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| Figure One - a handful of Lookingbill projectile points and knife forms surface found in Wyoming and Colorado. Key attributes; medium to large triangular blades, straight to slightly concave bases, and the side-notching. John Bradford Branney Collection. |
In this article, I introduce the reader to the Lookingbill projectile point type, some of the projectile point's history, and a possible origin for Early Archaic side-notched technology on the High Plains.
When I was growing up in junior high and high school in eastern Wyoming, I spent my summers working on farms and ranches. One of my activities was helping the local sheep ranches "dock" their sheep. Tail docking is a common practice to shorten the length of lambs' tails to reduce the incidences of blowfly strikes. Castration turned ram lambs into wether lambs to improve herd genetics and meat quality. My job during the docking process was holding each lamb by its legs so that the rancher could perform those indelicate operations. It was unglamorous work for sure, but for a teenager, it was money in the pocket and sure beat the heck out of making burgers at the local drive-thru. On some of the larger sheep ranches, we docked hundreds of lambs and it took a couple of weeks to get them all done.
To dock the lambs, we first needed to round the sheep herds up from the pastures. At one ranch near Hat Creek, Wyoming I was herding a bunch of ewes and lambs toward a holding pen. While walking behind the herd on a hilltop, I spotted a beautiful side-notched knife form on the ground. I picked it up, admired it for a few seconds, and stuck it in my pocket for later examination. That knife form made from Knife River Chalcedony is the fifth artifact from the left in figure one.
I was almost at the holding pen when the herd stampeded off in the opposite direction in a big cloud of dust. I ran after the herd to head them off, but the sheep were too fast and frantic. I eventually gave up the chase. Well, the rancher was none too pleased with me for losing the herd. He growled and cursed and mumbled under his breath about my teenage incompetence. I didn't dare bring up the prehistoric knife form in my pocket.
That story was my first introduction to the Lookingbill point type, and I have been occasionally finding them ever since. I didn't know that point type existed for a long time. I assumed they were used as a spear point or knife form in late prehistoric times. In 1984, I acquired a book titled Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains by George C. Frison (1978) and the author introduced me to Lookingbill points. That got me searching for Lookingbill points in my collection.
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| Figure Two - The Lookingbill Site in northwestern Wyoming. |
The Helen Lookingbill Site was an open-air prehistoric campsite and tool stone procurement area at approximately 8,600 feet above sea level. The site was located near a prolific natural spring in what is now the Shoshone National Forest in northwestern Wyoming. While elk hunting in 1966, Al and Helen Lookingbill of Riverton, Wyoming noticed chipping debris eroding from an embankment. When they probed the embankment they found two large side-notched projectile points. Archaeologist George Frison (2014:158) became aware of the two points and the potential site in 1968. Under his direction, the University of Wyoming began excavating the site in 1972. The investigators discovered Lovell or Fishtail points in Late Paleoindian deposits overlain by Early Archaic deposits containing side-notched points. The site yielded a large sample of Early Plains Archaic side-notched projectile points. Manos and metates were also found in the Early Archaic deposits, suggesting the processing of food at the site.
George Frison (1983) honored Helen Lookingbill by naming those side-notched projectile points after her. Figure one is a photograph of examples of surface found Lookingbill projectile points from my collection. Figure two is a photograph taken at the Helen Lookingbill Site.
Perino (1991:130) described the typical Lookingbill point as follows: thin, small-to-medium-sized dart points with side notches. The blade was triangular and widest at sharp and angular shoulders. The notches were rounded and were as deep as they were wide. Sometimes, the notches were placed very close to a straight or slightly concave basal edge. Figure three is a photograph of a 1.6-inch long Lookingbill dart point I surface found in northern Colorado on July 9, 2015, at one of my most prolific sites call Shadows on the Trail. Does Perino's description match that point?
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| Figure Three - 1.6-inch long Lookingbill dart point I found in northern Colorado on July 9, 2015. |
The Lookingbill point is currently the oldest side-notched projectile point type on the High Plains. According to radiocarbon dates, Lookingbill points were Early Plains Archaic around 7,000 years old. Up until that time, projectile points exhibited fishtails and indented bases and/or stems (figure four). Lookingbill points were dart points, spear points, or knife forms. In general, they were too large to use with bows and arrows, and according to current archaeological evidence, the bow and arrow did not show up in North America until several thousand years after Lookingbill points disappeared.
