Platter Chatter Along the Shadows on the Trail

 

Platter Chatter

By John Bradford Branney

Figure 1 – a trio of Clovis platters cached in southeastern Wyoming and discovered by a highway department employee in the late 1950s or early 1960s. For scale, the middle artifact is 7.9 inches long. John Bradford Branney photograph and collection.

Figure 1 is a photograph of a cache of three Clovis platters surface found in the late 1950s or early 1960s by a gentleman who worked for the Wyoming Highway Department. The exact location of the find is unknown, but according to his niece, he found the cache while working on a highway in southeastern Wyoming. Based on that information, I assume he was in either Goshen or Laramie County. When the finder passed away, much of the information about the Clovis platter cache died with him.

The finder’s niece ended up with the collection. She knew little about artifacts and placed the cache into storage, where it lay for approximately twenty-five years. Approximately seventeen years ago, Frank Parrish, a collector and hunter of Paleoindian artifacts, met the niece at a rock and gem show in Tucson, Arizona. Long story short, Mr. Parrish made an offer for the cache, and she accepted. Mr. Parrish saved this cache from a lifetime stuck in a storage locker and/or eternal obscurity. Mr. Parrish sold the cache to me in 2021.

In the literature, authors refer to this type of artifact as platters (Patten 1999; 2005), or ovate bifaces (Waters and Jennings 2015), or discoidal cores (Bradley, Collins, and Hemmings 2010). I will refer to them as Clovis platters because that best physically describes them. These platters have features that are distinctive to Clovis biface thinning, such as wide flakes and spacing, overshot and over-the-face flake scars, alternate flake sequencing, end thinning, and, on at least one of the platters, Clovis biface striking platforms as shown in Figure 2 (Bradley, Collins, and Hemming 2010: p 67).

Figure 2 – Clovis biface platform characteristics from page 67 in 

Clovis Technology by Bradley, Collins, and Hemming.

In Clovis Technology, Bradley pointed out that overshot flaking was not a common feature and that in most cases it resulted from knapping errors. The same authors noted that overshot flaking was one marker for defining Clovis biface technology. The authors proclaimed that investigators have yet to find discoidal cores (platters) in Clovis camp or kill site settings, prehistoric quarries, or near the sources of the same raw material.

What did the Clovis people use platters for? I like to think of them as portable rock supplies. They either cached them as a backup plan or used them on their wandering to make tools and projectile points. Tankersley (2002: p. 115) described how eight of the nine pieces in the Crook County Clovis Cache were a rock type called Tiger Chert, and the source for Tiger Chert was more than three hundred miles southwest of where Harold Erickson discovered the Clovis cache in Crook County, Wyoming. A Clovis individual, or perhaps a beast of burden such as a dog, hauled these Clovis platters and stone tools from southwestern Wyoming for three hundred miles before caching them within a thin lens of red ochre in the Fox Hills Formation in northeastern Wyoming. Obviously, the Clovis individual never returned to retrieve the cache.

The maker of the Clovis platters in Figure 1 used what appears to be orthoquartzite material from the Spanish Diggings prehistoric rock quarry in southwestern Niobrara County, Wyoming. For thousands of years, prehistoric people mined orthoquartzite and chert from the Mesozoic Cloverly Formation at Spanish Diggings. The orthoquartzite from the quarry ranges in color from bright yellow to gold, tan, brown, gray, pink, lavender, and purplish hues. 

Figure 3 – Looking in a westerly direction at the prehistoric rock quarry called 

Spanish Diggings in Niobrara County, Wyoming. On the horizon is Laramie Peak.

Photograph by Neil A. Waring.

Based on what we know about the provenance of the cache, the highway worker who found them was working on some road in southeastern Wyoming. If that were the case, the finder could have been anywhere from ten to one hundred or so miles from Spanish Diggings when he discovered the cache.

Figure 4 – Side A of Clovis platter A 321 made from Spanish Diggings orthoquartzite. This platter
is 6.9 inches long (176 mm). John Bradford Branney photograph and collection.

Clovis platter A 321 (Figure 4) is an oval-shaped biface that is 176 millimeters long, 102 millimeters wide, and approximately 19 millimeters thick near the center of the biface. It has a width-to-thickness ratio of 5.4. The rock type is a moderate orange-pink orthoquartzite with hues of gray throughout the matrix and scattered manganese dendrites. Clovis knappers’ special skill was percussion flaking, and this platter reflects that expertise. The flaking scars are classic Clovis technology: thin, straight, wide, and long. The marginal edges have a minor amount of secondary sharpening. There is no visual evidence of red ochre on the surface or within the cracks or hinges of the platter.

Figure 5 - Hillside made of red ochre.   

Oftentimes, Clovis people covered or buried their caches in a mineral called red ochre. Ochre is an earthy pigment consisting of ferric oxide and clay minerals. It varies from shades of light yellow to brown to red. There is archaeological evidence that prehistoric people in both the Old and New Worlds used red ochre as a pigment for painting, a preservative, an abrasive, and a packing material. Neanderthals in Europe used ochre as early as 250,000 years ago, and investigators have found ochre in Upper Paleolithic graves in Europe and in one Clovis grave in North America.

Investigators have found red ochre in a variety of contexts within North America, such as occupation floors, burials, stone tool caches, and at least one prehistoric mine. Investigators have found red ochre on a Paleoindian grinding slab and on stone artifacts, foreshafts, main shafts, atlatl fragments, and cave walls. Although it appears red ochre had ritualistic uses, it also served several practical applications.

Figure 6 – Clovis platter A 321 A made from a moderate brown Spanish Diggings 

orthoquartzite. This platter is 7.9 inches long (201 mm). 

John Bradford Branney photograph and collection.

