Early Paleoindian Land Use, Mobility, and Lithic Exploitation Patterns: An Updated Distribution of Fluted Points in Indiana

Abstract

This article documents 583 fluted projectile points from seventy-two Indiana counties. While fluted points occur in virtually all microtopographic settings, the highest frequency were recovered from riparian settings or overlooks of those areas. The largest concentrations of these artifacts are located on the terraces of major streams. More than half of the fluted points documented were found in the unglaciated portion of the state along the Ohio River and in the bedrock source areas of high-quality lithic material. Most of the fluted points are manufactured from high-quality lithic materials that occur as abundant, large, unflawed masses that outcrop within a 250 km radius of the artifact's findspot. Ten percent of the fluted points documented were manufactured from exotic lithic materials (> 250 km between the fluted point findspot and lithic raw material source area). A number of typological-geographical patterns are also evident: (1) Clovis points occur throughout Indiana; (2) Cumberland points are more abundant in the unglaciated region, especially along the Ohio River; and (3) Gainey, Barnes, Crowfield, and Holcombe points are restricted to the glaciated landscape of the northern half of the state.