A good deal has been published regarding scrapers. They served pretty much the same purpose everywhere in the world. While this is true, yet there is a great difference in scrapers, and the simple statement that they are scrapers with or without notches does not suffice. There are ordinary flakes worked to a scraping edge, and scrapers with deep notches and long tangs; there are scrapers with barbs, and without barbs; there are broken arrow-heads worked into scrapers. I have subdivided the scrapers under the Committee’s general class as follows:—
A. Flakes worked to a scraping edge (several in Fig. 192). B. Ordinary oval and circular scrapers. (See Fig. 184.) C. Spoon-shaped scrapers. (See bottom row, Fig. 190, and bottom row, Fig. 184.) D. Scraping edge extending entirely around (bottom row, Fig. 188). E. Notched or shouldered scraper. (See Figs. 187, 193.) F. Crescent scraper. (Two to the left in Fig. 187, one in Fig. 193.) G. Specialized scraper. (See Figs. 188, 190, 191, 193.)
Scrapers are commonplace tools, yet they played an important part in the life of ancient man. They illustrate his economy, for we know that he made over broken spear-heads and arrow-points into scrapers.
I have endeavored to show in these illustrations all types, from the circular disc with the scraping edge to the highly specialized forms. Of course, scrapers and knives merge the one into the other, and where the scraper ends, the knife begins.
Series can be arranged in any large collection beginning with the simple knife and working back to the scraper, or vice versa. In the Mandan village-site ash-heaps more than seven hundred scrapers were found by Mr. E. R. Steinbrueck; the large Mandan collection of five thousand specimens, which contains them, was presented to our Museum through the kindness of Professor E. H. Williams, Jr. A plate of these scrapers is shown in Fig. 190.
Fig. 184. (S. 1–2.) Scrapers of classes “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D,” Phillips Academy collection, Andover, Massachusetts. These are from various portions of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys.
Fig. 185. (S. 1–2.) Scrapers of Class “E.” These are the more common Wisconsin-Minnesota forms. F. M. Caldwell’s collection, Venice, Illinois.