What drove the side-notched innovation and where did that inspiration begin? If Lookingbill was the oldest side-notched point on the High Plains, did the people who inhabited the Helen Lookingbill Site invent the side-notched technology or did that development come from another region?
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| Figure Four - Early Archaic points earlier than Lookingbill points. In the photograph, there are indented bases, fishtails, stemmed, and two side-notched Lookingbill points for comparison. John Bradford Branney Collection. |
There were other Early Archaic/Middle Archaic side-notched projectile point types in other regions outside of the High Plains and Lookingbill Site. Were those other side-notched point types the inspiration for Lookingbill points, or vice versa? What was the relationship between those other point types and the Lookingbill point type? Did they have common attributes with Lookingbill points? A few examples of Early Archaic to Middle Archaic side-notched point types from other regions include Big Sandy, Graham Cave, Northern, Godar, Hemphill, Hickory Ridge,
Osceala, Raddatz, Newton Falls, White River, and the list goes on and on. Most of those side-notched
projectile point types looked similar to the Lookingbill point type. It would be interesting to know whether Lookingbill technology ended up in those other regions or Lookingbill technology originated in one of those other regions.
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| Figure Five - Map showing my chicken scratching of the geographic distribution for six Early to Middle Archaic side-notched projectile point types in North America. Bitterroot was from the west and Big Sandy came from the southeast. The legend is to the right and the age is in B.C. (Before Christ). |
I
did my own quick and dirty exercise in figure five to quench my curiosity about
Lookingbill and its origins. My first objective was to sample six well-known Early Archaic/Middle Archaic side-notched projectile point types for geographic distribution and age. I found that Bitterroot (B.R.) was to the north and west of Lookingbill (L.B.), Long Creek (L.C.) was to the north of Lookingbill, and Logan Creek (Lo.C.) was to the east of Lookingbill. For good measure, I added two well-known, side-notched projectile points from the Midwest and Southeast; Graham Cave (G.C.) and Big Sandy (B.S.). My next action was to compare the ages of the six side-notched projectile point types. My hypothesis was that the oldest side-notched projectile point type was the technological origin for other younger side-notched projectile point types, including Lookingbill.
To be consistent, I used one reference source for the geographical range and the reported age of five of the six side-notched projectile
point types. My reference was Greg Perino’s three-volume set titled Selected Preforms, Points,
and Knives of the North American Indians. In that book series, Mr. Perino documented most projectile point types known in North America. I knew there were other sources of information for those six projectile point types, but no other book series covered North American projectile point types in a consistent manner and with as much detail. The Perino books are a classic. Since Mr.
Perino never documented the Long Creek projectile point type, I substituted Jeb
Taylor’s Projectile Points of the High Plains for the geographical range and age of that one projectile point type.
By
looking at the reported age, I was hoping to determine a pathway for the origin of side-notched
technology on the High Plains. Was Lookingbill or Bitterroot or Long Creek or Logan Creek the oldest technology? The oldest reported age for those point types would give me a hint as to where side-notching began. If Lookingbill points were the oldest that could raise the possibility that Lookingbill was the ancestral technology for the other side-notched projectile point types outside of the High Plains region.
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| Figure Six - What I am calling Lookingbill projectile points. All surface found in Wyoming or Colorado. The points are in various stages of resharpening. The point on the far right was repurposed into an end scraper. John Bradford Branney Collection. |
The map in Figure five was the result of my plotting the geographic range and reported age for the six side-notched projectile point types. Based on the map, here were a few of my observations.
1. I only reviewed side-notched projectile point types in or surrounding the High Plains. My main objective was to determine if Lookingbill people spread side-notched technology to other surrounding regions or if Lookingbill people were the recipient of side-notched technology from an adjacent region. I
limited my study to six projectile point types. I could have plotted every Early
Archaic/Middle Archaic side-notched projectile point type in the United
States, but I believed that would only confuse the matter.
