Fluted Projectile Points Research Articles

Before Folsom: The 12 Mile Creek Site and the Debate Over the Peopling of the Americas

Histories of American archaeology rightly point to the discoveries at the Folsom site as the turning point in the debate of a Pleistocene peopling of North America. However, this was not thefirst site where fluted projectile points were recovered in association with an extinct form bison. In 1895 University of Kansas paleontologists excavated the 12 Mile Creek site in western Kansas and recovered an in situ fluted projectile point with the remains of 13 Bison antiquus skeletons. The site is generally overlooked in the histories of this debate. Published articles and unpublished personal letters reveal that 12 Mile Creek was influential to the Folsom excavators as well as a number of other important researchers. The limited influence that 12 Mile Creek had on the anthropological community was not because of the loss of the projectile point from the site or difficulties in dating the site, but was instead due to the manner in which the investigators presented their results. What differentiated the 12 Mile Creek site from Folsom was that the investigators of the latter site allowed outside researchers to independently validate claims about the site’s age and the association between the artifacts and animal remains.

Renewed investigations at the Folsom Palaeoindian type site

The Folsom site (New Mexico, USA) is justly famous as the place where in 1927 four decades of sometimes bitter controversy came to an end, when it was finally demonstrated humans had been in the New World since the Pleistocene (Meltzer 1993). Folsom became the type site for the Palaeoindian period and distinctive fluted projectile point that bears its name (see Hofman 1999). Yet, as the excavations done in the 1920s by the Colorado (now Denver) and American Museums of Natural History focused initially on the recovery of Bison antiquus skeletons suitable for museum display, and latterly on documenting the association of projectile points with those bison remains, many fundamental questions of interest about the site’s stratigraphic, environmental and archaeological context were left unanswered (and often not asked).

Geographic Variation in Fluted Projectile Points: A Hemispheric Perspective

This paper examines geographic variation in fluted point morphology across North and South America. Metric data on 449 North American points, 31 Central American points, and 61 South American points were entered into a database. Ratios calculated from these metric attributes are used to quantify aspects of point shape across the two continents. The results of this analysis indicate gradual, progressive changes in fluted point outline shape from the Great Plains of western North America into adjacent parts of North America as well as into Central and South America. The South American “Fishtail” form of fluted point is seen as the culmination of incremental changes in point shape that began well into North America. A geographically gradual decline in fluting frequency also is consistent with the stylistic evolution of the stemmed “Fishtail” points. Although few in number, the available radiocarbon dates do suggest that “Fishtail” fluted points in southern South America are younger than the earliest dates associated with Clovis points in western North America. All of these data converge on the conclusion that South American “Fishtail” points evolved from North American fluted points.

HUMAN SETTLEMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICA AND NORTHERNMOST SOUTH AMERICA (14,000–8000BP)

A human presence in Central America, Colombia and Venezuela (outside ‘Amazonia’) before the Late Glacial Stage (≈14,000–10,000 BP) requires substantiation. In Venezuela, hunter-foragers who used elongate, thick bifacial projectile points preyed upon megamammals (e.g. gomphotheres) before the onset of a (≈12,000–11,000 BP) warming stage, particularly visible in highland Colombia (Guantiva Interstadial). Some archaeologists argue for a distinct pre-12,000 BP population centered on the Sabana de Bogotá (Colombia, ≈2500 m). Their ‘Abriense’ stone tool kit lacked bifacial reduction, and continued to be used well into the Holocene. In Central America, no human cultural remains yet pre-date the widespread, but poorly documented ‘Palaeoindian’ horizon. This coincides chronologically with the ≈11,000–10,000 BP cold stage equivalent to the Younger Dryas (in Colombia, ‘El Abra Stadial’). Makers of lanceolate (‘Clovis’) and stemmed (‘Fish-Tail’) fluted points, carefully trimmed scrapers, burins and perforators, ‘Paleoindians’ have also been identified in northwest South America. Palaeoenvironmental data suggest that they moved around in many different vegetation types. In general, these were unlike modern potential vegetation because temperatures and annual rainfall were still lower than those of today. Human material culture at the onset of the Holocene (10,500±700 BP depending on region) does not seem not to have changed as rapidly as climate and vegetation. But the disappearance of fluted projectile points and the Late Pleistocene megafauna may be causally related. Presently, it is difficult to distinguish widespread and short-lived diachronic changes in human culture, from culturally diverse populations living synchronously in different geographic areas. Some archaeologists argue that early Holocene forest expansion and foraging territory contraction were responsible for socioeconomic diversification and a gradual shift from mobile hunting and gathering to a more sylvan way of life. This emphasized the intensive collection and incipient domestication of forest products (e.g. palms and root crops), and the hunting of deer and rodents.

