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Bone has been used as a medium for crafting both tools and decorative items since our earliest ancestors. The paucity of published work related to worked bone artifacts can be attributed to three main issues: the lack of a standardized terminology to describe bone artifacts morphologically, issues describing the function of worked bone artifacts with many having multiple uses, and the availability of few assemblages to analyze due to preservation bias. To address these concerns, this analysis takes a multi-methods approach to examine the relationship between form and function among osseous technologies to better understand the choices being made during the acquisition, manufacture, use, and discard of worked bone material. Thisanalysis focuses on the bone pin assemblage (n=169) from a special event midden, Kinzey's Knoll, at the Mill Cove Complex, a Mississippian-period mound center located in Jacksonville, Florida. Few worked bone assemblages recovered in the southeastern United States are this large and varied, with Kinzey’s Knoll being thought to be the byproduct of ritual craft production. My research provides much-needed insight into the role of worked bone within this unique context. Furthermore, this research addresses the reliability of morphologically based artifact typologies traditionally used in worked bone studies, as well as the issues inherent in bone artifact analysis.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
University Of Wyoming Anthropology Building, Laramie, Wyoming, United States