2. From
the Missouri River on the east to the Great Basin on the west, it appears that Lookingbill points were the oldest side-notched projectile
points at around 5000 B.C. or 7,000 years old.
3. Kornfeld, Frison, and Larson (2010:113) declared that there might be a temporal and typological
relationship between Bitterroot and Logan Creek. The older Lookingbill point type was geographically between Bitterroot to the west and Logan Creek to the east. Kornfeld, Frison, and Larson did not address any potential relationships between Bitterroot and Logan Creek with Lookingbill. Based on my initial findings, it was possible that Lookingbill side-notched technology expanded westward into Bitterroot and eastward into Logan
Creek.
4. Logan
Creek had a similar form and age to the side-notched Hawken projectile point discovered in northeastern Wyoming. Frison (1978:199) noted the similarity and proposed a potential relationship between the two types. After a multi-year investigation of High Plains projectile point types, Taylor (2006:307) observed that the only bona fide Hawken points he encountered during his study were from the Hawken Site itself. Could the Hawken and Logan Creek projectile point types be one and the same? Do we need Hawken as a standalone projectile point type if its distribution is limited to one site?
5. Of
the six side-notched projectile point types investigated, Graham Cave in Missouri was the oldest. Graham Cave and
Lookingbill were separated by both space and time, and there does not appear to be
an intermediary projectile point type bridging that space and time. A thousand years or so and a state or two separated Graham Cave from Lookingbill in Wyoming. Logan Creek bridged the geographical space between Graham Cave and Lookingbill but was younger than both projectile point types.
6. The arrow on my map in Figure seven demonstrates the possible dispersion of side-notched technology from Graham Cave dispersing west at an earlier time to Lookingbill dispersing east and west at a later time.
7. It was my conclusion that Lookingbill was not the source for side-notched technology in North America. It appears more likely that side-notched technology originated with Graham Cave or one of the older side-notched projectile point types in the Midwest or East. However, It is also my conclusion that it was plausible that Lookingbill technology in the High Plains fed side-notched technology to Bitterroot, Logan Creek, and Long Creek prehistoric cultures.
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Figure Seven - Possible side-notch technology dispersion. From the east (such as
Graham Cave) to the west (such and then from Lookingbill to
the north, east, and west.
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The
side-notched innovation developed from a culture of people who recognized the benefits of notching. Based on my investigation, side-notched technology appears to have originated somewhere in the Midwest or eastern North America. Whether or not the technology originated in the "Old World" versus North America, I did not research that, and therefore cannot draw any conclusions on that. Resolving the mysteries as to where side-notched technology originated from requires more archaeological discoveries. In the meantime, the origins of side-notched technology provide us food for thought and something to debate and write about.
References Cited
Frison, George C.
1978 Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. Academic Press. New York.
Frison, George C.
1983 The Lookingbill Site, Wyoming 48FR308. Tibewa. 20:1-16
Frison, George C.
2014 Rancher Archaeologist. The University of Utah Press. Salt Lake City.
Kornfeld, Marcel, George C. Frison, and Mary Lou Larson
2010 Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers of the High Plains and Rockies. Left Coast Press. California.
Perino, Gregory
1997 Selected Preforms, Points, and Knives of the North American Indians - Volume I. Second Edition. Hynek Printing. Richland Center, Wisconsin.
1991 Selected Preforms, Points, and Knives of the North American Indians - Volume II. Points and Barbs Press. Idabel, Oklahoma.
2002 Selected Preforms, Points, and Knives of the North American Indians - Volume III. Hynek Printing. Richland Center, Wisconsin.
Taylor, Jeb
2006 Projectile Points of the High Plains. Pp. 313-315. Sheridan Books. Chelsea, Michigan.
About the Author
The historical fiction novels written by John Bradford Branney are known for their impeccable research and biting realism. In his latest blockbuster novel Beyond the Campfire, Branney catapults his readers back into Prehistoric America where they reunite with some familiar faces from Branney’s best-selling prehistoric adventure series the Shadows on the Trail Pentalogy.
John Bradford Branney holds a geology degree from the University of Wyoming and an MBA from the University of Colorado. John lives in the Colorado mountains with his wife, Theresa.
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