Use-Wear Analysis on Shell Artifacts

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Shells feature prominently in prehistoric archaeological assemblages in the

southeastern United States. However, serrated freshwater mussel shells, of the type found at a Late Woodland site in North Carolina and other area sites, have not been studied and their use been unknown. These freshwater mussel shells were given a serrated edge, with evenly spaced teeth along all edges of the shell, excluding the hing. Denticulated shells do not show up in historic accounts from later sites, nor is there any clear contextual information about their use. Use-wear analysis was used to attempt to identify what these serrated shells were used for. Due to minimal previous research on shell use-wear, use-wear analysis methodologies were developed for this project and tested on a sample of serrated shells from the Late Woodland site. Data resulting from use-wear analysis was used to identify possible uses for the serrated shells, and one of these uses was provisionally explored through exploratory archaeology process. Initial experiments showed that the shells may have been used on plant material, which provides a window into indigenous plant uses that have otherwise been lost due to taphonomic processes on site.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37735.0