These photographs show a selection of the artifacts recovered from a newly discovered Toyah campsite that was recorded and tested during the 1999 STAA Field School.  The Scraper Site, 41KM200, was named for, you guessed it, the large number of hide scrapers found there.  Based on the artifact evidence seen here, this campsite appears to date primarily to the Toyah phase/horizon, a relatively brief interval of time, about A.D. 1300-1500.  

During Toyah times, hunting and gathering groups across much of central and southern Texas appear to have used similar kinds of artifacts and, by inference, shared a similar life style (“adaptation”). Central to this identity was a reliance on bison and deer hunting.  While it is the return of bison to the region that is often thought to be the hallmark of the Toyah horizon, studies of animal bones from several sites have shown that deer and sometimes antelope provided more food than did bison. Nonetheless, the Toyah “tool kit” appears to be a fairly specialized adaptation to bison (and to a lesser extent, deer) hunting. While studies have also shown that burned rock middens and plant foods were still important (as they were for thousands of years), what hunter-gatherer wouldn’t prefer a nice buffalo steak?

KM200bifaces	KM200cores1	KM200cores2	KM200cores3
KM200cores4	KM200dartpoints	KM200flaketools	KM200groundstone
KM200musselshell	KM200perdiz	KM200perforator	KM200unifaces1
KM200unifaces2	KM200unifaces3	KM200unifaces4	KM200unifaces5

These photographs show a selection of the artifacts recovered from a newly discovered Toyah campsite that was recorded and tested during the 1999 STAA Field School.  The Scraper Site, 41KM200, was named for, you guessed it, the large number of hide scrapers found there.  Based on the artifact evidence seen here, this campsite appears to date primarily to the Toyah phase/horizon, a relatively brief interval of time, about A.D. 1300-1500.  

During Toyah times, hunting and gathering groups across much of central and southern Texas appear to have used similar kinds of artifacts and, by inference, shared a similar life style (“adaptation”). Central to this identity was a reliance on bison and deer hunting.  While it is the return of bison to the region that is often thought to be the hallmark of the Toyah horizon, studies of animal bones from several sites have shown that deer and sometimes antelope provided more food than did bison. Nonetheless, the Toyah “tool kit” appears to be a fairly specialized adaptation to bison (and to a lesser extent, deer) hunting. While studies have also shown that burned rock middens and plant foods were still important (as they were for thousands of years), what hunter-gatherer wouldn’t prefer a nice buffalo steak?

Perdiz arrow points [KM200-perdiz.jpg] are characteristic Toyah artifacts, although they are also found in other areas of Texas and beyond at the same time.  Several of the Perdiz points from the Scraper site are made on blades.  Blades are parallel-sided flakes that are removed from specially prepared cores.

Among the site’s cores (pieces of flint from which flakes and blades were removed) are several that show blade removals [left specimen in KM200-cores1.jpg and KM200-cores3.jpg].  [No need to use KM200-cores2.jpg or KM200-cores4.jpg unless you want to.]  It is likely that many ordinary cutting and whittling tasks were done with unmodified flake or blades freshly knocked off a core. Such “flake tools” [KM200-flake tools.jpg] are often hard to spot without careful microscopic examination. 

As you might expect, the site’s scrapers are numerous and varied.  Some are quite large while others are small.  Some are made on blades, but most are made on ordinary flakes. [Use several or all of KM200-unifaces1-5.jpg]  These are all thought to have been used in hide-scraping and suggests that this was one of the major activities that took place at the site.

We don’t have pictures of the site’s pottery, but we found sherds of Toyah bone-tempered pottery. This earthenware pottery was probably made locally – most vessels were probably ollas used to carry water.  One usual artifact is a scraper or smoothing tool made out of a thick mussel-shell fragment [KM200-mussel shell.jpg].  This semi-circular piece is well worn and could be a pottery smoothing tool. 

Only a few bifaces [KM200-bifaces.jpg] were found at the site, but these appear to include several different tool types including beveled knives (fragments only) and a peculiar thick biface with partially serrated ends (leftmost specimen) that could be a “flesher,” a tool used to remove flesh and gunk from hides prior to scraping.

Several ground stone tools were found including a nutting stone (left) and a hammerstone (right). [KM200-ground stone.jpg]

Several dart points were found at the site, but these are believed to be scattered artifacts from earlier peoples in the area. [KM200-dart points.jpg].