Blood Residues on Fluted Points from Eastern Beringia

Blood residues have been microscopically and chemically detected on fluted projectile points from eastern Beringia. From these residues a variety of large mammal species, including mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), have been identified using biochemical and molecular-biological methods. This is the first time a direct association has been made between the use of fluted projectile points and human predation of extinct fauna and other large Pleistocene mammals in arctic and subarctic North America. This suggests the northern fluted-point assemblages are part of the Paleoindian big-game hunting tradition that was widespread in North America at the close of the Pleistocene.

Technology, Flaked Stone Technology, and Risk

Recent theoretical studies of flaked stone technology have identified many factors that affect the ways in which human beings make and use tools. However, these studies lack a unified body of theory that might help to integrate their diverse perspectives. This paper expands recent anthropological discussions of risk as the basis for such a theory. We begin by defining risk, emphasizing two distinct components of this concept‐the probability that some problem will occur and the cost of such an occurrenceand argue that technology can be seen as a means of reducing such probabilities in the face of unacceptably high costs. We support this argument using cross‐cultural data on hunter‐gatherer technology and archaeological and historic data on the construction of defensive works on the northern Great Plains. Next, we consider specific problems in applying this perspective archaeologically, concluding that existing limits on our ability to estimate failure probabilities and costs prevent us from testing the ideas outlined here in archaeological contexts. However, accepting this perspective as provisionally validated by ethnographic data allows us to see how it can illuminate archaeological cases, and we exemplify this by comparing the production of Araya microblade projectile points in the Japanese Paleolithic and Folsom fluted projectile points on the North American Great Plains.

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

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.

Folsom Fluted Projectile Points East of the Great Plains and Their Biogeographical Correlates

It is widely, although erroneously, assumed that Folsom Fluted projectile points are confined to the Plains of western North America. Projectile points morphologically identical to the western forms are relatively common throughout the upper Mississippi drainage basin as far east as eastern Illinois and northwestern Indiana. Their distribution east of the Plains coincides closely with the distribution of both prairie-like vegetation and bison at ca. 11,000 B.P., suggesting a similarity in the adaptations of both the eastern and western participants in the Folsom Tradition.

Epistemological Importance and Fluted Points: An Observation

The earliest cultures of North America produced exquisitely made fluted projectile points. Over time, projectile points became progressively more crude in form and workmanship. A common explanation for this apparent regression is that native North American stone workers “lost the art of fine flint knapping.” This hypothesis is questioned and an alternative offered. It is suggested that regression had not occurred. Rather, there had been a shift in epistemological importance away from projectile points into more relevant areas for those more recent cultures. Points simply were no longer important to them.

Clovis Origin Update

ABSTRACTRecent research sheds new light on the period from 12,000 to 11,500 b.p., which is critical for undertstanding the origin of Clovis culture. Based on evidence available today, it appears likely that, late in the Pleistocene, caucasoid bands, bearing an Upper Paleolithic tool kit, migrated eastward from Central Asia to eastern Siberia and, eventually, across Beringia. On the way, they intermixed with sinodont peoples of northeast Asia in such a way that sinodonty became genetically dominant, but the tool kit was little changed. Between 13,000 and 12,000 b.p., one or more bands moved southward from Alaska through an ever-widening corridor between the retreating glaciers. It was after they passed beyond the remains of the ice barrier that a talented flint knapper invented the fluted projectile point. Whether or not they encountered other people already here remains to be determined.

