Clovis/Folsom Endscrapers and Gendered Hideworking: Ethnographic Analogy or Inference to the Best Argument?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Cross-cultural data show a strong positive relationship between latitude and dependence on hunting for subsistence. Higher latitude foragers that were dependent on megafauna for subsistence were equally dependent on animal hides for clothing and shelter to survive through winter, and for the survival and reproduction of corporately organized, hearth-centered family groups. Hunting and clothing/shelter making were strongly gendered in these societies. Both activities require a great deal of skill and training to do well, which in turn require long periods of training and practice during childhood and adolescence. We suggest that strong division of labor between hunting and hide processing results from the channeling of these two skill-intensive tasks onto male and female roles. Hence, the argument that Paleoindian endscrapers were used and probably made by women to process hides in a manner similar to historic Plains bison hunters is more than an ethnographic analogy, a rather weak logical construct, but rather, an inference to best argument. Similar patterns of recent Plains and Pleistocene Paleoindian hideworking and tool use arose under similar biological and social reproductive constraints and thus constitute a form of evolutionary convergence.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25088