The Design and Use of Paleoindian Unifaces of the Gainey Phase in the Lower Great Lakes Region

肯特州立大学的马克·f·西曼博士将在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，对早期古印第安人社会中工具设计和工具使用之间的关系进行考古调查。具体的重点将放在俄亥俄州斯塔克公司诺伯尔斯池塘遗址（33ST357）的石器组合上。诺布尔斯池塘属于中西部的盖尼期，是北美东部最大的早期古印第安人遗址之一，大约在公元前11,200-10,800年。盖尼期古印第安人是五大湖下游地区已知最早的人类种群。他们是有弹性的“高科技采集者”，因为他们使用便携式但设计复杂的工具，使用寿命长，并且具有很强的回收和回收潜力。他们也是地球上流动性最强的人群之一。在某种程度上，占领诺布尔斯湖的古印第安人处于人类群体特征的居住策略的一个极端，他们为研究技术组织提供了一个有用的背景。在这里，工具的设计/效用关系应该在密集选择的条件下，因为殖民觅食者占据了新的和动态的景观。为了以可控的方式调查这个问题，重点将放在正式的单面工具上，特别是有柄的末端刮刀。在诺布尔斯池塘的挖掘中，已经发现了超过1800个有柄的末端刮刀，这是已知的最大的古印第安遗址样本。在这项研究中，将从两种不同的遗址环境中选择具有代表性的工具，并将与实验条件下使用的现代复制品进行比较，结合考古学家和物理学家的见解。这项研究解决了三个主要问题。1)在可观察到的形态上，有多少形式的变化可以用单一类设计工具的使用、破损、损耗、再循环和回收来解释？2)诺布尔斯池塘工具的特定磨损模式与特定损耗状态或其他使用寿命条件的相关性如何？3)在类似的实验生产和使用的工具上，特定的磨损模式与损耗或其他使用寿命条件的关系如何？这项研究的大范围优势在于能够将形式、磨损和实验的分析结果整合到一个应用于大样本的单一研究项目中。目标设计/使用关系对考古学很重要，也是检验所有技术系统的关键问题，最终影响到适应性优化、规划深度和风险最小化等更大的结构。还应该认识到，诺布尔斯池塘的挖掘是一项社区努力，有2 000多名成年志愿者参与了挖掘工作。这个分析项目将通过当地志愿者在他们自己社区的一所大学的科学实验室项目的持续参与，使该地区与一个重要的考古试金石保持联系。这个项目进一步标志着肯特州立大学考古学和物理学之间的第一次合作，它可以在未来的多个尺度上研究磨损的过程。有柄末端刮刀是早期古印第安人环境中数量最多的正式工具，它们的研究可以为我们了解许多觅食社会的生存策略提供强有力的见解，这些社会占据了我们集体过去的大部分时间。

Dr. Mark F. Seeman of Kent State University and with the support of the National Science Foundation will conduct an archaeological investigation of the relationships that link tool design and tool use within early Paleoindian societies. The specific focus will be on the stone tool assemblage from the Nobles Pond site (33ST357), Stark Co., Ohio. Nobles Pond pertains to the Gainey phase of the Midwest and is one of the largest Early Paleoindian sites in eastern North America ca. 11,200-10,800 B.P. Gainey phase Paleoindians were the earliest known human populations in the lower Great Lakes area. They were resilient, "high-technology foragers" in that they employed portable, but complexly designed tools with long use-lives and with strong potentialities for salvage and recycling. They also were among the most mobile populations on earth. To the extent that the Paleoindians that occupied Nobles Pond lie at one extreme of the residential strategies characterizing human groups, they provide a useful context for studying technological organization. Here the design/utility relationship of the toolkit should be under conditions of intense selection as colonizing foragers occupy new and dynamic landscapes. In order to investigate this question in controlled fashion, the focus will be on formal unifacial tools, specifically hafted end scrapers. The Nobles Pond excavation has yielded over 1,800 hafted end scrapers, the largest known Paleoindian site sample. In this study, representative tools will be selected from two different kinds of site contexts and will be compared with modern facsimiles used under experimental conditions, combining insights of both the archaeologist and the physicist. The study addresses three main questions. 1) How much of the formal variation in observable morphology can be explained by the use, breakage, depletion, recycling, and salvage of a single class of designed tools? 2) How well do particular patterns of wear on Nobles Pond tools correlate with particular states of depletion or other use-life conditions? 3) How well do particular patterns of wear correlate with depletion or other use-life conditions on similar, but experimentally produced and utilized tools? The broad-scale advantages to this study lie in the ability to bring the results of analyses of form, wear, and experimentation together in a single research program applied to a large sample. The targeted design/use relationship is important to archaeology and is a key question in the examination of all technological systems, ultimately bearing on such larger constructs as adaptive optimization, depth of planning, and risk minimization. It also should be recognized that the Nobles Pond excavation was a community effort, with over 2,000 adult volunteers participating in the excavation. This analytical project will allow the continuation of a regional connection to what has become an important archaeological touchstone through the continued involvement of local volunteers in a scientific laboratory program at a university in their own community. This project further marks the first collaboration between archaeology and physics at Kent State University, and it is one that can be built on to investigate the process of wear at multiple scales in the future. Hafted end scrapers are the most numerous formal tools in Early Paleoindian contexts, and their study can provide strong insights into the survival strategies of the many foraging societies that occupied the majority of our collective past.