A Toolkit for the Prehistoric Farmer

The theme of Kansas Archeology digging stick tip. One end of the bone Bison shoulder blade hoes Week for 2001 is prehistoric agriculture. was removed with an angled cut that In the last issue, we talked about the created a blade-like tip. A hole was The scapula of the American bison is plants that were raised in Kansas over a drilled in the end of the bone, and a a large, flat bone. This bone was saved thousand years ago. In this issue we take handle was inserted. Because bison when a bison was butchered, and the a look at the tools that were used to plant, bones are large and thick, these digging spine was removed from the flat side. It process, cook, and store the crops that stick tips would last over many seasons. was then attached to a handle and used as people raised. a hoe. Sometimes archeologists find a Farming today relies upon large ma- Stone hoes bone hoe that had split and been repaired chinery powered by fossil fuels, but in by drilling holes in either side of the split The early residents of Kansas used the past people made effective farming and lashing it together with sinew. Bison chert–a widely available, very hard, fine- tools from materials at hand. They bone hoes are found frequently in Kansas grained stone–for a wide array of tools, chipped hoe blades from slabs of chert archeological sites that date from about including sharp tips for spears and ar- and lashed the shaped stones to wooden A.D. 1 until metal was introduced in rows, knives, and hide scrapers. Among handles. They added durable bone tips to approximately A.D. 1600. the largest chipped stone tools are hoes. wooden digging sticks for planting and A slab of chert was shaped into a thin, loosening soil. People also used the oval shaped tool about eight inches long. Grinding stones shoulder blades (scapulae) of bison to This piece was attached to a handle to Seed crops, both gathered and plant seeds and dig pits for storing crops. serve as the blade of a hoe. After a long grown, needed to be processed before They prepared seeds for cooking on period of use, a stone hoe took on a lus- they were eaten. They could be boiled grinding stones and made clay pots to trous polish. If the blade became dull, it and eaten as a gruel or cereal, or they cook the foods that were raised. was resharpened by chipping off the could be ground into flour. Seeds, such worn edge. Stone hoes are not very com- as corn kernels, were placed on a large, Digging sticks mon from archeological sites in Kansas flat, heavy stone, called a metate (me- A sharpened, hardened stick was but are more often found farther east. TAT-tay) and ground with a smaller, used to break the prairie sod to dig roots This may be because of the presence of rounded hand-held stone called a mano or plant seeds. Sometimes a bison leg bison here in the Great Plains. The shoul- (MA-no, meaning “hand” in Spanish). bone was added to make a more durable der blade of a bison makes a great hoe. The flour could be used to thicken soups 5 This bison leg bone digging stick tip was in good condition when exposed during excavation. A well worn bison shoulder blade hoe with crack lace holes was finally discarded and later recovered from an archeological site.

The illlustration on the opposite page shows how bison scapula hoe blades were attached to wooden handles and used to cultivate crops.

and stews or to make flat bread. Grinding corn is hard work and took a long time. Over time, the trough of a metate got deeper with wear, so that it looked more like a dish than a flat grind- ing stone. An experimental archeologist attaches a wooden handle to a modern replica of the type of digging stick tip used by Pottery prehistoric Kansas farmers. In many parts of the world, the first use of pottery coincided with the adoption of agricul- ture. People who hunted and gathered wild foods tended to stay on the move. Pottery ves- sels are fragile and fairly heavy, so they were not widely used by nomadic people. As people settled down and began farming, pottery became more practical. Early farmers made their pots out of local clays. Making a pot may look simple, but it takes a lot of skill to make a vessel that will not crack while it is drying or shatter when it is be- ing fired. Some of the earliest pottery was not very strong and possibly could not be placed directly over a fire. Instead, stones or clay balls

