In the questions pertaining to the use of flaked glass a strong theme,
despite context, has been Native Americans and early or primitive
technology.  I can't tell you how many times I have beeen in the field or
camping and picked up a sharp edged stone of other object and cut string or
twine.  The other day I rather neatly cut a length of 1/2 inch hemp rope by
placing it on the edge of a big rock and smacking it with another rock.
Does that make me Native American or more primitive?  Nope, It just means I
know how to make and effectively use an expedient tool and it was easier to
do that than go find a modern technologically advanced shearing device.
Try this scenario: the farmer had a job to do and wasn't about to run to
the hardware store to spend his hard earned money on something he could
make for himself ... Often the simplest answer is the correct answer.  This
train of thought, to create an expedient tool, comes naturally or by
necessity to some people, and for others such actions never enter their
mind.  We are each deducing from our own experiences.  We see it all the
time in prehistorians who think that only Indians of long ago used chert
and flaked tools, or historians who can't imagine what purpose such a
primitive and technically simple thing had.

        Dan W.



>> Kira Presler wrote:
>>I am aware of
>> worked glass on earlier sites, but the late date is puzzling. Though this
>> could be the work of either Native Americans or Europeans, there are no
>> known contemporary Native American settlements in this vicinity. Has
>anyone
>> come across any reference to something like this on later European sites?
>> Native American Sites?
>>

Ron May wrote:
>>Kira, Depends on what you call "late"? Around here, contact period Kumeyaay
>>took broken dark green wine and lighter olive green wine bottle glass to
make
>>Desert Side Notch arrowpoints at least as early as 1780 and as late at 1900.
>>There are numerous accounts of Apache using bottle glass and telephone pole
>>insulators for arrowpoints and cutting tools, including spectacular red
glass
>>objects well into the 1880s. By the 1890s, steel seems too plentiful to
>>explain flaked glass. But hey, your farmers might have been flintknappers.