[AlArchie]

Daryl, flensing is a term usually applied to the removal of blubber, tissue, or skin from a whale or seal, a holdover from the whaling industry, and is probably of dutch origin. My reference to this as a flensing knife is based on what my dad told me and further confirmation by that archaelogical team.

I would think that it is most likely an assessment of the general shape of the blade, as this looks a lot like a miniature version of the huge flensing knives used in whaling. Some of those knives looked more like a sythe, only sharpened on the outside, rather than the sweep edge, and this is the same configuration on a much smaller scale.

As this particular blade is around 2-3000 years old I can't relliably come up with an exact use for it, but it appears as though it would have been useful in skinning animals and fleshing hides, which would correspond to the 'flensing' of whales.

The original blade seems to have been ( I hesitate to use the word crudely, but that's what it looks like to me) hammered into shape, as there are remaining surface indentations, similar to those marks left by a ball pien hammer, when working copper. My bet would be that it was pounded into shape using one of the many rounded Lake Superior rocks that litter the shoreline around here. It has a shank that is roughly square in profile, and sweeps in a shallow arc, as if to secure it from twisting in a handle. This particular blade seems to have been sharpened on both the inside curve and the outside, but it is also the victim of a lot of years of corrosion, so the edges may have been deteriorated to a sharp edge due to chemical decomposition.

I have never seen or heard of another such blade ever being found, and the survival of this one may have been due to the location it was found. The old blueberry plains were originally part of the huge white pine stands that spread across the Upper Penninsula, and are composed of very fine dry sand, which probably would have helped preserve it.

My dad kept copious notes on most everything he did, but most were lost after his untimely death, so my recollection of the background on the blade is strictly verbal, and as it was relayed to me when I was around 8 years old, there may be all sorts of 'discrepencies' in interpretation.

I do know that copper artifacts, made in this area by the ealy Native americans have turned up as far away as Florida, Arizona, and actually into Mexico. This type of native copper can be assayed almost to a particular local area where it was mined.

Some of the copper pieces can still be found lying on the surface, and large pieces of flote copper turn up regularly in odd places. I found one about 8'x4'x1' a few years back, alonside the main highway, here, probably turned over by a snow plow in the winter. there is an interesting method that was used by the ancient Natives for 'mining' copper and I'll email that to anyone who is interested.

Boy, did this get off the carving theme!

Al