Always thought those bone tools were just knives until a dig in Nebraska

I was at a site near Lincoln last summer, and we pulled a bison rib with these deep spiral grooves. The lead archaeologist explained it was an awl for punching holes in hide, not a cutting tool. That one detail made me rethink how specialized their gear really was. Anyone else get tripped up by a tool's real use?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_claire22d agoTop Commenter

OH MY GOD, yes! I had the SAME kind of moment. I was volunteering on a dig out in western Kansas and we found this weirdly shaped bone with a blunt end. Everyone was like "it's a hide scraper" but the guy running the site finally showed me how you hold it like a chisel and hammer it with a rock. It was a WEDGE for splitting wood, not any kind of scraper at all. That moment COMPLETELY changed how I look at every artifact now. I used to think they had one tool for one job, but now I see how they probably had a whole bag of tricks with just a few pieces. It's wild how a tiny detail like that can flip your whole understanding upside down.

wendy13122d ago

Grabbed a deer antler from a creek bed once and spent an hour trying to figure out how it was used. Turned out it was just a digging tool for roots. Made my whole theory about tool kits feel dumb.

miles_hall22d ago

But what if it wasn't just a digging tool, though. The shape and weight of that thing would make it a perfect hand axe for scraping hides or even as a makeshift hammer for breaking open bones for marrow. People back then didn't have one-use tools, they carried a few things that did everything. That antler was probably used for roots one day and for cracking open a deer skull the next. You might have been closer to a multi-purpose tool kit than you give yourself credit for.