The 12 Mile Creek Site: A Reinvestigation

The 12 Mile Creek site in western Kansas was the first site yielding a fluted projectile point to be excavated in North America by scientific personnel. The Bison from this kill site were used in forming the original concept of B. occidentalis. A new study of the site including radiocarbon dates and a pollen analysis suggests the kill took place in a pine parkland about 10,300 years ago. The artifact from this site reported by Williston seems to be a Clovis projectile point.

Paleo-Indians and Fluted Points: Subarctic Alternatives

For more than three decades a postulated northern (Alaskan) origin for Paleo-Indians bearing fluted projectile points has been based on sparse fluted point occurrences in the north and expectations...

Observations on the Patination Process and the Context of Antiquity: A Fluted Projectile Point from Belize, Central America

The first occurrence of a fluted point from the Maya lowlands of Belize is documented in this paper. This heavily patinated artifact was found at Ladyville #1, a surface site near Belize Ci...

A Clovis Projectile Point from the Kansas River

The presence of a Clovis projectile point near Bonner Springs, Kansas, indicates that Clovis people occupied the area between the Clovis site at Twelve Mile Creek in Western Kansas and the Clovis site at Kimmswick near Saint Louis, Missouri. The Symbos-Cervalces fauna from the Kansas River suggests that the Clovis occupation of the Bonner Springs area was probably ecologically more similar to the Clovis occupation in the vicinity of Kimmswick than to the Clovis occupation in the vicinity of the Twelve Mile Creek site in Western Kansas. The evidence of human occupation of Kansas during the Pleistocene is very sparse. This is ironic because the first scientifically recovered proof of man's association with extinct Ice Age animals in the Western Hemisphere was found at the Twelve Mile Creek site in western Kansas in 1895 (Osborn, 1910). A fluted projectile point was found in association with Bison antiquus at the Twelve Mile Creek site. This style of projectile point was later found in a number of other sites in North America, frequently in association with the bones of extinct elephants. Recently a Clovis projectile point was recovered from a gravel bar on the Kansas River near Bonner Springs, Kansas.

Comment on Bray's “An Eighteenth Century Reference to a Fluted Point from Guatemala”

Bray's interpretation of an eighteenth century reference to a lithic implement in Guatemala as describing a fluted projectile point is challenged on the grounds that semantic variations of the translation may well fit the attributes of a late period-style obsidian prismatic blade. Problems in distinguishing between genuinely fluted points and "pseudofluted" points are also noted. The possibility of widespread pseudofluted points in Central and South America raises questions of their relationship to North American paleo-Indian industries.

A Supposed Fluted Point from Fort Rock Cave, an Error of Identification, and Its Consequences

The erroneous identification of a fluted projectile point associated with the earliest radiocarbon date at Fort Rock Cave is noted. Contrary to what has been stated in the literature, no fluted or Folsom-like projectile points have been found associated with early radiocarbon dates at Fort Rock Cave.

Bone Foreshafts from a Clovis Burial in Southwestern Montana

Formal and functional analyses of bone artifacts from a Clovis burial in southwestern Montana suggest that they were constructed to serve as (detachable or nondetachable) foreshafts for attaching fluted projectile points to lance shafts.

Rummells-Maske: A Clovis Find-Spot in Iowa

The first controlled excavation of a Clovis site in Iowa revealed a concentration of complete and fragmentary Clovis Fluted projectile points. The site, in eastern Iowa, is interpreted as a projectile point cache destroyed by agricultural implements. Measurements and photographs are provided to facilitate the comparison of the collection with assemblages from other states.

Two Clovis Fluteld Points from Southern Arizona

Two Clovis fluted projectile points from southern Arizona were recently reported to the Arizona State Museum. These typical Clovis points are described and illustrated.

The Distribution of Fluted Points in Arizona

ABSTRACTA total of seventy-two fluted projectile points have been reported from seventeen localities within Arizona. The location and distribution of these points indicates that early man, using fluted projectile points, was most active in the northeast Plateau region, and the southeast Desert regions of the state.