Print edition: 
As an archaeologist, Terry Powell often wondered how effective the tools made by prehistoric man really were.
"I was just real curious how they worked," Powell said. "Did they work? I assume they did. They made them."
Unable to test-drive valuable artifacts, Powell started re-creating those tools as a hobby and found they did function.
Today he's making that interest work for him as owner of Tools From the Earth, producing replicas of ancient tools for museums, personal collectors and others.
Most recently, he shipped a hoe made from a bison scapula to the Indiana State Museum, which is staging an exhibit on the history of corn. That led to requests for more replicas. Powell ended up sending several tools, including a corn- husking peg, stone hoe, and mortar and pestle.
Powell, who has a master's degree in anthropology from Southern Illinois University, worked as an archaeologist for 30 years before forming Tools From the Earth a year ago. He moved to Wichita from St. Petersburg, Fla., with his wife, Jan Luth, when she took a job as director of Exploration Place. His workshop is located beside their home in east Wichita.
Powell makes his replicas from the same materials — wood, stone, shells, bones, hide — the originals utilized. He works from a variety of sources: photographs, diagrams and first-hand knowledge of prehistoric tools that have been found whole or partially preserved; written accounts from early explorers about what they found in the Americas; even oral histories from Native Americans made during the last century.
In addition to buying materials from suppliers around the country, he finds much of what he uses — for instance, following tree trimmers to look for branches whose shapes might lend themselves to certain uses.
When a particular material isn't available, Powell finds a substitute that he thinks the original toolmakers might have used if available. For a rake that early inhabitants of South Dakota made with willow saplings, Powell substituted false indigo, which looks like willow and bends nicely.
"If they had it up there, they probably would have used it," he said.
The tools range from the simple — a hairpin made of bone — to the complex, such as a fish trap made of bent, intertwined branches that fish swim into, but not out of. It's opened by loosening twine.
Powell said 90 percent of the tools he makes are functional. He has replicated hundreds of tools, from beaver-tooth chisels to coastal axes made of conch shells to a sickle that he said cut tall grass better than anything in his garage.
Powell sells kits that include the tools and background information that teachers and others can use to make presentations. Some of the kits show tools in various stages of completion, or allow students to participate in the process.
"Nowadays museums and everybody else want to do interpretation," he said. "It used to be they just put stuff on display."
Although Powell uses the same materials as prehistoric man, he works with modern tools.
"Nobody wants to pay you for 30 hours for something you can make in a few hours with modern tools," he said.
Replicating and using prehistoric tools has given Powell several insights that simply finding them might never have generated. For instance, archeologists were puzzled as to why a small shark-tooth knife — probably used as a finishing tool for making bowls and other objects — had such a long handle. Powell thinks it was to allow the user to get both hands on the handle at once.
Despite his admiration for ancient tools and their makers, the implements definitely had limitations. With stone axes, for instance, "you have to learn from trial and error how much pressure you can put on them" before breaking.
"It's easy to see why natives went to metal as soon as it was available," he said.
