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Two examples of how the presence of spurs was determined quantitatively. A box of 3 mm by 1 mm was constructed (a). A spur was any projection no wider than 3 mm, but at least 1 mm long (b) (compare with c). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0078419.g001
Source publication
Paleoindian unifacial stone tools frequently exhibit distinct, sharp projections, known as "spurs". During the last two decades, a theoretically and empirically informed interpretation-based on individual artifact analysis, use-wear, tool-production techniques, and studies of resharpening-suggested that spurs were sometimes created intentionally vi...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... spur was defined as any projection no wider than 3 mm, but at least 1 mm long. A box of these dimensions was rendered on paper for an easy, objective, replicable means of quickly assessing whether projections met our metric criteria of a spur (see figure 1). ...
Context 2
... result does not support the notion that most spurs are created incidentally or accidentally via resharpening. Moving from spur count to spur presence/absence, there is no significant relationship (T-test p = 0.142) between average Tsa and spur presence/absence (TABLE 11, FIGURE 5). This result does not support the notion that most spurs are created incidentally or accidentally via resharpening. ...
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Citations
... Together, this has contributed to the widely held understanding that edge sharpness would have been important to stone tool users in Palaeolithic, ethnographic, and historical contexts. Such is its prominence, the requirement to maintain a sharp working edge is the functional selective pressure underpinning important theoretical frameworks emphasising edge 'resharpening' and/or 'rejuvenation' (e.g., Kuhn, 1990;McPherron, 1999;Iovita, 2010;Eren et al., 2013;Morales & Verges, 2014;Buchanan et al., 2015;Schimelmitz et al., 2017;Maloney, 2019), or explaining the heat treatment of stone tool raw materials (Domanski & Webb, 2007;Key et al., 2021;Rick & Chappell, 1983). Ethnographic and experimental accounts have even detailed how much 'use' is required prior to edges becoming blunt enough to require resharpening. ...
In line with engineering research focusing on metal tools, techniques to record the attribute of ‘edge sharpness’ on stone tools can include both mechanical and micro-geometric approaches. Mechanically-defined sharpness techniques used in lithic studies are now well established and align with engineering research. The single micro-geometrically-defined technique—tip curvature—is novel relative to approaches used elsewhere, and has not explicitly been tested for its ability to describe the attribute of sharpness. Here, using experimental flakes produced on basalt, chert, and quartzite sourced at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania), we investigate the relationship between tip curvature and the force and work required to initiate a cut. We do this using controlled cutting tests and analysis of high-resolution microCT scans. Results indicate cutting force and work to display significant dependent relationships with tip curvature, suggesting the latter to be an appropriate metric to record the sharpness of lithic tools. Differences in relationship strength were observed dependent on the measurement scales and edge distances used. Tip curvature is also demonstrated to distinguish between the sharpness of different raw materials. Our data also indicate the predictive relationship between tip curvature and cutting force/work to be one of the strongest yet identified between a stone tool morphological attribute and its cutting performance. Together, this study demonstrates tip curvature to be an appropriate attribute for describing the sharpness of a stone tool’s working edge in diverse raw material scenarios, and that it can be highly predictive of a stone tool’s functional performance.
... Blade fragment FS-1 is a distal end piece steeply retouched to form a unifacial end scraper. The adjacent lateral margins are unifacially retouched as well, and a corner of the distal end and lateral margin bears a small spur common to Clovis end scrapers (e.g., Beck and Jones 2009, 117-118;Eren, Jennings, and Smallwood 2013;Kornfeld 2013, 139-140;Morrow 1997). A similar unifacial end scraper on a blade-like fragment was reported at the Komodo Site, a Paleoindian locale located ∼100 km south of the Nye Canyon Paleo Site in Long Valley, California (Basgall 1988, 110). ...
The place of the Clovis techno-complex in Great Basin culture history remains enigmatic, both in relation to the Western Stemmed Tradition – the dominant Paleoindian artifact complex in the Intermountain West – and to the range of late Pleistocene/early Holocene habitats that people employing Clovis toolkits utilized. Here we describe the Nye Canyon Paleo Site (26Ly930), located in the Pine Grove Hills in western Nevada. The Nye Canyon Paleo Site stands alone in the Great Basin because it contains both fluted points and Clovis-style blades alongside Western Stemmed Tradition points and other tools, sits at a relatively high elevation, and potentially contains buried cultural deposits. Recent test excavations failed to locate an intact buried Paleoindian component, but the Nye Canyon Paleo Site nevertheless demonstrates the use of Clovis and Western Stemmed technology at a single upper montane locality in the western Great Basin and highlights regional Paleoindian upper montane land use.
... Arthur (2018:169) notes that Gamo hide workers never use a spur on a hidescraper. While some spurs at the side of the working edge of the scraper may be functional (Eren et al., 2013), Shott (1995:59-60) and others argue that they are generally the by-product of resharpening while the tool was hafted. The average working edge convexity of the four whole endscrapers with spurs is 2.75 indicating a flatter distal edge than the average for whole specimens in general. ...
