Just a question

[Older The Better]

I was thinking of the little thumb scraper I found and gender roles among Indians, how it probably was a woman’s tool to process a hide or food… then i thought of something I never really had before… were there woman knappers? Or would men make the tools and hand them off? I don’t think I’ve come across anything that looks at that subject. Any thoughts or does anyone know? Also just in the spirit of a treasure net post I’ll throw in a pic of the area and a couple animal friends

 

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[Red-Coat]

Interesting question.

No other details given, but this is a quote from Dale Weisman in an article on the Texas Parks & Wildlife website:

Archaeological evidence suggests that women in prehistory made stone tools and projectile points, and some Native American women were buried with their knapping tools.

Also this abstract from “Feminine Knowledge and Skill Reconsidered: Women and Flaked Stone Tools” by Kathryn Weedman Arthur in “American Anthropologist” published 19 May 2010 (the full paper is behind a paywall):

Archaeologists continue to describe Stone Age women as home bound and their lithic technologies as unskilled, expedient, and of low quality. However, today a group of Konso women [in Ethiopia, not America] make, use, and discard flaked stone tools to process hides, offering us an alternative to the man-the-toolmaker model and redefining Western “naturalized” gender roles. These Konso women are skilled knappers who develop their expertise through long-term practice and apprenticeship. Their lithic technology demonstrates that an individual's level of skill and age are visible in stone assemblages. Most importantly, they illustrate that women procure high-quality stone from long distances, produce formal tools with skill, and use their tools efficiently. I suggest in this article that archaeologists should consider women the producers of Paleolithic stone scrapers, engaged in bipolar technology, and as such perhaps responsible for some of the earliest-known lithic technologies.

 

[Up-North]

~♨️~

 

[ToddsPoint]

With over 12,000 yrs of natives living here, anything that you can think of that might have been done probably was done at some point. Lady knappers? Sure, why not?

 

[Older The Better]

Thanks for the deeper dive redcoat, and I agree why not, na’s were smarter and more capable than they usually get credit for, and plenty were matriarchal… when looking at the scraper i pictured a woman having to ask a male figure to make a tool and it seemed like an inefficient dynamic if she could just do it herself.

 

[Bucket Lister]

EXCELLENT question!

Thanks for the deeper dive redcoat, and I agree why not,

+1. The Texas article is good. I wish there were more substantiation; maybe there is, but it's doing a good job of hiding from me! 🙁

I do love these little rabbit holes warrens though.... Like Forrest Gump's box-o-chocolates (food of the gods!), you never know what you're going to find....

First female Chief of the Cherokee Nation:
Wilma Mankiller, 1945-2010​

Works on a few levels.

 

[GDub62]

Just this months Peach State Archeology news letter talks about evidence of women hunters in Peru some 9000 yrs. ago. So I would agree it's very possible

 

[GirlWithWolf]

The way it has been taught to me is everyone was skilled in pretty much every task that had to be done, so it isn't surprising. Beliefs that the men were the only ones that hunted while women stayed behind to pick berries and raise babies are incorrect. Hunting (and later raiding) for the men wasn't a day shift job, leaving in the morning and home for dinner. They were gone days, weeks, sometimes even months. Women literally had to hold down the fort and have all the skills to survive in the environment.

 

[Older The Better]

That’s a good point, in my immediate area the Osage would go on large hunts multiple times a year, not everyone could go, sick, old, that kind of thing. those that stayed behind would have to be just as capable of surviving.