Stone Tools, Politics, and the Eighteenth-Century Chickasaw in Northeast Mississippi

Abstract

The technological analysis of a collection of cores, flakes, unifaces, and bifaces from a Chickasaw site in northeast Mississippi makes it clear that the lithic industry was substantially reorganized to meet the functional demands of the early eighteenth-century colonial economy. The focus of this industry was a distinctive, well-made end scraper. Similar tools occur throughout the Midwest during late prehistoric times and extend into the middle Mississippi River valley during the protohistoric. Although the Midwest scrapers are likely a response to the spread of bison into that region, a study of the distribution of the Chickasaw tool kit in time and space suggests that it was used to process deer skins, the primary focus of the trade with the French and English in the Southeast. However, stone scrapers are not found on all early eighteenth-century Chickasaw sites. The historical documents suggest that some villages were more successful in their trade relations with the Europeans and were therefore able to replace stone tools with metal at an earlier date. An examination of the occurrence of stone tools throughout the Southeast during the early historic period indicates that relative distance to ports of trade was the primary determinant of the rate at which stone-tool technology was abandoned.