We feel that the potential range of information to be gleaned from the study of unifacial tools has not been realized. This case study deals with three types of retouched unifacial tools from an Iroquoian village: endscrapers with thick distal bits, flake scrapers with thin distal bits, and side scrapers. Attributes considered include length, width, thickness, edge angle, shape of working edge, and breakage. Use wear and residue analysis of selected specimens was conducted as well. We conclude that differences in the value of some attributes relate to intended function while other differences relate to different stages of use-life, especially the difference between whole and broken specimens. For example, broken endscrapers had on average lower edge angles than whole ones, broken flake scrapers had higher frequencies of convex distal bits than whole ones, and broken side scrapers had higher frequencies of sharp lateral edges than whole ones. A consideration of spatial patterning indicates that broken endscrapers were concentrated in one of three longhouses and broken side scrapers tended to be found outside longhouses. Flake scrapers and endscrapers found along the walls of structures appear to be less reduced from retouching than specimens found elsewhere.
... Weedman 2002). Different studies have demonstrated that front spurs are accidents created by hinged retouch, and that corner spurs can be linked with the sharpening of the scraper (see Eren et al. 2013 for discussion). The presence of spurs may lead to the discarding of scrapers, as they may damage soft materials such as hides (Weedman 2002). ...
Microlithic Wilton scrapers are widespread stone tools of the southern African Holocene Later Stone Age. Though they have been studied and classified in various ways, there are still many uncertainties regarding their fabrication, function and hafting, which ultimately produce one question: are all these scrapers the same tool? The scraper variability in one site, Balerno Main Shelter in the Limpopo Province of South Africa, is investigated through a morpho-functional analysis of the Late Holocene (end-)scraper assemblage. The results of our analysis led us to individualise three types of tool that vary primarily with regard to the characteristics of their passive units (the assumed prehensile part). This classification is accompanied by hypotheses about the hafting and functioning of these scrapers, and carries implications for the categorisation of Wilton scrapers throughout southern Africa.
... The opposite face shows several scars extending from the base, the longest of which is 7 mm in length, 15.5% total point length (Figs. 5 and 6). Flake scars in general are overface scars (Smallwood, 2010;Eren et al., 2013aEren et al., , 2014 and diagonal in directionality relative to the biface midline axis, although one face possesses an overshot mistake scar. The point tip is broken and blunt, seemingly from what appears superficially to be impact damage. ...
... Character states in character V (outer tang angle) were determined as follows: if both tangs are greater than 92 degrees the character is "diverging"; if both tangs are less than 88 degrees the character is "converging"; if both tangs are between 88 and 92 degrees the character is "straight"; if the tangs differ in the above categories the character is "multistate." Character VI (tang tip shape) was measured by treating the tangs as "spurs" and determining the pointy or blunt status following the procedure of Eren, Jennings, and Smallwood (2013). colleagues confirm that Clovis foragers engaged in two tiers of social learning. ...
Over the past several decades, archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists, and others who study cultural phenomena have begun to appreciate that methods developed to reconstruct the evolutionary, or phylogenetic, relationships among biological taxa can be used to create cultural sequences based on heritable continuity. One method in particular is cladistics, which creates hypothetical statements of relatedness—rendered as trees—based on the model and parameters used. To date, cladistics has been used to create phylogenetic orderings of a wide variety of cultural phenomena, including basketry and other textiles, ceramic vessels, stone projectile points, languages, folk tales, manuscripts, residence patterns, and political organization. Here we lay out the basic method of cladistics and show how it has formed the basis for long-term studies of the colonization of eastern North America during the Early Paleoindian period (ca. 13,300–11,900 calendar years before the present).
Statement of Significance Archaeologists have long used changes in artifact form to measure the passage of time, the supposition being that if the changes are ordered correctly, a historical sequence of forms is created. This is correct, but oftentimes what archaeologists really want to know is which thing produced another thing as opposed to simply preceding it. This is an evolutionary sequence. Over the past several decades, not only archaeologists but also anthropologists, linguists, and others who study cultural phenomena have begun to use a suite of methods that were developed to reconstruct the evolutionary, or phylogenetic, relationships among biological taxa, one of which is cladistics. This marks a return to the questions on which the founding of much of anthropology rests: the writing of cultural lineages. This return is important to the growth and continued health of archaeology and anthropology because a reconstructed phylogeny helps guide interpretation of the evolution of traits in that it generates hypotheses about the lineages in which those traits arose and under what circumstances.
Data availability The authors confirm that all data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction. All relevant data are contained within the paper.
