Abstract ID: 3.11644 | Accepted as Talk | Talk/Oral | TBA | TBA

How hunter-gatherer populations adapted mountain environments is a perennial question in archaeology. A central technological adaptation to these environments is leather clothing, which is signaled by the archaeological occurrence of lithic hide-scraping tools. End scrapers are one of the most common tool types in early North American lithic assemblages. Paleoindian end scrapers sometimes exhibit anomalous spur features characterized by one or two lateral protrusions located on the working edge. This analysis examines usewear on a large sample of Paleoindian end scrapers from the northern Rocky Mountains. Low-power light microscopy and optical profilometry are used to examine the ostensible working surfaces of the spur features. Additionally, experimental scraper analysis examined the effectiveness of the optical profilometer to measure uswear using both the Sa and Ra roughness coefficient. Preliminary results indicate that both the dorsal and proximal surface were used in scraping tasks, consistent with the hypothesis that the spurs were functional and not merely incidental to hafting or maintenance. This finding points to an unknown technological tradition likely associated with clothing manufacture among the Rocky Mountain’s first peoples. We conclude with a series of hypothetical applications to spur future research.