The Lovell Constricted (Fishtail) Projectile Point.



Figure One - What I suspect are Lovell Constricted or "Fishtail" projectile points surface 
found on the High Plains of Wyoming and Colorado. John Bradford Branney Collection.  

At some point in the past, the Lovell Constricted projectile point type acquired the nickname of "Fishtail points" because its outline resembled that of a fish with its tail. For this article, I will refer to that point type as Lovell Constricted or just plain Lovell, even though I 
oftentimes call them "Fishtail points" myself.  

In 1957, a man named Gene Smith was hiking in the Absaroka Mountains of Wyoming when he stumbled upon a large rockshelter along the North Fork of the Shoshone River. From 1963 to 1965, National Park Service archaeologist Robert Edgar investigated the rockshelter and added it to the existing knowledge known about prehistoric life in the area. The rockshelter yielded stratified human occupations from approximately 9000 years ago in the Late Paleoindian period to Late Prehistoric artifacts such as basketry and pottery of Shoshonean descent.  

The most interesting and magnificent discovery at the rockshelter was a well-preserved 1,400-year-old mummified man buried under a rock cairn. "Mummy Joe" was wrapped ceremoniously in a sheepskin garment ornamented with fur and feathers. For years, Mummy Joe was publicly displayed until Congress passed the Native Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Mummy Joe was returned to the Shoshone tribe for burial in 1990.  

Figure Two - Mummy Cave, Park
County, Wyoming. 

Edgar and his researchers noticed that the Late Paleoindian projectile point types at Mummy Cave did not resemble the projectile point types found downriver at a site of similar age called the Horner Site. The Horner Site was a large Cody Complex site on the open plains of the Big Horn Basin. The two sites reflected different subsistence patterns; while the dominant animal remains at Mummy Cave belonged to mountain sheep, bison dominated the animal remains at the Horner Site. Since Mummy Cave was dry and for the most part weather-resistant, the investigators found perishable items and bones from smaller animals. The Horner Site was not as lucky as far as the preservation of small bones and perishable items. Based on the respective artifact assemblages at both sites, Frison and Grey (1980) suggested that the inhabitants at Mummy Cave lived a more Archaic lifestyle than the Paleoindians at the Horner Site by being less dependent on large mammals and more dependent on smaller animals and plant gathering. 

Husted and Edgar (2002) concluded that two distinct Paleoindian cultures coexisted in northwestern Wyoming in different environmental settings. While the Paleoindians who inhabited Horner and similar sites preferred the open plains, the Paleoindians who inhabited Mummy Cave and similar sites chose rockshelters and caves in the foothills and mountains. Archaeologists named the Paleoindian cultural sequence found at Mummy Cave, and other similar sites in the mountains and foothills, the Foothill-Mountain Paleoindian Complex (Kornfeld 2013:51). The Foothill-Mountain Paleoindian Complex was a different adaptation model than the Plains Paleoindian Complex with each having its own distinct diagnostic artifacts.    

From 1962 to 1964, archaeologist Wilfred M. Husted (1969) excavated rockshelter sites east of Mummy Cave in the Bighorn Canyon of Wyoming and Montana. The sites were in jeopardy of flooding due to the pending construction of the Yellowtail Dam. In three closely spaced rockshelter sites named Sorenson, Mangus, and Bottleneck Cave, Husted discovered two new projectile point types which he christened the Lovell Constricted and the Pryor Stemmed. He named the former after the nearby town of Lovell, Wyoming, and the latter after the Pryor Mountains in Montana. I recently wrote an article on Pryor Stemmed, so I refer to that article for information on that interesting projectile point type (Branney 2023).  

Husted uncovered Lovell Constricted projectile points stratigraphically below Pryor Stemmed projectile points indicating that Lovell Constricted points were older than Pryor Stemmed points. The strata that contained Lovell projectile points yielded a radiocarbon date of 8,000 years or slightly older, or approximately 8,800 to 8,900 years old in corrected calendar years  (Kornfeld et al. 2010:36). 

The Foothill-Mountain Paleoindian projectile point sequence discovered at Mummy Cave and the Bighorn Canyon was later verified at the Medicine Lodge Creek and Lookingbill sites in northwestern Wyoming (Kornfeld 2010:101).   

Figure Three. 1.3-inch long Lovell Constricted dart point
found in central Colorado in the early 1900s by the late 
Louis Brunke. Note the convex and concave curvature
lines of the edge. John Bradford Branney Collection.   

Husted (1969:12) described the Lovell Constricted point as "medium to large in size with a concave base and a definite constriction of the lateral edges slightly distal to the base. The lateral edges above the constriction usually are smoothly convex. Basal edges vary from shallowly to moderately concave. Flaking is crudely parallel-oblique with the flake scars extending downward to the right. Lateral edges are ground smooth from the base forward for up to one-half of the length of the points. Cross sections are lenticular."   

Figure Four - 1.8-inch long Lovell Constricted or McKean Shouldered knife form. The knife has
light basal edge grinding in the hafting area and an oh-so-slight "waist".  I surface
recovered the knife form on November 8, 2021, in northeastern Colorado.

For those of you familiar with High Plains projectile point typology, you will immediately notice the similarities between Lovell Constricted points and Middle Archaic McKean Shouldered points. Those point types are difficult to differentiate, especially when recovered outside of archaeological and stratigraphic contexts. Figure four is the perfect example of what I wrote in the previous sentences. Is that knife form a Lovell or a McKean? I cataloged it as a Lovell. 

