Courtesy Photo | This Cochrane chert endscraper, or a stone multitool, was found in spring 2016 at an...... read more read more
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Investigators studying the archaeological resources at Fort McCoy have found numerous examples of stone tools that can serve a variety of functions all throughout the installation.
Most people today are familiar with the concept of the multitool. For some, the Swiss Army knife will instantly jump to mind. Other brands and types of multitools have come to prominence in the years since the Swiss Army Knife was created near the end of the 19th century, but the concept of the multitool has been around for millennia.
One of the more unique examples of a prehistoric multitool was recovered by researchers investigating a hilltop site in the south half of Fort McCoy. The site had been categorized in the early 1990s as an insignificant scatter containing a few pieces of chipped stone, commonly referred to as debitage by archaeologists.
Additional surveys in the vicinity 20 years later yielded more debitage and, more importantly, a sizable fragment of a prehistoric ceramic pot.
Pot fragments, which archaeologists call sherds, are significant because they indicate that prehistoric people likely lived at this location for a time, even if it was only for a matter of days. The pot sherd meant that more investigations were necessary to determine how extensive the site truly was.
Additional investigations were performed in spring 2016, which resulted in the recovery of hundreds of pieces of chipped stone debitage. Debitage most commonly results from creating or re-sharpening stone tools such as knives or projectile points. Stone tools and tool fragments were also recovered from the site, along with pot sherds, a few pieces of copper, and a fire pit with charcoal that returned a radiocarbon date of approximately 1,000 years old.
One artifact, however, really grabbed the attention of the archaeological researchers: a Cochrane chert endscraper.
A scraper is a stone tool that has been shaped in a way that makes them very effective for removing an animal hide and scraping off residual tissue. An endscraper is a tool that has a very steep edge at one end and is effective for pushing against an animal hide.
Chert, which is closely related to flint, is a sedimentary rock that has a high silica content and forms in rock formations such as limestone or dolomite. It was frequently used in the past by people around the world because it breaks in predictable ways, which results in a higher success rate for stone tool production.
Cochrane chert is a specific type of chert that is not locally available at Fort McCoy, but it can be found to the west near the boundary of Wisconsin and Minnesota.
The Cochrane chert endscraper recovered in 2016 was exciting to researchers because of how it appeared to have served multiple uses. Not only would it have been effective as a hide-working tool, but it also could have been used to produce small cutting tools called micro-blades.
Small scars on different surfaces of the tool seem to support the tool’s use as a source for creating more small cutting tools. Such scars are most frequently only found on a single surface or “face” of scraper tools, a process archaeologists refer to as unifacial flaking. This particular tool could have been used to completely butcher any small mammal found at Fort McCoy quite quickly.
All archaeological work conducted at Fort McCoy was coordinated by the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch.
Visitors and employees are reminded they should not collect artifacts on Fort McCoy or other government lands and leave the digging to the professionals. Any person who excavates, removes, damages, or otherwise alters or defaces any historic or prehistoric site, artifact, or object of antiquity on Fort McCoy is in violation of federal law.
The discovery of any archaeological artifact should be reported to the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch at 608-388-8214.
(Article prepared by Colorado State University’s Center for the Environmental Management of Military Lands.)
| Date Taken: | 09.25.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 09.25.2020 14:23 |
| Story ID: | 378719 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WI, US |
| Web Views: | 101 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Fort McCoy ArtiFACT: Chert endscraper, by Aimee Malone, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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