Early Tools from Florida

[Harry Pristis]

I've just started to photograph some artifacts in my modest collection. I've started with some tools from Paleo or Early Archaic Periods (best guess). I'm curious as to how these Florida forms parallel forms from regions outside of Florida. What do you think?

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[Tnmountains]

Harry
As always your pictures are simply amazing. The first blade at 6.0" is huge. The patina is beautiful.
I think that the scraper technology is pretty consistent throughout paleo times forward. Your oblong snub nose scraper is similar in style to what we call a horse hoof scraper here. Same style just diffrent names.
I look forward to what the experts in Paleo have to say.
Thanks for sharing your finds.
TnMtns

 

[Harry Pristis]

Harry
As always your pictures are simply amazing. The first blade at 6.0" is huge. The patina is beautiful.
I think that the scraper technology is pretty consistent throughout paleo times forward. Your oblong snub nose scraper is similar in style to what we call a horse hoof scraper here. Same style just diffrent names.
I look forward to what the experts in Paleo have to say.
Thanks for sharing your finds.
TnMtns

Thanks for the feedback, TnMtns!

I was stunned when I found that big blade. It was so exotic -- jet black and as shiney as obsidian. The patina didn't go away, just the color.

Horse hoof scraper, you say. That's what I'm interested in, I guess -- regional variations and similarities of tools. I think tool-makers were more utilitarian than traditional, though tool-kits are identified in Florida, at least.

What about the Hendrix scraper which is common here in Florida (the one in my image may be atypical with its narrow end sharpened into a perforator)?

 

[joshuaream]

Harry,

The fourth one down is a neat type that has a pretty wide distribution. Here are a couple examples from my collection. I have pieces from Florida, Texas, and bunches from Venezuela. In Venezuela they are very early tools, part of the El Jobo complex. When you put them side by side, you really can't tell them apart (material, workmanship, use-wear, etc.) the significant difference is the river patina from Florida.

Joshua

 

[sscindercoop]

Amazing

 

[Harry Pristis]

Harry,

The fourth one down is a neat type that has a pretty wide distribution. Here are a couple examples from my collection. I have pieces from Florida, Texas, and bunches from Venezuela. In Venezuela they are very early tools, part of the El Jobo complex. When you put them side by side, you really can't tell them apart (material, workmanship, use-wear, etc.) the significant difference is the river patina from Florida.
Joshua

Thanks, Joshua! Another knowledgable collector pointed out the El Jobo tool similarity in a different forum. That collector had El Jobo tools just like yours! Venezuela! Now, THAT is an extra-regional tool parallel!

I couldn't resist doing a little research, and here's what I found on about.com:

Definition: The site of Taima-Taima is located within deeply buried, stratified beach sand deposits in northern Venezuela, and consists of lithic tools (including paleoindian-era El Jobo points) in contact with a mastodon skeleton.

The site was first excavated by Jose Cruxent in the 1960s and again by Ruth Gruhn, and Allan Bryan in the 1970s. The site has been dated between 13,000-12,000 years old. The age alone make the site controversial; however the site is quite well documented, and there is a recent book by Claudio Ochsenius and Ruth Gruhn which apparently substantiates the original dating (I haven't seen the book).
Source
Dillehay, Tom. 1996. Settlement of the Americas before 12,500 BC. pp 23-24 in Brian Fagan (ed). 1996. The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

 

[Tnmountains]

Hopefully Uniface and Thirty7 and some others will chime in with some more examples that may be similar. I am fishing tomorrow but will try to take some pics when I get back.
Nice research !!

 

[Th3rty7]

Nice pictures and examples Harry. Here's an Indiana uniface tool that imo shares similarities with your Hendrix piece.

 

[Harry Pristis]

Here are a couple of nicely-made biface blades from Florida rivers. There is no indication that either was hafted. I've labelled 'em as Paleo - Early Archaic 'cause that's typical of the river artifacts.

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[uniface]

OK then.

With reference to Joshua's, which are generally called limaces (or at least used to be), one from Tennessee :

 

[Harry Pristis]

OK then.

With reference to Joshua's, which are generally called limaces (or at least used to be), one from Tennessee :

That's good to know. I'll try to get comfortable with "limace" -- the French for "slug." How do you pronounce "limace" . . . "leh.MACE"? . . . "Lih.MAHS"? . . . "LIH.mus"? . . . ?

One web-site defined "limace" like this:
"LIMACE
A narrow, slug-shaped, unifacial, flaked stone tool having steep edge angles and a high dorsal surface that is often rounded.

"Tool might have been socketed and used as a chisel on hard surfaces.

"AKA: Narrow Side Scrapers, Unifacially Flaked Drills, Boats, Hendrix scrapers, Flakeshaver"

Here in Florida, "Hendrix scrapers" is the commonly used term. But, I'm glad to learn how these tools fit into a larger geographical picture.

 

[joshuaream]

Francois Bordes named them after their slug like shape, so I think the french pronunciation would be appropriate. British archies call them Plano-Convex tools, and that name also caught on for a while in the literature in the 50's and 60's.

That said, Limace or Plano-Convex is kind of like saying celt or adze. It's a general term that describes a shape/characteristic not an age or a culture, and many examples like the one Uni posted are different from the example that caught my eye. Examples like Uni's appear to come from large prepared cores, while the ones from Venezuela are thought to be the result of bipolar reduction. (Take a round cobble, whack it hard to split it down the middle and then flake creating two tools.) Bipolar reduction gives them that wavy edge, something that you wouldn't see from a typical core.

I'm stuck in Jakarta for the next couple of weeks, but when I get back to Florida I'll take some pictures of some of the different tools from Venezuela. There are some different and interesting theories on contact between South America and Florida over the years, and given the similarity in some of the paleo tools I'm inclined to think the posibillity is not too far fetched... Also during the Mississippian period where you have a lot of ceremonial items in common between Venezuela/Colombia, the Caribbean islands and the Mississippi river valley (shell gorgets, spuds, mace forms, monolithic axes, bead shapes, copper spools, tablets, four sided flat top mounds, etc.)

OK then.

With reference to Joshua's, which are generally called limaces (or at least used to be), one from Tennessee :

That's good to know. I'll try to get comfortable with "limace" -- the French for "slug." How do you pronounce "limace" . . . "leh.MACE"? . . . "Lih.MAHS"? . . . "LIH.mus"? . . . ?

One web-site defined "limace" like this:
"LIMACE
A narrow, slug-shaped, unifacial, flaked stone tool having steep edge angles and a high dorsal surface that is often rounded.

"Tool might have been socketed and used as a chisel on hard surfaces.

"AKA: Narrow Side Scrapers, Unifacially Flaked Drills, Boats, Hendrix scrapers, Flakeshaver"

Here in Florida, "Hendrix scrapers" is the commonly used term. But, I'm glad to learn how these tools fit into a larger geographical picture.

 

[uniface]

Agreed. The Tennessee example is a lamellar blade retouched into a bi-pointed tool rather than a textbook limace, but it's the only picture I had in the file that came close.

Unfortunately, I boogered up our camera by pushing the wrong little button & don't know how to un-do what I did -- one picture now shows up in the picture program as a square of 16 little ones. Otherwise I would illustrate others that fit Josh's parameters.

I'll see if I can hunt some up that are already posted.