pip. ?fo." IsT HOSTERMAN SITE — MILLER 195 



SCBAPEBS 



Scrapers, since they occur over long periods of time, are much too 

 ubiquitous to be considered as good horizon markers as they first 

 appear in Early Man sites, continuing through the Archaic and into 

 pottery-making horizons. They have become so well adapted that 

 they have continued to be manufactured over long periods of time; 

 thus, their usefulness as "index fossils" has been destroyed. 



Scrapers are flake tools. They vary both as to size and form. They 

 are characterized by a plane or slightly curved undersurface (ventral 

 face) surmounted by a dorsal keel or flatness displaying one or more 

 abruptly retouched edges. The working edge is somewhat convex, 

 except in the case of a very thin variety. The convexity is clearly the 

 essential feature. Maximum tliickness is not confined to any par- 

 ticular portion of the scraper. They are unifaced and ovate, ellip- 

 tical, lunate, triangular, subtriangular, trapeziform, circular, or ir- 

 regular in outline. 



The very presence of scrapers portends certain technical knowledge 

 of the preparation of pelts into leather goods for the manufacture 

 of clothing, etc. 



I believe Stewart's (1946, p. 45) definition of a scraper is an ex- 

 cellent one. He describes it as : 



A primitive thing called a scraper is crude and not at all eloquent until you 

 realize that it points to much else. It means not only a scraper, but a thing 

 to be scraped, most likely a hide; therefore it means a growing ability to kill, 

 to take the hide and cure it. That is just the beginning, for a scraper also 

 shows a knowledge of how to scrape, and a desire for scraping, and enough 

 leisure (beyond the struggle to get food) to allow time for scraping. All this 

 means self restraint and thought for the future, and it implies a certain confi- 

 dence in the ways of life, because no one would be liable to go to all the trouble 

 of scraping if he did not have the reasonable hope of enjoying the results of his 

 work. 



Scrapers can roughly be divided into two classes: end and side 

 scrapers. End scrapers have the working edge or edges on the ends 

 of flakes and are roughly convex, and where there is a central keel it 

 frequently rises up fanwise to meet it. Sometimes much fluting 

 occurs along the side of the flake to trim it into the desired form. 

 End scrapers can be subdivided into : keeled^ circular^ large and small 

 teardrop, small planoconvex, large and small flahe, flat thumbnail, 

 beveled, triangular, subtriangular, peaked planoconvex, and scraper- 

 graver combination. Side scrapers are subdivided into: large -flake 

 single edged, large flake triple edged, large planoconvex triple 

 edged, double edged, prismatic flake, thin pointed double edged, and 

 combination side scraper — spokeshave. 



