In archaeology and anthropology a digging stick, or sometimes yam stick, is the term given to a variety of wooden implements used primarily by subsistence-based cultures to dig out underground food such as roots and tubers or burrowing animals and anthills. They may also have other uses in hunting, farming or general domestic tasks.
They are common to the Indigenous Australians but also other peoples worldwide and normally consist of little more than a sturdy stick which has been shaped or sharpened and perhaps hardened by being placed temporarily in a fire. It is a simple device, and has to be tough and hardy in order not to break.
In Mexico and the Mesoamerican region the digging stick was used for traditional agriculture such as for cultivating maize, and still is used for agriculture in some indigenous communities. It is known as a coa stick in this area and usually flares out into a triangle at the end. Some newer 20th century versions have added a little metal on the tip. Digging sticks were the most important agricultural digging tools used in Mesoamerica and throughout the ancient Americas.
Famous quotes containing the words digging and/or stick:
““Ah, are you digging on my grave
My beloved one?—planting rue?””
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“It is commonly said, and more particularly by Lord Shaftesbury, that ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is not just. I deny it. A truth learned in a certain light, and attacked in certain words, by men of wit and humour, may, and often doth, become ridiculous, at least so far, that the truth is only remembered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)