Message #30:
From: AzTeC SW Archaeology SIG
To:   "'Matthias Giessler'" 
Subject: Glass Insulators in Experimental Archaeology
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 97 12:49:00 MST
Encoding: 16 TEXT


From: Ellie McDowell-Loudan

One can add to this category of glass insulator collectors.  Some lithic 
technologists and some Native Americans (in California, I'm told) gather 
these solid items for experimental archeology--lithic-tool-working on a 
material that resembles (they tell me) volcanic glass.  Errett Callahan, 
formerly a consultant for the Catholic University of America's archeology 
program (among others), noted that some folks felt that this was safer to 
avoid pollution of archeological sites with obsidian debitage which might be 
misleading to excavators.  This was in the 1960's and early 1970's when 
there was a bit less consciousness of the importance and significance of 
glass insulators as cultural information.  Wonder when we'll see the first 
"insulator core" in an artifact complex?