부산대학교 도서관

Recent ethnographic research in Namaqualand has shown that certain pastoralist groups use rough sandstone pebbles to scrape animal skins clean. These 'scrapers' are quite unlike the classic Later Stone Age scrapers described in the literature. Archaeologists are therefore urged to re-examine the 'informal' component of stone tool assemblages to avoid discarding such artefacts. In addition these findings indicate that an absence of formally retouched convex scrapers at a site does not necessarily mean that skin-working activities were not taking place.