Is this an indian skinning blade?

[pganjon]

Hello Everyone, I spotted this in the stones by the creek and first thought maybe arrowhead. Then looking closer I believe maybe a knife blade or am I just in wishful thinking mode. It is a beautiful piece of brown flint and I would like to know what all of you think. I live in Adams county Pa, but found this next door in Carroll County Md. Thanks again, Paul

 

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[Tdog]

I'd say it could be a utilized flake but more likely, knapping debitage. Nice material though and just my opinion. I'd keep searching that area.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Sorry, not an artifact, at most debitage and even that is slim chance.

 

[pganjon]

Thank you Guys! Paul

 

[Tdog]

Sorry, not an artifact, at most debitage and even that is slim chance.

The side depicted in the 2nd pic looks like it "peeled" off a core that way.

 

[smokeythecat]

Actually, they are all partially correct. It is waste from Indians working jasper. This jasper comes from over 125 miles away in Berks County and is called Vera Cruz jasper. Therefore, somebody picked it up and brought it there. It is a widely used material used for aboriginal tools and the Indian quarries there go back to the Paleo Indian period.

 

[uniface]

Good that we're looking beyond simplistic assumptions, IMO.

Now take it one step further. Would the typical trade blank be thick enough to run that off as waste ?

And is it for-sure certain that it being taken off in a way that left two thin, sharp edges and a point was entirely coincidental ?

 

[smokeythecat]

Perhaps they were going to make a scraper or such from it, but it was lost first. Impossible to tell. It was not heavily worked.

 

[ToddsPoint]

If you wanted to save the skin you wouldn't use a tool like that. Razor sharp tools cut the skin leaving holes. You need a chipped blade like a Thebes for skinning. Flat, beveled edge blades work the best. After skinning, you would use a tool like yours for dismembering. A tool like that would last about 5 or 10 minutes before losing its razor edge. It would then be tossed and a new one used. Your flake was very useful knapping debitage. Gary

 

[pganjon]

You Guys are Awesome, Thanks! Paul

 

[RustyRelics]

It is a flake that has been whacked off of a core. I have made flakes like that when I knap.

 

[uniface]

If you wanted to save the skin you wouldn't use a tool like that. Razor sharp tools cut the skin leaving holes. You need a chipped blade like a Thebes for skinning. Flat, beveled edge blades work the best. After skinning, you would use a tool like yours for dismembering. A tool like that would last about 5 or 10 minutes before losing its razor edge. It would then be tossed and a new one used. Your flake was very useful knapping debitage.

Ridiculous nonsense there. Hard to believe that you ever hunted and ate what you killed, dressing it out yourself.

You want a sharp point to puncture the hide, From there, you want the equivalent of a razor blade to un-zip it and, pulling the hide edge, slice the connecting tissue that holds it to the body.

Several archaeologists have skinned entire buffaloes with single flakes. And found that those flakes showed no evidence of use afterward.

 

[MAMucker]

Uniface,

Let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that the flake in question is a man made flake.

Are you making the point to say that there is no way to know if a random flake had been utilized?

Or that there is no way to know if it hasn’t?

And to take it a step further, are you confusing purpose of manufacture with random or possible function?

In other words, It could have been used to do X, therefore it must have been made to do X?

 

[Kray Gelder]

Ridiculous nonsense there. Hard to believe that you ever hunted and ate what you killed, dressing it out yourself.

You want a sharp point to puncture the hide, From there, you want the equivalent of a razor blade to un-zip it and, pulling the hide edge, slice the connecting tissue that holds it to the body.

Several archaeologists have skinned entire buffaloes with single flakes. And found that those flakes showed no evidence of use afterward.

Well gosh, kind of an abrasive comment Uniface. I have skinned a lot of animals, with steel tools, and just about any kind of edge will do. Pulling on the hide, with one hand, and just touching the membrane with your cutting edge, will remove a hide. It depends on how much sand and grit one is dealing with, how long the edge will last. I have skinned bears, where their hide was so full of dirt, that I needed to sharpen my knife several times, just to get him slit open. Then again, I have zipped the hide off of a deer, with little effort.

