Paleoindian Endscrapers

[uniface]

First off, "the new guy" here is NOT trying to start something. OK ? This is not about, or with reference to anybody here personally. It's about replacing inaccurate (if common) impressions with good information.

IMHO, anyone with an interest in paleoindian endscrapers (data - not opinion) should start with

http://www.ele.net/pes/pesintro.htm

It's the best general introduction to the subject on the net.

This deals specifically with southwestern US paleo endscrapers, (which have some regional peculiarities). For an overview of eastern (Illinois) examples (download PDF),

http://www.clt.astate.edu/jmorrow/Clovis Era Research.htm

And if you just want to look at some neat paleo endscrapers from northern New York, maybe trying out the ideas you've picked up from Baker and Morrow,

http://sracenter.blogspot.com/2008/07/arc-site.html

And for our Canadian friends,

http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/anthropology/cje/Thedford.htm

Cheers & Regards

 

[jeff a]

i'e seen some flint ridge that looks like your scraper on the left

 

[Th3rty7]

Thanks, Thirty7. Every little bit helps.

As far as the range of Carter goes, Gary Fogelman found a big early Archaic uniface tool of it in east central Pennsylvania (!) It's the artifact in the center of the cover of his book "Pennsylvania Chert" and Hothem illustrates a humdinger fluted Dalton of it in his Ohio paleo book.

Southern West Virginia : like around Charleston ? or like up on the Cumberland plateau ?

Hothem noted that a surprising percentage of Ohio fluted points are of flint nobody can source. Pretty, oddball flint seems to be a paleo/early Archaic trait -- a minor but consistent one.

TnMountains -- gonna try your hints. Thanx

southeast of Charleston in Fayette County.

jeff a, you may be right , I've found some ridge in Wv.

I figue this thread could use another paleo endscraper example, here's a bigun from White Co. IL, Endscraper / sidescraper multitool. Possible flute, although I realize it may have been a previous flake driven off.

 

[uniface]

Nice !

Hornstone ?

 

[centfladigger]

yes this is pic heavy, sorry. These came from one site myself and 2 of my digging buddies had permission to dig. It was an older dig site in the woods 115 acres with a 4 acre sinkhole on the backside. To the north was a river and the south side was a lake with paleo sites all around it, very shallow lake in our county. This site was mostly kirks and early archaic points and PALEOS. We each have found realistically over 500+ of these scrapers and hammerstones and other tools. The thing about this site was it had an active hardpan, we would dig 3-5 ft at the deepest and dig through that layer of hardpan and hit the paleo stuff. Quarry site is right across the road north of this site. Clean hillsborough river basin chert. On a piece of property next to this site workers found in the borrow pit over a dozen big 6 incher suwanee points. We found a few fluted bases but all whole points were simpson and suwanee points. I found a chache of "turtleback" svrapers with a drill and a knife and possible preform. All this was about 6 ft down on and in the hardpan in 1 pile together.
We lost the site to development that hasnt happened/built yet and now the tweekers and stoners have trashed it all to heck.

 

[uniface]

Wow !!!

Awesome stuff, and a great education too !!! Being able to place the tools with the points is golden info.

Needless to say, thanx !

The endscraper with the double spokeshaves !!

(edit : Duhhhhh . . . guess that's a regular tool type down where you are )

 

[Tnmountains]

That is some awesome pictures of some very old fine material. Thanks for taking the time to share.

 

[Th3rty7]

uniface here are some close ups of that scraper, it's one of my favorites. I call the material " wv flint ridge " , I'd love to know what it really is, any ideas? It's scarce, I dont find it often, but have found 2 corner notched points and two interesting humpback tools made of the same flint. The last pic is some scrapers I found earlier this year. Is the top right scraper a paleo endscraper in your opinion? also the third one from the right, the examples with spurs. great thread btw.

 

[uniface]

Hi Thirty7

Your superscraper is called a limace (French for "slug" -- like the ones in your garden that come out after a rain). Aka "humpbacked scraper." A very common and virtually unknown (to other than archaeologists and bookworms) paleo (and probably early Archaic) type. Problem is, middle & late Archaic people made vaguely similar tools by the trainload, so you have to get past the superficial similarities. They're generally unifaces but can, like yours, be modified by knapping to create a flat ventral surface rather than exploiting one they already had.

As to what they were used for, guesses are all over the place. Sizes run from (exhausted) under an inch to huge ; often, one end will be worked into a graver and the other into an endscraper. One edge is sometimes steeper than the other. Gonna have to learn how to do the camera-computer images thing here.

Google paleo + limace and click on a book excerpt from "Kentucky Archaeology" by R. Barry Lewis. See pp. 31 (text) & 32 (illustration). Also see

http://oldstoneage.com/pubs/HLD/scrapred2.pdf
text p. 318 ; illustration p. 317

You can probably find more. Thanks to you, Thirty7, I found the second one, which I'm going to have my nose in for a long time, I suspect. Good stuff for detail freaks.

One hand washes the other

Hope this helps.

& thanks for posting yours

 

[uniface]

As for the two scrapers, Paleo or Early Archaic more than likely, IMO.

The corner notches and humpbacked tools would be of considerable interest & importance in getting a handle on a time frame for your limace. (Hint hint)

 

[abarnard]

This looks simialr to a few that CentFlaDigger has found, except made out of some sort of different material. The material has some mafic minerals in it which makes it heavy. i want to know how they knapped this material, and where the material was accumulated; who knows, it just seems like it would be tough to knapp. Not your every day material for TX.. Found in Crystal City, tx in South Texas... Found alot more artifacts, which I will post later on when I get back to Austin, tx. Thanks for sharing...

 

[Newt]

yes this is pic heavy, sorry. These came from one site myself and 2 of my digging buddies had permission to dig. It was an older dig site in the woods 115 acres with a 4 acre sinkhole on the backside. To the north was a river and the south side was a lake with paleo sites all around it, very shallow lake in our county. This site was mostly kirks and early archaic points and PALEOS. We each have found realistically over 500+ of these scrapers and hammerstones and other tools. The thing about this site was it had an active hardpan, we would dig 3-5 ft at the deepest and dig through that layer of hardpan and hit the paleo stuff. Quarry site is right across the road north of this site. Clean hillsborough river basin chert. On a piece of property next to this site workers found in the borrow pit over a dozen big 6 incher suwanee points. We found a few fluted bases but all whole points were simpson and suwanee points. I found a chache of "turtleback" svrapers with a drill and a knife and possible preform. All this was about 6 ft down on and in the hardpan in 1 pile together.
We lost the site to development that hasnt happened/built yet and now the tweekers and stoners have trashed it all to heck.

H.G. is an awesome site. I've seen some really nice points come out of there. Including a 8" Paleo blade--It was G-10.
Newt

 

[bruce]

Hello there,

Uniface I saw you checked out my box 2
that I called paleo your right I put those
together like those to try to find a way of
sorting all those pieces with thier simularities.
Really did not to mislead, it was just my way
trying to classify. Would check out my stuff
tool boxes 1-10 to see anything you like to see
close I will retake some pictures. Did you see
box 2 reply? These are paleo off the corner block.


Thanks,

Bruce

 

[uniface]

Hi Bruce

I'll be glad to check them again.