Staying Warm in the Pleistocene: The Organization of Hideworking

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Papers in Celebration of Bruce B. Huckell, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Survival in cold climates is as much about staying warm as it is about food, perhaps even more so. Hide working was not a secondary, optional activity during the ice age, but as necessary and indispensable as hunting. Paleoindigenous peoples, especially the very young and the very old, were in need of warm and dry clothing, bedding, and shelter. Unfortunately, the study of fur and animal-hide products during the ice age has received scant attention, in part because its residues aren’t always clear and in part because processing animal skins has an unglamorous reputation. My research explores two related questions: 1) Can we tell who was doing the hide-processing and sewing at the end of the last ice age? and 2) What do the archaeological record and historical images reveal about how hide working was organized in terms of supply of tools and the spatial location of hide processing? The results of this analysis suggest that both the makers and the organization of hide working are identifiable which can help us see a fuller picture of ice age peoples.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Papers in Celebration of Bruce B. Huckell, Part 1   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52370