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Show designed for a single purpose but were reused for another task without altering the design. An example would be a mano, a tool designed for food-grinding, which was reused to grind pottery clay. Multipleuse tools, sometimes referred to as multifunctional tools, differ only in the fact that the secondary activities did alter the tools' designs, but the tools could still be employed in their primary activities (Adams 1997:3-4). An example would be a mano used as an anvil on its edge or dorsal surface. In this case it is clear that the resultant anvil pitting would not interfere with the food-processing function of the mano. Even if anvil pitting occurred on the use-surface it would not necessarily prevent continued use of the mano for food-grinding unless the pitting was extremely deep or resulted in the mano breaking. The other main category of secondary use is called sequential secondary use. This term is applied when secondary activities have prevented tools from functioning in their primary uses (Adams 1997:4). Sequential secondary uses involved either redesigning or recycling tools. Redesigned tools were either altered through use in a second activity or remanufactured to the point where they could no longer be used for the original purpose. An example would be a mano with a notch pecked into it so it could be used as a hafted hammer or hoe. Recycled tools, according to Adams (1997:4), were "designed and used for one activity but ultimately were employed in a completely different context that may not have physically altered the tool," and "the important attribute is that they were no longer manipulated as tools." An example of a recycled tool would be a metate that was used as a deflector in a pit house or kiva. Although Adams (1997) did not explicitly discuss the secondary use or remanufacturing of broken tool fragments, presumably these would also be considered redesigned tools. If for example a fragment from a broken metate was used as a mano (whether it was purposefully reshaped or not), it would be considered a redesigned tool. Artifact Wear Wear on artifacts has been defined as "the progressive loss of substance from the operating surface of a groundstone artifact as a result of relative motion between contacting surfaces" (Adams 1997:5). A literal interpretation of this definition would include processes such as pecking and grinding, which were used to maintain the usability of a tool. These activities are nevertheless considered wear-management techniques and use of the term wear is usually restricted to the damage resulting from the actual use of a tool. A wide spectrum of wear occurs on tools and the varying degrees of damage can be classified qualitatively. Unused tools are manufactured artifacts that exhibit no damage from use. Tools with light wear have been used but little evidence of use is visible to the unaided eye. Moderate wear leaves clearly visible damage but does not alter the overall shape of the tool. Heavy wear changes the natural or manufactured tool shape. Tools are considered worn out or exhausted when they have been used and worn so much that they become difficult to hold for continued use, or when the usable portion of the tool is almost gone. During the N16 project the amount of wear exhibited by manos and metates was often noted in the comments sections using the above terminology. This was not done consistently for every tool, however, because a somewhat similar classification system was being used to identify tool "use phase" (see appendix). Use-Wear Analysis Use-wear analysis involves macroscopic and microscopic examination of an artifact to look for evidence indicating how a tool was altered by use (Adams 1997:7). The evidence being examined includes such damage patterns as striations, crushed grains, leveled areas, impact fractures, and chipping. These patterns and their locations on tools can be used to help determine a tool's function as well as the motor habits of the manufacturer or tool user. The analysis included comparing the use-wear observed on stone grinding tools recovered during the N16 project with information from stone tool replication studies (Adams 1993, 1989, 1988; Kamp 1995; Logan and Fratt 1993; Mills 1993; Wright 1993). THE TRANSITION TO AGRICULTURE AND SUBSISTENCE SPECIALIZATION Two of the main research priorities for the N16 project were investigating the prehistoric transition from a hunting-gathering economy to an agriculturally based economy and examining the closely related issue of subsistence specialization. To what degree were the inhabitants of the N16 sites generalized or specialized in their resource procurement strategies? Archaic hunter-gathers are typically viewed as generalists who exploited proportionately a wide variety of the available subsistence resources. In contrast, the Anasazi have been traditionally viewed as heavily reliant on the corn-beans-squash triad. What has not been demonstrated is the degree to which the Kayenta Anasazi relied on agriculture for subsistence and to what extent their subsistence strategy became more or less specialized through time. V.6.8 |
