Native fork or eating utencil.

[CMD]

We really don't have to make our tools. You see when we need a tool we just go to the tool box or the kitchen drawer and pull out what we need, and don't think anything about it. They needed a tool they had to make them. So they had to think about it and of course experiment with it until it worked. I like to think about the tools and figure different ways to use them. We have no idea how Paleo or Archaic people used these things. We just assume their uses. My proposal is not out of line. It's what makes collecting more personal, if we can think outside the Books. Kim

But we can know how many “points” were used by detecting and analyzing the usage wear. However such tools were used will always leave some clue. Not that I am very good at doing that, because I am not. But, consider the case of what New England collectors once called, and many still do, “small stem points”. These included types such as Lamoka, Wading River, and Squibnocket Stemmed. They look like ideal small arrowheads or dart points. But, an analysis by Jeff Boudreau, of usage wear, demonstrated that most were used for cutting, graving, boring, or scoring operations. Many other “projectile points” were obviously not used as projectiles at all, but were instead knives.

Bottom line: we don’t just “assume” how these tools were used. We can analyze usage wear and deduce how they were used.

In the “Rethinking Small Stem Points” essay at this link, Boudreau demonstrates the analysis of usage wear for such points:

https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1185&context=bmas

[tomclark]

I think everyone had their own eating utensil(s) and that would be a knife along with any/all wooden utensils. Even I have a "special" Tom's fork, spoon and knife in the drawer that I use most often. Historically, people had their own pieces. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/medieval-knives

[oldrocks2]

I can see using a flint knife to hold a piece of meat some probably were. I ate a deer backstrap a friend brought along on a campimg trip. Cut a slice and stabbed it with a Buck and ate it off the knife so probably happened.
Then comes "Hey white feather hand me the caviar spoon I can't keep this catfish roe on my knife"