From Tulane New Wave: Graduate student Rachel Johnson studies obsidian flakes from prehistoric Peru

This story originally appeared in Tulane New Wave entitled Shear Study, on March 27, 2018. Photo by New Wave staff member Paula Burch-Celentano (newwave@tulane.edu).

Rachel Johnson organizes and photographs obsidian flake tools she crafted with a large flat river rock, known as a hammer stone to anthropologists. The tools will be used to shear alpacas on her family;s farm in North Carolina as part of an experimental archaeological project. Johnson hopes to compare the patterns of wear on the tools to similar tools excavated in Peru that were used to shear camelids during prehistoric times.