Educational Artifact Displays	by William Moody
Central States Archaeological Societies 2025 October Journal	West Tisbury, Massachusetts

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Figure 1.The top face of the cache of five chisels.

As avocational archaeologists or collectors, when we have occasions to share our collections with people who might be interested in seeing the artifacts, we often find that they naturally want to know more. Most people would usually recognize an “arrowhead,” but what about many of the other stone implements? What exactly are they? And then, how were they used? This is when we are provided with the additional opportunity to offer some helpful education on the subject.

As we know, so much of the archaeological record is comprised primarily of stone implements because organic materials, such as wood or bone, are not well preserved over time. This means that it is very rare to see exactly how a stone tool or weapon was actually utilized—how it may have been hafted for its working purpose. There have, of course, been rare exceptions that give great insights into prehistoric activities. A hafted celt, for example, still in its wooden handle was found a number of years ago off the south coast of Massachusetts. It was submerged in a mud flat and discovered by a fisherman raking for clams. The fisherman carefully wrapped it in wet burlap and donated this exceptional artifact to the Massachusetts Archaeological Society. After undergoing a painstaking process by professional archaeologists, the wooden handle was treated to prevent any further deterioration. It has since been displayed for many years at the Society’s museum.

Yet when someone sees a fine polished stone celt in a collection without its original haft, he may not be able to easily imagine how it could have been utilized. In earlier times, for example, polished stone celts were thought by some cultures to have fallen from the sky as thunderbolts and were often imbued with sacred, magical, or healing powers. Little was known of their actual use. The author has found that having some artifacts displayed with replicated hafts or handles has been especially informative for others. This has been of even greater interest when a person is allowed to pick up the hafted stone tool and “feel” how it was used. (Something that is almost never possible with public museum displays).

Some examples in the author’s collection are shown in the accompanying photographs (Figs 1-5). All of the replicated hafts illustrated here were made by Richard Parker of Massachusetts, who has great expertise in replicating stone tools and then subsequently experimenting with them. Parker once created a group of stone axes, gouges, and celts; hafted them using traditional methods and materials; and then chopped down a large tree and made an entire dugout canoe!

Figures 1 and 2 show two hafted celts. The first example (Fig. 1) is a small celt that the author found along an eroded shoreline. The author asked Dick Parker to create a working haft. Parker modeled this ...

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