Nicholas Blackwell and his father went to a hardware store about three years ago seeking parts for a mystery device from the past. They carefully selected wood and other materials to assemble a stonecutting pendulum that, if Blackwell is right, resembles contraptions once used to build majestic Bronze Age palaces.
With no ancient drawings or blueprints of the tool for guidance, the two men relied on their combined knowledge of archaeology and construction.
Blackwell, an archaeologist at Indiana University Bloomington, had the necessary Bronze Age background. His father, George, brought construction cred to the project. Blackwell grew up watching George, a plumber who owned his own business, fix and build stuff around the house. By high school, the younger Blackwell worked summers helping his dad install heating systems and plumbing at construction sites. The menial tasks Nicholas took on, such as measuring and cutting pipes, were not his idea of fun.
But that earlier work paid off as the two put together their version of a Bronze Age pendulum saw — a stonecutting tool from around 3,300 years ago that has long intrigued researchers. Power drills, ratchets and other tools that George regularly used around the house made the project, built in George’s Virginia backyard, possible.
“My father enjoyed working on the pendulum saw, although he and my mother were a bit concerned about what the neighbors would think when they saw this big wooden thing in their backyard,” Blackwell says. Anyone walking by the fenceless yard had a prime view of a 2.5-meter-tall, blade-swinging apparatus reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe’s literary torture device.
