Stone tool traditions in the contact era /

This symposium volume examines varying patterns in time and space in the replacement of stone tools by metal tools within what would become the US portion of North America from the 16th through the 19th centuries. Contrary to traditional ideas that metal tools, being inherently superior to stone tools, replaced them rapidly, these studies show that some stone tools persisted for considerable periods of time. For example, both Johnson writing on the Chickasaw and Cassell on the Eskimos see the persistence of stone-end scrapers as a result of their efficiency in hide-scraping, a task that increased with the postcontact trade in hides, while Carmody uses the absence of such scrapers in a 16th-century Oneida Iroquois site to argue that the occupants were not connected to the fur trade, but were engaging in warfare to capture individuals for adoption. Other authors study ground stone tools such as axes, pipes, pestles, and adzes, examining how the practical and spiritual values of these artifacts determined their postcontact use and persistence. While of variable quality, the papers in this volume demonstrate the complexity of cultural contact between Native Americans and Euro Americans and its effect on stone tool manufacture and use. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. L. L. Johnson Vassar College