Small, flaked rectangular celt with a polished working edge and a red band running through the stone.
The warmer climate of the Archaic Period made waterfront and riverine habitats much more accessible. The Wampanoag, along with other Indigenous groups started crafting mishoonash (dugout canoes) so they could travel and transport goods along the riverways and coasts, building a large, far-reaching network. They exchanged goods, as well as news and information with their distant neighbors.
A celt like this was originally hafted onto a handle and used like an axe, and might be useful for mishoon construction, which is done with a combination of burning, chopping, and scraping. Celts were first used in the Late Archaic period. The other tools here, choppers and hand axes, are fairly simple tools to create and are very effective; they were used by humans for millennia. Although these types of tools are difficult to date without associated archaeological information, they represent the types of chopping, scraping, and gouging tools that were used to make mishoonash or work wood.
