open access

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/48757

Endscrapers of the Old Koryak Culture: A Case Study in the Kamchatka and Taigonos Peninsulas

英語

2012-03

Graduate School of Letters, Hokkaido University

Journal of the Graduate School of Letters

7

31-53

This study purposes to clarify the functions and uses of stone endscrapers of the Old Koryak Culture(ca. the 5th to 17th centuries C.E.) from the northern Kamchatka and Taigonos peninsulas. Through an examination of the “high-power approach (HPA)”of lithic use-wear analysis, it has been found that all of the endscrapers with heavily abraded edges had been used for hide-working,and that there were also traces of hafting,probably into handles made of bone or antler. Furthermore, an interpretative model for estimating the direction of tool movement indicates that scrapers with relatively sharp edge-angle were used in a whittling motion, while scrapers with blunt edge-angle were used in a scraping motion. This study also revealed that working edges of almost half of the endscrapers we examined were worn rounded to an extent that measurement of use-angles was difficult,implying that many of these tools were used for a variety of tasks in the hide-working process, tilted at varying angles against the hides. These results show that although the Paleo-asiatic-type of scraper may have existed in this region prior to the 17th century, it constituted only a part of the hide-working toolkit. The assemblage of hideworking tools in the Old Koryak Culture was relatively varied and multipurpose. It is believed that at some point between the period of the Old Koryak Culture and the beginning of the period of ethnographic documentation of the region,a transition occurred whereby the toolkit was pared down to a single tool―the Paleo-asiatic scraper.

紀要論文

Version of Record

1880-8832

AA12118273