Patterns of End Scraper Reduction and Discard: A Case Study from the Paleoindian Record of Eastern North America

ABSTRACT

Many researchers studying the technological organization of mobile hunter-gatherers have provided expectations for the design and appearance of tool-kits based on environment. This paper examines the condition of discarded end scrapers at Early Paleoindian sites in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern portions of eastern North America. Using end scrapers from 16 Paleoindian sites, differences in resharpening patterns are observed between northern latitude sites compared to their southern counterparts. Although differences in artifact curation are expected for groups living in more open and colder environments, they are contrary to some published literature, which report the opposite. These results show attempts to minimize risk through tool-kit design. Similarities in end-scraper resharpening and discard may also suggest that a combination of both residential and logistical mobility strategies were common in each region. By using multiple reduction indices, this paper provides a dataset to compare with other Paleoindian and later periods sites.

KEYWORDS:

• Paleoindian
• end scrapers
• technological organization
• curation

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Bob Kelly and Todd Surovell for their assistance on this paper. I would also like to thank Charlotte Pevny and Ted Goebel for their detailed editorial comments. Other annonymous reviews also improved and clarified sections of the manuscript. Many individuals and institutions assisted with advice and access to collections. This includes Jon Lothrop (NY State Museum), Kurt Carr (PA State Museum), Dennis Stanford (Smithsonian Institution), and Paula Work and Bruce Bourque (Maine State Museum).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Joe Gingerich is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Ohio University. His research focuses on hunting and gathering societies, New World colonization, human environmental interactions, lithic technology, and spatial analysis. His research has been funded by the Smithsonian Institution, National Geographic, and the National Science Foundation.

Notes

1 Here, ET and PB were examined because these measures have shown to correlate with modern hunter-gatherer mobility patterns. Because they correlate with latitude in this case, I feel better using latitude as a proxy. Late Pleistocene environments, as discussed, were complex; I make the assumption that latitude captures gross environment trends – as it does with modern data reflecting ET- and PB. Kelly (1983, 1995) compared these modern environmental measures with the mobility patterns of known hunter-gatherer groups.

2 Here, I highlight the 20-km mark, as 20 km is considered to be the maximum distance a forager can traverse in one day (a round trip of 40 km or an average of 5 km an hour for 8 h). These estimates are supported by Binford (2019, 235–238), who reports that hunter-gatherers rarely exceed a one-way foraging distance of 20 km. This estimate has been used by Surovell 2009 and others as a measure of local and non-local toolstone sources.