I couldn’t decide what material to put this under, since it could have been both in Woodworking and Stone & Bone, so this seems good.
Shoveling snow today, I was thinking that primitive peoples the need to shovel snow too, but obviously don’t have mass-produced metal and plastic shovels. Luckily, I remembered that one of my college books, The Netsilik Eskimo, had pretty good descriptions of at least one type of snow shovel used by the Inuit people.
Once the proper sort of building snow had been found, the igloo builder went to work. The thin top covering of soft snow was removed quickly with the snow shovel, an ingenious tool illustrating the Eskimo's ability to employ substitute materials for hard-to-find wood. The frame was made of split antler, four of rive pieces held strongly together with plaited sinew threads, to which a piece of depilated sealskin was tightly fastened. It was held very low, almost horizontal to the snow surface, by an antler handle and was operated with short quick thrusts.
I’ll scan the picture from the book soon. Until then, my Google-fu found me these.
http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/ROM-MCQ/E/records/12000001.htm
http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/ROM-MCQ/E/records/12000002.htm
http://www.splendidheritage.com/DataPages/Fry0142.html