Object as History

WEEK 1

we understood that how an object’s history plays a role in it uses, importance and appearance.

Ms. Alisha Sadikot was our teacher and she showed us some examples which are kept in museums currently and explained it’s uses and etc.

Our homework was to select an object which had it’s uses till now.

WEEK 2

I searched for many objects like telephones, choppers, coins. I selected my object “burins”

 

Burins were stone tools with a rounded grasping end and a sharp, razor-like working end. It was invented in the Paleolithic age (16^th century). The tools were formed by striking off a small stone flake from a larger stone flake. They were used for carving other materials such as bone and wood. They were wielded either in hand or attached to a wooden handle.[1]

An engraving burin is used predominantly by engravers [Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into It.], but also by relief printmakers in making wood engravings.[2] Its older English name, still often used, is graver. Usually an engraver will have several tools, of different sizes and shapes of cutting face.

In use, it is typically held at approximately a 30-degree angle to the surface. The index and middle finger typically guide the shaft, while the handle is cradled in the palm.[3]

Tools like blade cores, scrapers, hand axe and clovis points were engraved by burins.

[1] https://sciencing.com/tools-used-stone-age-8241954.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engraving

[3] http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/stsmith/classes/anth3/courseware/LithicTech/9_Upper_Paleolithic_Tool.html

WEEK 3

For the 3rd week we have to be detailed and more informative.

Burins are known as gravers. They were mainly used for engraving on soft stone or bone as well as on the rock shelter and caves used by pre-historic man. These are small chisel[1] like tools produced on blade like flakes with a sharp but thick cutting edge formed by the intersection of the leveled or sloping surface.

Technology and evolution of mankind influenced a lot on the historic objects and its uses. Engraving now was not widely used and took a separate corner of our community. The making of the object depends on its uses and burins helped the pre historic man to make sharpen the other stones, helped engraving on wood or bones and also to cut them. Now days these all are different types of work done by different technologies adapted by big companies.

In short, burins are extinct and seen in galleries now days.

[1] A long-bladed hand tool with a bevelled cutting edge and a handle which is struck with a hammer or mallet, used to cut or shape wood, stone, or metal.

WEEK 4