... The shapes of prehistoric tools have been understood as a reflection of many different concepts, depending on the theoretical framework in which a particular lithic study was conducted. From classificatory approaches to dynamic interpretations, changes in the morphological features of tools have been linked to cognitive capabilities (Holloway, 1969;Gowlett, 2006), style (Lenoir, 1975;Tiffagom, 2003), cultural transmission (Lycett, 2008;Buchanan and Collard, 2010;Schillinger et al., 2014), mobility dynamics (Shott, 1986;Blades, 2003;Sellet, 2013), site function (Bachelleire et al., 2011), reduction (Dibble, 1984(Dibble, , 1987bMcPherron, 1995;Shott and Ballenger, 2007;Brumm and McLaren, 2011;Eren et al., 2013)a n d many other aspects of the behaviors of prehistoric peoples. ...
... In contrast, reduction approaches have focused (primarily but not exclusively) on unifacially retouched stone tools, primarily scrapers sensu lato (e.g. Dibble, 1987a;Kuhn, 1990;Shott, 1995;Shott, 1996;Attenbrow, 2002, 2003;Eren et al., 2005;Shott and Weedman, 2007;Eren et al., 2013;Morales et al., 2015). This work attempts to link shape and reduction analyses in order to test for relationships between the shape of a tool and its reduction stage. ...
... Tanning of hides might also spatially overlap with the other two activities; scrapers, fleshers, hide beamers, and awls would be found with needles (Issenman 1997a(Issenman , 1997bKlokkernes 2007;Osborn 2004Osborn , 2014Rasková Zelinková 2010). Tools for needle manufacture and maintenance and repair such as burins or spurs (Eren et al. 2013) and grooved abrading stones may also be associated. On the other hand, if the small-diameter needles were used to stitch beads and other ornaments onto clothing, associations with the same set of tools plus ornaments are expected. ...
Eyed bone needles have been recovered from Paleoindian sites over the last 70 years. Specimens 13,100–10,000 calendar years old average 1.81 ± .58 mm in diameter, similar to 2500–1000 year-old specimens in the Aleutians which average 1.67 mm in diameter. Use of industrial steel needles and experiments with replicated bone needles indicate the broken eyes and mid-length fractures of Paleoindian bone needles are the result of use. Some specimens said to be Paleoindian eyed bone needles are ≤ 3 mm in diameter and likely represent behaviors distinct from those with diameters ≤ 2.9 mm. Many smalldiameter needles have been recovered from sites that also produced ornaments. Small-diameter Paleoindian needles may have been used to attach decorative items to clothing; decorative items could have served as identity icons as human groups became sedentary and established home ranges a few centuries after colonization. Paleoindian residential sites that have produced multiple specimens of small-diameter needles reveal clustering of needle specimens in limited areas, and Varying degrees of association with hide-preparation and needle manufacture and maintenance tools such as gravers, scrapers, and awls. Paleoindians, like some ethnographically documented people and some industrial-age people, had sewing specific activity loci.
... Their research takes different conceptual approaches to dealing with the question of reduction. Technological analyses (Dibble, 1984(Dibble, , 1987(Dibble, , 1995Marwick, 2008), experimentally tested indexes Attenbrow, 2002, 2003;Hiscock and Clarkson, 2005;Clarkson, 2002;Eren et al., 2005;Kuhn, 1990), and allometric relationships (Blades, 2003;Clarkson and Hiscock, 2011;Shott et al., 2000;Iovit¸ a, 2010;Eren, 2013;Eren et al., 2013) are the principal approaches to estimating reduction in archaeological and experimental samples. ...
This paper describes the evaluation, based on archaeological materials, of the role that resharpening plays in the continuum of stone-tool reduction. We define a multi-evidence-based approach that combines use-wear intensity and location, traces that could be related to hafting and the distribution of mineral residue. By combining these methods, we have observed a minimum resharpening ratio of 52% in the selected end-scraper sample. If one takes into account ethnographically obtained information about end-scraper management, this result is an unexpectedly low value. Dynamics of mobility, technological organization and raw material availability causes high variability in the archaeological visibility and characteristics of lithic remains. Our results are in line with a technology organized wholly or partially on the basis of expediency, in which tools are not curated for more than the time taken to complete the activity or the length of the occupation. Tools that were not exhausted were abandoned at the site, leading to recycling behaviors in periodic site reoccupations.
Stone Age hunter-gatherers likely often had choices concerning the raw materials used in the production of their technologies. How different raw materials performed once transformed into tools was one potential consideration that influenced raw material choices. Here, we present an experiment comparing replica Late Pleistocene North American Clovis culture osseous weapon tips versus stone tips in terms of how well each penetrates a target. We focused our efforts specifically on bone and stone point forms similar to those from the Sheriden Cave site, Ohio. Our results show that the bone point form penetrated significantly shallower than the stone point form. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that penetration depth was not a motivating factor in the production of bone point forms at Sheriden Cave. We suggest that other factors, such as raw material availability, craftsperson skill and experience, or tool durability may better explain the presence of bone points at the site. However, more broadly, our study illustrates that experiments do not provide answers about the past, but instead should be employed as theoretical tools to help frame testing and interpretation of the archaeological record.
