Perishable Technology in the Great Lakes Region during the Late Pleistocene: Evidence from Microwear Analysis

Summary

Lithic artifacts typically dominate the assemblages of Late Pleistocene sites in North America. Paleo Crossing (33ME274), a Clovis site in northeast Ohio, provides an excellent example of this pattern. Thousands of chipped stone artifacts have been recovered at the site during surface collections and subsurface excavations. However, lithic microwear analysis on a sample of artifacts from Paleo Crossing indicates that the site’s inhabitants expended a great deal of effort on the production of hide, plant, and bone artifacts. Results indicate that most of the end scrapers were used to process fresh, wet hides. Additionally, much of the plant processing at Paleo Crossing was geared toward plant fiber production. These findings provide further evidence that perishable technologies were important elements of the Clovis toolkit.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage