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<p>[QUOTE="Taupou, post: 4328342, member: 45"]It's a general-purpose Indian scraping tool. It's a little hard to tell, just from a photo, if it's obsidian or flint. Both were used for scrapers, depending primarily on which material was readily available. Both obsidian and flint were trade items, with pieces found a long way from their source.</p><p><br /></p><p>Obsidian comes in several colors and forms, but it can be identified by its glass-like sharpness, so it was good for cutting and piercing. But it was easily breakable, like glass. Flint is harder, less likely to break when hit (when struck by steel, it produces a spark, and used for starting fires). For some purposes, it would be more useful as a scraper than obsidian, since obsidian would tend to cut, if the intent was only to scrape.</p><p><br /></p><p>It's just about impossible to assign a specific purpose to a tool like this (although some people will), since it was probably used for whatever it worked for. And they may have had tasks to perform that we have no idea of today.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="Taupou, post: 4328342, member: 45"]It's a general-purpose Indian scraping tool. It's a little hard to tell, just from a photo, if it's obsidian or flint. Both were used for scrapers, depending primarily on which material was readily available. Both obsidian and flint were trade items, with pieces found a long way from their source. Obsidian comes in several colors and forms, but it can be identified by its glass-like sharpness, so it was good for cutting and piercing. But it was easily breakable, like glass. Flint is harder, less likely to break when hit (when struck by steel, it produces a spark, and used for starting fires). For some purposes, it would be more useful as a scraper than obsidian, since obsidian would tend to cut, if the intent was only to scrape. It's just about impossible to assign a specific purpose to a tool like this (although some people will), since it was probably used for whatever it worked for. And they may have had tasks to perform that we have no idea of today.[/QUOTE]
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