Scraping Seal Skins with Mineral Additives

Abstract

Neolithic scrapers from the Vlaardingen Culture (3400-2500 BC) display a variety of hide-working traces, amongst which traces interpreted as being the result of contact with dry hide. It has been suggested that, potentially, some of these implements were used to scrape fatty hides with mineral additives. Therefore, a series of experiments were set up to better understand the use-wear traces resulting from scraping fatty hides with mineral additives. For these experiments two skins of common seals (Phoca vitulina) were scraped using either sand or clay. The use-wear traces on the scrapers were well developed and easy to distinguish. The ‘dry hide’ scrapers from the Vlaardingen Culture site Hekelingen III were reanalysed. It was suggested that the use-wear traces on these scrapers might be related to the scraping of fatty hides with additives. We concluded that the wear-traces on these scrapers did not match the experimentally observed traces. They most closely resemble traces resulting from the softening of dry hides. In one instance the traces resembled those of previously conducted dehairing experiments. Although the traces from these experiments could not be matched to those found on Vlaardingen Culture scrapers, the traces resembled those found on a retouched blade from the Middle Neolithic site of Schipluiden (3600-3400 BC). We concluded that the traces resulting from scraping fatty hides with mineral additives are distinctive enough to be recognised archaeologically. Nevertheless, the experiments should be extended to terrestrial animals with fatty hides, to fully understand the variation in traces resulting from the scraping of fatty hides with mineral additives.

Keywords

• experiment
• neolithic
• the netherlands
• stone
• use wear analysis
• skin or leather