Fire-Cracked Rock As Tools: Wear-Pattern Analysis

Abstract

Within the last ten years, lithic studies have focused intensively on chipped stone tool technology, particularly biface reduction procedures. Recent analysis of lithic materials from a multi-component Middle Missouri Village site (32ME7) in North Dakota revealed the necessity for intensively examining another artifact class, fire-cracked rock. A considerable quantity of fire-cracked granitic stones exhibited one or more wear patterns assumed to represent wear suggesting recycled procurement and utilization of a common resource. Supplemented by archaeological analogs and analysis of secondary attributes (i.e., archaeological context and systemic context), the wear pattern study resulted in the identification of five functional classes of fire-cracked rock tools.