The millennia-long use history of triangular bifaces

Relatively small, triangular bifaces often considered to be projectile points have a demonstrable use history that includes the Middle Archaic, Late Archaic, Early Woodland, late Middle Woodland, Late Woodland, and Contact periods of regional archaeology. Radiocarbon dates and other data are used to document this extensive history using the Upper Delaware Valley of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York as a case study. Observed trends are evaluated in a broader regional context. The degree to which triangles of different ages can be distinguished from one another is addressed and suggestions for future research are made.

AN UPDATED HISTORY OF PRE-CONTACT NEW ENGLAND: NEW AMS DATES FOR THE HORNBLOWER II AND FRISBY-BUTLER ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES

ABSTRACTFaunal assemblages from the pre-Contact period sites Frisby-Butler and Hornblower II on Marthaʼs Vineyard, Massachusetts, USA, remain unstudied since excavation during the 1980s. This project establishes radiocarbon (14C) dates from faunal remains and evaluates occupation and abandonment at each site. 14C measurements were collected from 17 specimens and 13 dates from previous analyses were re-examined. Dates were identified from the archaeological time periods Transitional Archaic (2700–3700 BP), Early Woodland (2000–2700 BP), and Late Woodland (450–1200 BP) at Frisby-Butler. Occupation likely represented seasonal visitations during autumn and winter to hunt based on white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) demographic profiles. A combined dataset of new and re-calibrated 14C measurements from Hornblower II date to the Late Archaic (3700–6000 BP), Early Woodland, Middle Woodland (1200–2000 BP), and Late Woodland periods. Settlement was focused on gathering warm-weather foods like demersal fish and lakebirds. Together, the sites demonstrate periodic seasonal use of the southwest coast of the island throughout the Late Holocene and fit within an established regional pattern in southern New England.

Investigations at the Barnes Site (40DV307)

At the Barnes Site (40DV307) along the Cumberland River, two discrete shell-bearing deposits dating to the Late Archaic and Middle Woodland periods (approximately 3500 and 1800 cal BP respectively) are separated by a thick Early Woodland–period shell-free stratum dated between 2900 and 2000 cal BP. Alternating shell-bearing and shell-free deposits at sites elsewhere in the southern Ohio Valley have often been viewed as indicative of long-term changes in subsistence practices and traditions or large-scale environmental fluctuations affecting resource abundance. At Barnes, however, chronological, geoarchaeology, and paleoethnobotany data from shell-bearing strata recovered in 2010 and 2012 suggest that the two shell-bearing deposits mark the locations of shellfish processing at or near the river’s edge when the river channel was physically closer to the current site location. Particle-size data indicate that when the shell-free deposit accumulated, the site was situated in a low-energy depositional zone, suggesting that the river channel had shifted further to the west during that period of time.

AN EARLY WOODLAND DOMESTICATED CHENOPOD (CHENOPODIUM BERLANDIERISUBSP.JONESIANUM) CACHE FROM THE TUTELA HEIGHTS SITE, ONTARIO, CANADA

A cache of charred, domesticated chenopod (Chenopodium berlandierisubsp.jonesianum) seeds is reported from the Early Woodland (930–915 cal BC) Tutela Heights site (AgHb-446) in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. This is the northernmost report of the crop, approximately 800 km northeast of Kentucky where the previous northernmost occurrences contemporary with Tutela Heights are reported. The Tutela Heights chenopod dates to about 1,500 years before the earliest maize is reported in Ontario and is the earliest Eastern Agricultural Complex crop in Canada. The chenopod may represent a crop that was not grown locally. In this scenario, the crop was strictly an exchange item that was circulating in an interregional exchange system that extended south to the US Midwest region and east to the Maritime provinces. Another possibility, although less likely given our current understanding of Early Woodland plant use in Ontario, is that chenopod was introduced to Southern Ontario in this exchange network and subsequently became a crop in a low-level food producing economy during the Ontario Early Woodland. However, no ecological indicators of cultivation have been found at Tutela Heights, and continuity of domesticated chenopod utilization from the Early Woodland period in the province has not yet been documented.

Current Research at Arkansas Archeological Survey’s Henderson State University Research Station

During 2017, the Arkansas Archeological Survey celebrated its 50th anniversary with a series of website postings (http://archeology.uark.edu/who-we-are/50moments/), a forum at the annual meeting of the Arkansas Archeological Society, and a symposium at the annual Southeastern Archaeological Conference in Tulsa. In addition, the Survey made strides in documenting and archiving its history and collections. The Survey’s Henderson State University (HSU) Research Station in Arkadelphia continued to inventory curated artifact collections and scan older paper records and color slides. Trubitt and Cinotto, assisted by volunteers during weekly Archeology Lab Days, are updating the station’s curated collections database with artifact counts and weights, and using identified diagnostic artifacts to revise temporal information in the AMASDA state site files database. We are also adding new information on novaculite projectile point distributions to the “Arkansas Novaculite” website (http://archeology.uark.edu/novaculite/index.html) database. Ultimately, the novaculite distribution map will be expanded to create maps for each time period. This attention to the station’s curated collections inventory has sparked several new projects. We inventoried over 10,000 artifacts from 1973 testing at the Spanish Diggings site (3GA48) in Garland County, the largest of the Ouachita Mountains novaculite quarries. Novaculite debris from this quarry can now be compared with excavated samples of chipping debris and in-process pieces from other quarries and habitation sites. Diagnostic dart points (Marshall and Gary, var. Gary) indicate use of the quarry at least during the Middle and Late Archaic and Early Woodland periods (ca. 6000-200 B.C.).

Archaeological Investigations at the Mike Myers Site (41CE481) on Bowles Creek in Cherokee County, Texas

The Mike Myers site is a multiple component prehistoric site in the Bowles Creek valley in the Neches River basin in East Texas. The site is on an upland landform (400 ft. amsl), now a pasture with low surface visibility, between Bowles Creek to the east ca. 100 m and a spring-fed branch to the west. The confluence of Bowles Creek with Jackson Branch lies ca. 600 m to the south. Soils on the site are classified as Nacogdoches fine sandy loam. Based on the archaeological investigations conducted at the site to date, the known site area covers a ca. 150 x 60 m area (north-south and east-west) or approximately 2 acres, but the site may well extend to the south onto a lower upland ridge slope (390 ft. amsl) some distance; hopefully shovel tests can be excavated in this area in the near future to determine the full site boundaries. This article discusses the archaeological findings obtained to date from 2016 archaeological investigations at the Mike Myers site, much of it consisting of shovel tests across the site area, focusing particularly on the archaeological remains recovered in the work that date from Woodland and Caddo periods. Most notably, the shovel test work at the site recovered two sherds of non-tempered early Woodland period Tchefuncte pottery. As far as we are aware, this is only the second site in East Texas where Tchefuncte pottery has been found; the other site is the well-known Resch site (41HS16) in the Sabine River basin in Harrison County, Texas. Tchefuncte culture pottery has been recovered from the Louisiana Gulf Coast, in the Ouachita and Mississippi river basins in Mississippi, Louisiana, and southeast Arkansas, and in the Sabine Lake area of coastal Texas and Louisiana, more than 250 km east and southeast of the Mike Myers site.