That tool shown above, and I do believe it was a serviceable tool, when it had a fresh edge, could have served to skin, or dismember game. I have field dressed a deer with only a pocket knife ( left my heavy blade in the truck ).

 

[uniface]

Sorry, Kray. I'm a cranky old fart (You kids get off my lawn !!) and lose patience with posters who SEEM TO be talking out of the part they sit on.

I'd take a nice flake to skin out a critter over a bifacial edge every day and twice on Sunday.

 

[uniface]

Let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that the flake in question is a man made flake.

Are you making the point to say that there is no way to know if a random flake had been utilized?

Or that there is no way to know if it hasn’t?

And to take it a step further, are you confusing purpose of manufacture with random or possible function?

In other words, It could have been used to do X, therefore it must have been made to do X?

Fair enough.

The Piled-Higher-and-Deeper among us drive me nuts with their fragmented perspective that reduces everything they deal with to abstract ideas they can logic-chop to their hearts' content. They seem to imagine that reality is a mosaic of conclusions drawn from little, independent considerations. Same pattern as biology showed 50 years ago : all they could do was kill things and dissect them into smaller and smaller units. But they were marketing that as "Biology," which purported to be the study of living organisms.

1) You know that it was found 125 miles from the lithic source. What does that tell you about the likelihood of its being produced intentionally ? Ditto the likelihood that an exceptionally far-ranging wanderer found it, decided it would be useful back home and carried it home with him ? (Subsidiary consideration : how many "natural" flakes show bulbs of percussion trimmed away like that one does ?) Many puzzling questions have pretty obvious answers when considered from a wider perspective.

Is there any way to know if it had been used ? As an abstract question, that depends on what it was used for. As in the replication cases Bob Patten cited years ago. But in this case, the damage (apparent use-wear) along one edge, in conjunction with the absence of this on the other edge is suggestive.

Could-have-been-used vs. was-used is a real PhD-type concern. The study of the past went to ruination when Boas hijacked it & re-focused its objective as the discovery of cultural behaviors. Which is howling idiocy in light of the fact that social organization, culturally-specific beliefs and the rest of it (except in rare cases like trophy head hunting) do not leave diagnostic evidence to be discovered -- only remains that can be conjecturally interpreted as evidence of them. The whole thing's a snipe hunt to keep people unable to think anything through occupied with futility lest they start asking real questions and disturb business as usual.

As for possible function, would you expect it to have been suitable for use cutting down a tree and shaping it into a canoe ? Such questions tend to answer themselves. And reach the point of being absurd when it's considered that their survival strategy involved,probably, a hundred specific tasks we can't visualize or even imagine because we're too far-removed from them, technologically.

 

[MAMucker]

Uniface,

Ok. I’ve met the smartest guy in the room.

The EXCELLENT point you make regarding the bulb of percussion-being trimmed away is instructive. It’s not easy to see it in the one photo revealing it, and I had to really inspect pic #2 to see it.

Pganjon, I’d like to see more photos of each side if possible.

 

[bowwinkles]

I was scanning the forum and seen this thread title, "Is this an Indian skinning blade"? My first thought was who would want to skin an Indian.

 

[uniface]

Ok. I’ve met the smartest guy in the room

No way. Just somebody who thinks.

And had the advantage of hearing (& taking to heart) a proverb common in art/craft circles : "Everybody looks. What you've got to do is learn to see."

I neglected to add that the fact that there was a bulb of percussion to trim off in the first place indicates non-"natural" origin.

Onward & upward

 

[Quartzite Keith]

If the source really is 125 miles away, the idea uniface mentions of that coming from a large biface that was used as a flake blank is very plausible. That type of long distance transport, combined with the high quality of the lithic and adding in at least the possibility of transport being in the form of a bifacial flake core, all are hallmarks of Clovis. Not saying it is, just saying, if it were me, I would really scour that area looking for more stuff. More than one Clovis site has been discovered starting with just a flake.