The UseWear Analysis of the Blue Lake Museum Lithic Collection

Summary

This paper examines the usewear related modifications on an assemblage of North American lithic artifacts that is held by the Blue lake Museum. The collection consists of a variety of material and tool types. There are a number of flaked projectile points and scrapers, as well as groundstone tools. All pieces were acquired by the Blue Lake museum through donation by private individuals and not all of the pieces have a known context. There has not been any intensive analysis carried out on this collection. Usewear analysis will be used to determine whether or not a given artifact was utilized and, if possible, to determine the work action the tool was engaged in as well as what material the tool was used on. Microscopic analysis will be used to examine usewear and coupled with ethnoarchaeological research to determine origins of the pieces. This paper will provide the Blue Lake Museum with a greater understanding of their lithic assemblage as well as guidelines for doing usewear analysis on museum lithics collections with no archaeological context.

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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