The Cultural Significance of Historic Bone Tools

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Artifacts are More Than Enough: Recentering the Artifact in Historical Archaeology", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Bone tools are commonly found on historic sites, but to date no one has discussed them, identified their makers, nor considered their uses. Without an interpretive framework, bone tools have fallen into a void and become a lost source of information. Recent investigations at a few multicomponent sites occupied first by Indigenous people and later by post-Contact people have provided the key to identifying the producers and users of bone tools recovered from historic sites. The number of sites and bone assemblages examined has grown and the data strongly support the association of historic bone tools with African Americans. They have been found on sites with households that included Enslaved people and Free people in Maryland and New York State, as well as one Maroon site near Buffalo, New York.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Artifacts are More Than Enough: Recentering the Artifact in Historical Archaeology   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow