Archaeological Artifacts — Natick Historical Society

Artifacts shed light on past life

Artifacts, objects used by people in the past, are clues that help us to reconstruct what life was like in Natick long ago. Before the English came, the Algonquian people did not have metal to make necessary everyday items like knives, weapons, cooking pots, or buttons. Instead, they made their tools, houses, and clothes from natural materials in their environment. They ate food that they hunted, gathered, and farmed on their land, rivers, and oceans. Unlike English people who wrote books and made maps to remember important places, Algonquian people remembered the best spots to find certain foods, plants, and rocks they needed. They passed this information on to their families through storytelling.

Stones were frequently made into tools because they are plentiful, strong, and can be sharpened or carved into the shape you desire. Objects made from stone, called lithics, fall into two categories: those that are chipped and those that are ground into the shape you want. Different rock types respond better to chipping versus grinding, so Native peoples had a detailed understanding of geology and where each type of rock might be found in their area.

Many of these tools look similar to objects we may still use in our houses, gardens, or workspaces today. They may look slightly different since they’re made of rock instead of metal or plastic and frequently broken and/or missing some parts of the whole object made from less sturdy materials.

By: Rebecca Sgouros

TYPES OF TOOLS

Hunting and Weapons

Projectile Point: A projectile point includes both the spear and arrowhead. These points would have been attached to wooden shafts and propelled through the air toward their target. Spear points were used as early as the Paleoindian period to hunt large game. The bow and arrow was adopted in the Woodland period and was more accurate, effective, and smaller than the spear point. The shape and styles of projectile points have changed over time (much like how cars or cell phones have changed.) We can use these stylistic changes to tell how old an arrowhead and site is, which is an excellent help to archaeologists.

Processing Hides and Plant Fibers:

Biface: biface is just the archaeologists’ word for a stone knife. These knives have been chipped or ground on both (two = bi) sides (faces). These knives were used for various functions, including butchering meat and cutting hides & plants. Bifaces are found across all periods archaeologically.

Scraper: these tools were made to have one edge (often curved) that was particularly sharp. This sharpened edge would scrape the meat from hides and bones before turning these materials into clothes, tools, and other everyday objects. Scrapers are standard at Paleoindian sites but were used in all periods.

Perforator: this sharp, pointy tool functions like a hole-puncher. It would be used to make holes in the hide for sewing clothing and other items or to punch holes in bone and wood to make other tools.

Awl: an awl is similar to a perforator and may be made of either stone or bone. Its function was like a needle and hole-puncher, and it was used for making hide or woven plant clothing, weaving birch bark containers or reed baskets, and making holes in clay objects before drying. Bone awls are pretty standard at Woodland period sites.

Fishing

Plummet: it is not entirely clear what the function of this tool was, but archaeologists suspect they were used as fishing line sinkers. The narrowed neck would have allowed a cord to be attached. These tools were used in the Archaic period.

Net weight: Net weights are grooved or doughnut-shaped rocks that would have hung from fishing nets to keep the bottom half of the net from floating up while in use. These tools are standard at Archaic period sites located near water.

Harpoon tips & fishing hooks: these are not frequently found except at coastal sites but would have been made from bone or antler and used to hunt large marine fish and mammals.

Woodworking

Woodworking tools of a variety are common to Archaic period sites when the area was well forested and Native peoples relied on boats to navigate streams and rivers to move between hunting, fishing, and trading grounds.

Axe: an axe served the same function in ancient times as it does today, to chop and split wood. Polished and sharpened stone axe heads would be grooved and attached to a handle with sinew.

Celt: a celt is essentially an axe that does not have any sort of groove and is attached to a handle with a hole in it to hold the stone in place.

Adze: this tool was used for heavy woodworking to chop and carve large pieces of wood. It falls somewhere between a gouge and an axe in shape and function, and when attached to a handle, and looks more like a small hoe than a traditional axe.

Gouge: this scoop/spoon-shaped tool was used to carve wood objects like canoes and fish weir stakes.

Cooking, Serving, and Storage

Grinding Stones: Grinding stones were used to process nuts, berries & corn into food. They would become polished and smooth from repeated grinding back and forth, and would need to be roughened using a hammer stone in order to improve its grinding abilities.

Steatite vessels: Steatite is a soft rock that was carved using an awl, biface, flake, or scraper, into bowls, cups, and platters. Steatite can withstand high heat and would make great pots and pans when placed over the fire. Steatite objects are found at Archaic sites but were likely made & used in later periods as well.

Pottery: The use of pottery probably began at the very end of the Archaic period but became widespread at sites in the area around 2,000 years ago during the Woodland Period. Local clay was collected and cleaned before being coiled and smoothed into shapes, then hardened and baked in open fires. Woven plant materials were pressed into the outside of these first pots to make them look like woven baskets, but over time, pottery took on its artistic style and was decorated with incised and pecked mark designs. Ceramic objects were used to store, cook, and serve food & liquids.

Tool Making

Hammerstone: The hammerstone is a tool for making other tools. Made from a particularly heavy and sturdy river rock, it was used to peck or chip ‘softer’ stone into desired shapes. Over time the repeated use of this hammer stone, to hammer other objects would leave a rough, dotted surface on this rock. These tools are found at sites from all time periods where stone tools were made.

Core: A core is the chunk of rock from which stone tools are produced. Pieces of rock are chipped off much like the way a wood carver produces woodchips while whittling a stick. Paleoindian knives and points were made by shaping and carving the core itself into its desired shape, but tools from later time periods were frequently shaped from flakes that were broken off of the core rock itself. Cores are found at sites where tools were being made.

Flakes: Flakes are by far the most commonly found item at an archaeological site. For every tool that is produced thousands of flakes can be created. Flakes are small slivers of rock that are produced during the chipping process. Some flakes are shaped into tools themselves; others are waste from the tool making process. While it takes a lot of time to make a well-crafted knife, flakes are easy and plentiful and sharp enough to be used as a quick cutting tool. They were often saved and used as knives, disposed of when they broke or got dull.

Archaeologists occasionally find artifacts made out of other fairly sturdy materials, like bone and shell. However, many objects made of far more fragile materials (like animal hide, plant fibers, and wood) do not preserved long enough to be found in archaeological sites. Without these objects, it isn't easy to reconstruct what clothing and art would have looked like thousands of years ago.

Most of the tools we find reflect hunting, building, farming, and cooking activities. However, we do occasionally find objects that were used as toys, ornamentation, or had religious significance. Without a time machine, we rely on our ability to draw comparisons between ancient and modern objects and on the traditional knowledge passed down through the generations in local Native communities to understand how artifacts were used. Sometimes, though, we get stumped, and specific artifacts remain mysterious. Ground-stone rods like this one are one such ‘mystery’ item from the past.

What do you do when you find these artifacts?
If you find an artifact in the woods or fields around Natick, it’s important not to move or take the artifacts. These artifacts and the context in which they were found provide essential clues to archaeologists and tribal historians studying the past. Please take a picture, note where you found them, and contact the Natick Historical Society about your discovery! Remember, these objects belonged to the ancestors of communities still living in the area today.