YOUNG: Scrapers, tools used by the Native American females

By Bill Young

June 27, 2009 06:25 pm

— In last week’s article, I illustrated two specific types of scrapers. One is known as the transverse scraper and the other was an end and side scraper. The transverse scraper is not as common as either the combined end and side scraper or just the plain end scraper. Probably the main reason for this was due to the difficulty of striking off a piece of stone which had an angled edge. Functionally it was just as good a scraper as any of the others.
Generally speaking most of the Archaic scrapers range in thickness from slightly over a quarter of an inch to more than a half inch in thickness. This thickness allowed the user to apply a lot of downward pressure when he or she was removing the membrane from the inside of a hide. As to what the process was when someone created a scraper is still debated. Any oval shaped cobble could be struck with a hammer stone in one single blow thereby removing a relatively round or oval shaped piece of chert. This may have been done during the beginning process of removing the cortex for the purpose of creating a thin biface and in turn, a finished projectile point. Whether the maker intentionally broke off a piece with which he could make a scraper is not known. However, many of the formal Archaic scrapers look as if they were specifically created from a larger piece of material solely to be utilized for scraping purposes.
Since most of the Archaic scrapers are fairly large and thick, the maker had the option of either holding the scraper with the thumb and first two fingers or attaching the scraper to a handle. Since the handles must have been made out of wood, none have survived in the open area archeological sites. A few have been found in dry rock overhangs and caves exhibiting some type of short handle but whether this was the norm is not known.
One thing which has been debated from time to time is just who used the scrapers — male or female? Some scrapers have been found associated with burials in some of the Late Archaic and Late Prehistoric graves. In nearly all cases, if there was enough of the skeleton remaining to identify whether the burial was male or female, the answer has always been female. Spanish and French documents written about the Caddos of East Texas and Louisiana noted both male and female shared most of the tasks such as the planting and harvesting of crops. The diaries also noted the males were solely responsible for the hunting of animals and therefore the making of projectile points to be used on arrows but there isn’t any mention about who used the scrapers.
During the 8,000 year period we consider to be all of the Archaic time frames, scrapers are consistently found on the same sites with projectile points. We think of all of the Archaic people as being hunter/gatherers, in other words, small bands of people constantly moving across the landscape gathering whatever they could find growing at the time such as nuts, berries, bulbs, tubers and wild fruit and also hunting all types of game as their main food sources. Also factor in the gathering of mussels during the drier parts of the year along with fish, frogs, turtles and snakes. The survival shows on television could take a lesson from the Native American populations about what was available to them as a food source. I mentioned above the fact scrapers are consistently found on sites associated with projectile points but this statement could be misleading. I have seen sites where only projectile points were found along with chipping debris from the manufacturing of stone tools and weapons. Archeologists have a specific name for these sites. They are referred to as refurbishing sites. In other words, a site where basically the only archeological evidence left at the site is mostly discarded broken projectile points along with a lot of chipping debris indicating one or more groups were fabricating new projectile points. If scrapers are not present on one of these sites, it is relatively safe to assume only the male hunters stopped briefly at this site to discard used points and make new ones. I saw one site exactly like this about 25 years ago on a tributary of the Brazos River. The site contained several broken examples of three different Late Paleo points, Dalton, Angostura and a still unnamed Late Paleo point found across this region. The site also produced a number of worn out Early Archaic types, Hoxie and Uvalde along with single broken examples of Gary, Marshall and Godley. There was one single scraper found on the site which probably was associated with one of the Early Archaic groups. Also found on the site was a Dalton Adze which some people might mistakenly call a scraper but this tool was utilized as a wood working tool similar to the way a wood planing tool is used today.
If an Archaic site produces scrapers, we must assume there were small complete families living at these sites. It would stand to reason a hunter or possibly two or three hunters along with their families stopped and occupied a site for an undetermined amount of time. They would hunt the area for any easy game and also gather any type of edible plant products until the supply started to dwindle. Then they would move off to another site and repeat the process. Archeologists would love to be able to track a single group from site to site based on a specific artifact but most sites have multiple occupations which share the same artifacts. It’s a shame one specific hunter did not autograph his projectile points with indelible ink which would allow us to trace his group but indelible ink had not been invented and I seriously doubt any Native American would take the time to sign his artifacts.
Next week: The small thumbnail scrapers associated with the Late Prehistoric
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