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Earth Knack
Stone Age Skills for the 21st Century
by Bart & Robin Blankenship

      Bart and Robin Blankenship present a wealth of knowledge in Earth Knack. True to the title, "Stone Age Skills for the 21st Century", the book is a selection of skills that are especially useful to the backyard primitive, including:

-spinning, cording, netting and card-weaving with natural fibers
-pigments and dyes, plus soap from plants
-basketry, gourd craft, bark containers, and log bowls
-pottery making
-primitive cooking
-tool making, friction fires, and musical instruments,
-hide tanning, hide glue, and the manufacture of clothing.

      Whether you are headed out into the wilderness, or just into your backyard, the skills presented in Earth Knack are a great, hands-on way to discover the world around you. 1996. 192 pages. Please Note: Earth Knack was scanned into a computer for the reprint edition. Some of the original quality was lost on the photos, but all the drawings and text look good.

Earth Knack: Stone Age Skills for the 21st Century     $19.00     Quantity:

On-Line Articles by Bart & Robin Blankenship
The Fire Plow | Card Weaving

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Outdoor Survival Skills
Sixth Edition
by Larry Dean Olsen
Reviewed by Thomas J. Elpel

      Outdoor Survival Skills was one of the first modern books published on wilderness survival with primitive skills. Larry Olsen has inspired thousands of people to reconnect with the past through these skills. The book covers all the basics: shelter, fire, water, plants for food and medicine, hunting, working stone and bone, bow & arrow, atlatl and dart, cordage, weaving, rawhide and tanning. Thirty years after it was first published, Outdoor Survival Skills is still one of the best texts on the subject, and minor improvements have been added through the years.

My grandmother owned a copy of the book, and I studied it constantly when I was a teenager. Reading the book led to attending a twenty-six day wilderness survival walkabout with Boulder Outdoor Survival School in southern Utah when I was sixteen, which ultimately helped launch my career in wilderness survival instruction. Cost $15.00

Outdoor Survival Skills    $17.00     Quantity:

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Survival Arts of the Primitive Paiutes
by Margaret M. Wheat

      Those of us who desire to learn primitive skills are often stuck in the situation of "reinventing the wheel". Skills that were developed by native peoples over thousands of years were often reduced to cryptic notes in ethnographic works, such as "The pine nuts were harvested, roasted and hulled." We are left to trial and error to rediscover what was once well known.

      Originally published in 1967, Survival Arts of the Primitive Paiutes is a unique ethnographic work, because author Margaret M. Wheat provided step-by-step photo-documentation of key skills used by the Paiute Indians in the Great Basin Desert. These are real skills demonstrated by the people who once depended on them. Some of the skills covered include: harvesting and processing pine nuts, tule boats, duck decoys, cordage, harpoons, fishing and drying fish, deadfalls, rabbitskin blankets, clothes woven from sagebrush bark, tule baskets, split-willow work, cradleboards, tule and grass hut construction. Coverage of braintanning and arrow-making is more sketchy.

      Margaret M. Wheat spent twenty years gaining the acceptance of the elder Paiutes to record their skills and stories before they were lost forever. Survival Arts of the Primitive Paiutes is a classic and elegant work with stunning black and white photography. 117 pages. Cost: $20.00.

Survival Arts of the Primitive Paiutes    $20.00    Quantity:

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Survival Skills of Native California
by Paul D. Campbell
Reviewed by Thomas J. Elpel

      As an author I know what it is like to undertake a large-scale research and writing project. But even I am awed by the scale and scope of Paul Campbells incredible book Survival Skills of Native California. Through ethnographic studies, interviews of elder Indians and extensive replicative studies, Campbell has compiled the vast majority of the physical skills of survival used by California Indians, including fire-making, shelters, water collection & storage, travel, cordage, traps, digging sticks, acorns and other nuts, mortar and pestle, the soaproot brush, numerous basket types, pottery, key edible and useful plants, use of sugar and salt, seeds and seed beaters, netting, sanitation, wooden containers, clothing, rabbitskin blankets and elderberry bark shirts, yucca and rawhide sandals, moccasins, flutes, bow & arrow, atlatl and dart, knapping, glue, stalking, split-wood figures, rabbitsticks, slings, snowshoes, braintanning, insect harvesting and use, twined bags, war clubs, tule boats, fish traps and nets, harpoons and sea hunting, fish catching and preparation. Most of the skills covered include all the necessary how-to information to do it yourself. The book includes nearly 1,000 instructional illustrations.

      Paul Campbell is uniquely qualified to write this book from a lifelong passion for learning, practicing and writing about primitive survival skills. The breadth and depth of his experience shows through every page of the book. 448 pages. 1999. Cost: $40.00.

Survival Skills of Native California    $40.00 Quantity:

   

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