The End of the Road

[uniface]

Thin blades were often modified for use as scrapers. Often (usually) only the snapped off tips of these are found. This is the butt end of one, used as an endscraper until it got too short from being resharpened, following which each side was modified into an incurve scraper (spokeshave). Such extensive utilization of even small pieces is typical of people (in this case, Paleo) living in (visiting) area where tools tone was unavailable or of poor quality, meaning everything needed had to be brought from the home territory, or acquired at a lithic resource site along the way. Material is high quality hornstone; find location unknown.

 

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[uniface]

This is an even more extreme example. There were areas where game was especially abundant but no good tool stone (or none at all), so enough had to be carried in to last the anticipated stay there. Tony Baker called these "lithic poor areas," and these prompted behaviors not ordinarily seen elsewhere.

This tiny finishing flake with edges not much thicker than a matchbook cover, shows meticulously careful use on three edge sections (!). primo Coshocton. From the site that produced the Ohio Lanceolate posted today.

 

[MAMucker]

I really appreciate the back story on the lithic material types and history, and the fine workmanship illustrated on these flake tools.

 

[uniface]

When you're on a trip away from home and you've got to make what you have last because your re-supply source is 300 miles away (or maybe only 80), you get serious about recycling what you have to make it last. As with the above evidences of it.

At the other end of the continuum, when you're surrounded by easy abundance, profligate behavior tends to happen.

What's ironic is that archaeology, as a branch of anthropology (as a branch of sociology), which believes its goal to be the elucidation of human behavior, tends (or at least used to) overlook such direct evidences of it while vaporing about "egalitarian social bands," which was easier and provided a wider scope for imagination. Why endure miserable summers with sore knees and mosquito bites when you can sit at home doing statistical analysis of inadequate sample sizes and passing this off as your contribution to the advancement of knowledge ?

"Journal Article Topics as Reflections of Easy Abundance in Academia, 1970-2000": a title in search of an author.

 

[Gravelbar32]

I love those end of the road pieces. It takes a good eye to spot them, too.

 

[uniface]

I love those end of the road pieces. It takes a good eye to spot them, too.

"Everybody looks. What you've got to do is learn to see." Proverb in the fine arts, widely applicable elsewhere.