Criteria for recognizing technological and use-wear modifications have been used to identify “bone expediency tools” by archaeologists who analyze bone assemblages recovered from sites where butchering of animals took place. These criteria are here reviewed and then used to identify bone pseudotools in cervid bone assemblages completely formed by non-human processes and recovered from the blast zone around the Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington. The procedures for identifying stone tools and bone tools share similar strengths and weaknesses that seem to originate with the logical criteria used for recognizing modifications to the objects under study. Less equivocal inferential identifications of bone objects as “tools” can be facilitated by turning to the problem of constructing testable hypotheses about the way patterns of use-wear modifications to bone tools can be expected to appear in the archaeological record.
Sedimentation in a blast-zone lake at Mount St. Helens, Washington—Implications for varve formation
