26. annealing

Return to History 8 Culture Origins Vocabulary

To anneal is to free from internal stress by heating and gradually cooling.[1] Artisans devised the technique of annealing, which involved making flint more workable by heating it up, perhaps in warm sand. This process dried out the water within the flint, making it more brittle. Annealing would have been useful in the manufacture of the new, more deadly flaked-flint spearheads. [2]

[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/annealing [2] Manual page 57

-William Perdue