authors to conclude that the benefits of using stone-tipped arrows probably do not make up for the extra time, resources and risk involved in making them. Therefore, they argue, it is likely that the ubiquity of stone tips is driven by some other consideration, either other parameter of hunting effectiveness or social dimensions of projectile point making, such as the prestige derived from skillful stone working.

While there is some ethnographic evidence for the functional argument (e.g., Ellis 1997), Waguespack et al. (2009) provide a good discussion of why stone points are effective conveyors of social identities and/or a form of costly signaling. Costly signaling basically refers to behaviors that are not strictly functional but nonetheless serve to augment the social standing of the people able to effectively engage in them, be it through more finely honed skills or access to resources unavailable to others (or their profligate use).

Currently having lithics on the brain since I'm preparing to teach my Lithic Analysis seminar this coming terms (there's still some open seats if you're an interested student living in Colorado!), I thought this was a really good study that yields both interesting results and a powerful demonstration of how experimental archaeology can help answer long-standing anthropological questions (and, in this case, in a manner appealing to a wide audience!). With that in mind, I was nonetheless left wondering whether results might have differed if other types of projectiles had been used (e.g., darts propelled using a spear thrower, or hand-cast spears or javelins). Likewise, I would have been really interested in seeing the penetration results of both point types in the accuracy experiment, since 16.75m (ca. 50 feet) is likely to have been a more appropriate prey-hunter distance approximation than 1.1m (ca. 4 feet) used in the penetration experiment.

In any case, if the authors are right, this opens up some really interesting avenues to research technologically-mediated costly signaling in the deep past. Since stone points were used as far back as the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age (ca. 300,000 years BP), it implies this practice may be quite old. In sum, this paper provides a good theoretical and empirical basis to ground studies of costly signaling as reflected in some classes of chipped stone implements (i.e., points) which are certainly better in that respect than handaxes, as I've discussed recently.

Update: Turns out this episode already aired a long time ago, on Feb. 13, 2008 to be precise. That's what I get for not having cable, let alone a TV!

References

Ellis, C.J. 1997. Factors influencing the use of stone projectile tips: an ethnographic perspective, in Projectile technology (H. Knecht, ed.), pp. 37-74. New York, Plenum Press.

Waguespack, N.M., Surovell, T.A., Denoyer, A., Dallow, A., Savage, A., Hyneman, J., & Tapster, D. (2009). Making a point: wood- versus stone-tipped projectiles Antiquity, 83: 786-800

Ups and downs in experimental archaeology

Have you ever wondered about just how glamorous the lifestyle associated with experimental archaeology can be? If so (and even if not!), you should head on over to The Real Eolith to find out a bit more about the (literally) gut-wrenching details of a recent experimental project on cut marks on decomposing fish remains conducted by L. Willis and M. Eren. Hold on to your stomachs!