NATIVE AMERICAN GARDENING

Living in Your Environment

Encourage students to view the natural world around them in terms of basic human needs to better understand Ohio's human prehistory.

Materials Needed:

• Flint
• Stone Cobbles
• Bones

• Stone Tools -

The earliest inhabitants of Ohio found here all of the resources they needed to live. Like any humans their most important needs were food, water and shelter. In order to get these things, humans often depend on tools. For prehistoric people those tools were often made of bone, stone and wood. Each of these materials was used because of some physical property such as hardness or sharpness.

To evaluate why each type of material is useful, there is no better way than a hands - on approach. Take each piece of material, cover with a piece of old cloth (in order to prevent chips from flying), and hit each with a hammer. What is the result?

Be careful when picking up each type of material because as the prehistoric Indians knew well, these materials often form sharp edges and points - useful but also potentially dangerous.

How each material acts will tell you what it is good for. A sharp edge is useful for cutting but is it also useful for chopping if it breaks easily? If it is tough and does not break easily, does it also form nice sharp edges? Use these results, and information from web pages, to help decide what tools were made from what materials.

Identify each item, what it was used for and what it was made from.

• Stone ax

• Spear point

• Arrowhead

• Atlatl

• Antler billet

• Awl

• Bow and arrows

• Knife

• Hammer

• Drill point

http://spirit.lib.uconn.edu/ArchNet/Topical/Lithic/

http://members.aol.com/artgumbus/lithbook.html

Bibliography

Converse, Robert N., Ohio Flint Types 1994. The Archaeological Society of Ohio

DeRegnaucourt, Tony, A Field Guide to the Prehistoric Point Types of Indiana and Ohio. 1991, Upper Miami Valley Archaeological Research Museum

Feder, Kenneth L. and Michael Alan Park, Human Antiquity: An Introduction to Physical Anthropology and Archaeology. Mayfield Publishing Company

Gramly, Richard M., Guide to the Palaeo-Indian Artifacts of North America, 1992 Persimmon Press ISBN 0-9615462-6-3

Justice, Noel D., Stone Age Spear and Arrow Points of the Midcontinental and Eastern United States. 1987, Indiana University Press, ISBN 0-253-35406-4

Livoti, Sandy & John Kiesa, Adventures in Stone Artifacts. 1997 Adventure Publications, ISBN 1-885061-15-3

Sharer, Robert and Wendy Ashmore, Fundamentals of Archaeology. 1979 The Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Co. Inc.