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Archeologists uncover a grinding slab and hand stone during This article was prepared by Dr. Robert J. excavation of a prehistoric village site. Hoard, state archeologist for Kansas. 6 from her research on the Salina Burial Kansans Attend Pit, being performed under contract with Spring Workshops the KSHS. She reviewed the archeologi- Conference in cal fieldwork of the Whiteford family, Successful beyond the excavation of the burial pit, and concluded that they were largely re- Kansans recently had the opportunity Oklahoma sponsible for gathering the information to take part in a series of workshops around the state that brought the art and A number of KSHS Cultural Re- that Waldo R. Wedel used in recognizing science of building preservation to their sources Division staff members traveled the Smoky Hill phase. doorsteps. The Cultural Resources Divi- to Norman, Oklahoma, to participate in Several other papers dealt with Kan- sion offered workshops in Fairway, the 23rd Annual Flint Hills Conference, sas topics, namely “Very Large Projectile Salina, Wichita, and Hays. March 15-18, 2001. This year the meet- Points in Little River Focus: A Discus- Attendees, 115 in total, learned about ing was held jointly with the 43rd Annual sion” by Dr. Susan C. Vehik, professor of a broad range of preservation issues in Caddo Conference at the newly com- anthropology at the University of Okla- the two-day workshops that coupled pleted Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of homa; “Late Plains Woodland in the classroom time with on-site visits of Natural History, University of Oklahoma. Middle Little Arkansas River Valley” by projects in progress. Participants were The sponsors were the Museum, Caddo Mark Latham, contract archeologist with treated to a broad range of information. tribe, Wichita tribe, and the Oklahoma the firm of Burns and McDonnell; and Sandra Hooper, architect for the Archeological Survey. “The Pawnee’s Stoneman Animal Lodge” Cultural Resources Division, started each Four of the conference presentations by Dr. Patricia J. O’Brien, professor emeri- workshop with an overview of the Na- involved KSHS collections or projects. tus at Kansas State University. tional and State Registers, an introduc- In “The Johnson-Zahm Cache: Insight KSHS archeology staff Anita Frank, tion to the various levels of intervention into Great Bend Aspect Lithic Acquisi- Martin Stein, and Virginia Wulfkuhle fur- in historic structures, and practical advice tion and Utilization,” KSHS Special ther took advantage of the trip to Norman on how to plan a preservation project. Projects Archeologist C. Tod Bevitt dis- to photocopy records collected at the Architects Craig Patterson and Don cussed the characteristics of the 60-piece Smithsonian Institution by Dr. Susan Mars followed with several adaptive stone flake and biface cache from the Vehik for her research on Great Bend as- Iola, Kansas, vicinity. He offered some pect materials. Continued on page 15 comparisons with similar caches and gen- eral raw material procurement and utili- zation practices from habitation com- plexes in the Great Bend aspect Toolkit for the (protohistoric Wichita Indian) core area. James O. Marshall proposed a new Prehistoric Farmer definition for the Lower Walnut focus of Continued from page 6 the Great Bend aspect, based on his analyses of artifacts from sites in the Ar- kansas City area. “A Review of the Stone Implements of the Lower Walnut Focus” compared stone tools, pottery, and exotic items with artifact types iden- tified with the Mississippian tradition. Jim D. Feagins, an archeologist who has contracted with the KSHS to carry out studies of materials governed by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the Kansas Un- marked Burial Sites Protection Act, de- scribed the nonintrusive documentation of nine artifacts made from a variety of materials. His presentation, entitled The holes in the body of this “Nonintrusive Documentation of Se- prehistoric cooking pot show lected Burial Artifacts by the Use of CAT attempts to repair a crack. Scans and X Rays: Example from NAGPRA/UBS Enhancement and Com- were heated and placed into a pot of food. This method, called stone boiling, pliance Study in Kansas,” revealed the cooked the food at fairly low temperatures. As potters learned to make stronger remarkable images produced by these so- pots, the vessels were set directly on the fire. This method allowed for the longer phisticated medical technologies. cooking times needed to soften some hard seeds, making them more palatable Dr. Donna C. Roper’s paper, “Guy and releasing their full nutritional value. and Mabel Whiteford: Early Kansas When metal tools were introduced, they quickly began to replace tools of Avocational Archaeologists,” resulted bone, stone, and clay. Metal hoes and pots lasted longer than their earlier coun- terparts and thus were valuable trade items. By the 1900s, metal tools and pots This article was written by Virginia had all but replaced their earlier Native American counterparts. Wulfkuhle, public archeologist in the Cultural Resources Division. 14