I use several attributes to help identify whether a projectile point or knife form is a Lovell Constricted or a McKean Shouldered. The first attribute is whether or not the projectile point or knife form has shoulders above the hafting area. McKean Shouldered points were named for that reason; they have shoulders while Lovell Constricted points do not. The rounded curvature of the edge on a typical Lovell Constricted point goes from convex along the blade to concave in the hafting area. Notice the curvature of the projectile point indicated by the red line in figure three. 

Figure Five - In the top row are three Middle Archaic McKean Shouldered points
and in the bottom row are three Late Paleoindian Lovell Constricted points. 
Note the difference in the edge curvature between the two types.
John Bradford Branney Collection.      

The second attribute I use on a suspected Lovell Constricted point is the concavity of the edges in the hafting area of the point. That concavity is called a "waist" because it supposedly resembles the hourglass shape of a person or at least a person in reasonably good physical shape. If a projectile point or knife form doesn't possess that "waist", then the artifact probably isn't a Lovell Constricted. However, that does not fly both ways since McKean Shouldered points oftentimes have their own "waists" (see figure five). 

The third attribute is whether or not a point has edge grinding or polishing along the edges in the hafting area. Edge grinding was customary on most Paleoindian and Early Archaic points. That custom pretty much disappeared from artifact assemblages post-Early Archaic. I wrote "pretty much disappeared" because I occasionally find projectile points from later cultures that ground the edges along the projectile point bases. The Late Archaic Pelican Lake people were notorious for grinding and polishing the bases on their corner-notched points. I have also found a few Paleoindian and Early Archaic point types that did not exhibit any or much edge grinding at all. It is my opinion, based on experience, that the Middle Archaic McKean Complex people abandoned edge grinding for the most part. Therefore, if the point has edge grinding and the other three attributes, it is probably a Lovell Constricted point. Edge grinding shouldn't be used as the sole criterion for differentiating between Lovell and McKean.   

Figure Six - I always thought this knife form resembled a Goldfish. I surface found this on 
a multicultural site on August 9, 1993, in northeastern Colorado. Is it a Lovell 
Constricted knife form or a McKean Shouldered knife form? 

The fourth attribute is the flaking pattern and thinness of the point. I rarely see the diagnostic parallel oblique flaking patterns on what I am calling Lovell Constricted points. However, in general, the workmanship of Lovell Constricted points was moderately better than the workmanship of McKean Shouldered points. You might be able to see the differences in the workmanship in the examples from figure five. In my opinion, McKean Complex points took a step backward in quality and workmanship from their Paleoindian and Early Archaic predecessors. I often wonder what happened to cause that. My opinion is that Middle Archaic people did not see the value in the extra time and effort needed to improve the aesthetics of their projectile points. If the projectile point served its purposes in functionality and performance, why dilly-dally around making it look prettier?   

In summary, unless a projectile point is a "no-brainer" as far as projectile point type, the four attributes can be used to determine whether a point is a Lovell or a McKean. The point may not have all four attributes, but it sure helps in the decision process. And last but not least, you may have your own criteria that you use to determine those point types.

Based on what they discovered at Mummy Cave and Bighorn Canyon, Husted and Edgar (2002:119) proposed that Lovell Constricted projectile point technology could have evolved from older Angostura projectile point technology. So, once Lovell Constricted projectile point technology existed, where did it end up? I wrote about the similarities and differences between Lovell Constricted and McKean Shouldered points, so the logical answer is Lovell ultimately ended up as McKean. Unfortunately, there is a problem with that hypothesis. There is a two to three-thousand-year time gap between when Lovell Constricted technology disappeared and McKean Shouldered technology showed up in the archaeological record. The technologies existed on either side of the two to three-thousand-year-long drought conditions of the Altithermal climate event. Lovell Constricted points preceded the Altithermal while McKean Shouldered points came after the Altithermal. What happened to Lovell Constricted projectile points during that long pause? That is still an archaeological mystery. Perhaps, the clues are out there in some unexcavated archaeological sites. Until then, we will just have to wait for archaeology to catch up and solve that mystery.      

References Cited 

Branney, John Bradford. 2023. Pryor Stemmed Points – Just Like Rolling the Dice! Academia. 

Frison, George C., and Donald C. Grey. 1980. Pryor Stemmed, a Specialized Paleo-Indian Ecological Adaptation. Plains Anthropologist. 25(87):27-46.    

Husted, Wilfred M. 1969. Bighorn Canyon Archeology. Reprints in Anthropology, Volume 43.  

Husted, Wilfred M, and Robert Edgar. 2002. The Archaeology of Mummy Cave, Wyoming: An Introduction to Shoshonean Prehistory. U.S. National Park Service Publications and Papers. 

Kornfeld, Marcel, George C. Frison, and Mary Lou Larson. 2010. Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers of the High Plains and Rockies. Third Edition. Left Coast Press, Inc. Walnut Creek.    

Kornfeld, Marcel. 2013. The First Rocky Mountaineers - Coloradans Before Colorado. The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.   

About the Author

The seed for John Bradford Branney's historical fiction book series titled SHADOWS on the TRAIL Hexalogy sprouted on an early summer morning in 2010 on a northern Colorado ranch where the author found a twelve thousand-year-old stone tool made from a red and gray striped rock from a prehistoric rock quarry in Texas. Several questions raced through the author's mind. How did that stone tool end up on a prehistoric campsite in northern Colorado? Who made it? What were they like? What happened on its journey from Texas? Since the author could not ask those questions to the Paleoindian who made the stone tool, he wrote his own version of that journey. SHADOWS on the TRAIL Hexalogy is available at Amazon.com or wherever fine books are sold.