Clovis platter A 321 A (Figure 6) is a leaf-shaped biface that is 201 millimeters long, 119 millimeters wide, and approximately 30 millimeters thick near the center of the biface. It has a width-to-thickness ratio of 4. The rock type is a moderate brown orthoquartzite with scattered blotches of pale yellowish-brown. The flaking scars are typical of Clovis; wide, long, and traveling a good distance across both faces of the biface. The marginal edges show little secondary sharpening. There is evidence of battering and crushing along the edges.

Master flintknapper Bob Patten (1999:93-94) wrote that although platters were many times larger and heavier than ultrathin knife forms, the production process was similar. As a master flintknapper, Patten opined that Clovis platter technology was as sophisticated as any knapping technology used by later cultures. Patten proposed that the Clovis people might have carried these platters in a leather sling or pouch, and when the timing was right, they would cache them or convert them into projectile point preforms or tools. Tankersley (2002: 116) found a diagonal pattern of red ochre on two of the Crook County bifaces, suggesting that the owner of the bifaces might have wrapped them in sinew or leather.

To replicate Clovis platters via flintknapping, Patten described how he beveled, battered, and abraded the edges to make it easier to remove large flakes via percussion. Then, he spaced each blow with his hammer wide enough so that the flake scars overlapped ever so slightly.

Figure 7 – Side A of Clovis platter A 321 B. This platter is 8 inches long (203 mm). 

On one edge, the knapper intentionally notched the platter 

and on the other edge, the knapper had prepared to notch it with 

Clovis biface platforms (see figures 2 and 8). 

John Bradford Branney photograph and collection.

Clovis platter A 321 B (Figures 7 and 8). This is the most interesting platter of the trio. The platter shape lies somewhere between oval and leaf-shaped. It is 203 millimeters long, 130 millimeters wide, and approximately 26 millimeters thick for a width-to-thickness ratio of 5. The knapper used a grayish orange pink orthoquartzite to make the artifact.

The knapper intentionally notched one side of Platter A 321 B in the middle of the edge. He or she was preparing to notch the other edge when the knapper cached it with the other two platters. The opposite edge (Figure 8) shows at least two Clovis biface platforms, which the knapper would have used to strike and detach flakes with the intention of notching into the body of the biface. Notches weaken the biface body enough to split the platter into sections, which the knapper would use for Clovis projectile points or other stone tools.

Figure 8 – "A" marks the beaten and the battered edge of side B of A 321 B. 

"P" marks typical Clovis biface platforms. The Clovis knapper was starting to notch this edge. 

Compare the characteristics of the platform with Figure 2 above. 

John Bradford Branney photograph and collection. 

So, why did the Clovis people cache these platters and other tools? Archaeologists and collectors have discovered Clovis-type artifacts in forty-eight states, Mexico, and Canada. The Clovis people traveled long distances in a relatively short time period. Based on thirty-two radiocarbon ages, Waters, Stafford, and Carlson (2020) proposed that Clovis technology lasted from around 13,050 to 12,750 calendar years ago. Clovis people were explorers, and when they reached areas where they were unsure of the raw material supply, they left a cache of stone tools and rock material to retrieve later. 

Time for me to get a little “preachy.” One big lesson I learned from this cache is to fully document the details and location of every artifact I find or acquire as accurately and completely as possible to ensure relevant information about the artifacts is available after I am no longer above ground. We should all do this. Artifacts are history, just not pretty rocks or works of art.

It is unfortunate that when the finder of this important discovery passed on, the provenance details went with him. I have a dozen or so questions about this cache, but those answers will never be known. We will never know where he found the cache, or under what circumstances. Was the cache found on the surface or buried? Did the road-building equipment unearth it? Did the finder investigate whether there were other pieces in the cache? My list of questions is practically endless. Unfortunately, I can ask all the questions I want until I am blue in the face, but I will never know the answers.

References Cited

Bradley, Bruce A., Michael B. Collins, and Andrew Hemmings
2010     Clovis Technology. International Monographs in Prehistory. Archaeological Series                 17. Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Patten, Bob
1999     Old Tools – New Eyes. Stone Dagger Publications. Denver.

2005     People of the Flute. Stone Dagger Publications. Denver.

Tankersley, Kenneth
2002     In Search of Ice Age Americans. Gibbs Smith, Publisher. Layton, Utah.

Waters, Michael R. and Thomas A. Jennings
2015     The Hogeye Clovis Cache. Texas A & M University. College Station.

Waters, Michael R., Thomas W. Stafford Jr., and David L. Carlson
2020     The Age of Clovis – 13,050 to 12,750 cal yr B.P. in Science Advances, Vol. 6, No.                 43.

About the Author

John Bradford Branney is a Wyoming native, an author, a geologist, a prehistorian, and an associate editor of Prehistoric AMERICAN. He has written thirteen books and over one hundred articles on Prehistoric America and life in general. Branney is currently writing the second edition of WINDS of EDEN, the third book in the prehistoric adventure series SHADOWS on the TRAIL Hexalogy. He lives in the northern Colorado mountains with his family.

CLICK for JOHN Bradford BRANNEY Books

Short Faced Bear - Predator, Scavenger, of Just Plain Terror?

Figure One - Arctodus simus, the giant short-faced bear.  

One of the major themes that I emphasized in my prehistoric adventure book series titled the SHADOW on the TRAIL Hexalogy was that life was onerous and difficult for the First Americans, or Paleoindians, living on the High Plains of North America. They not only had to deal with finding food and water every day, but they also had to contend with natural and manmade disasters such as earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires, blizzards, droughts, and the hostilities from other humans. It was surely no Garden of Eden. 

One of the bigger challenges that High Plains Paleoindians faced was big and aggressive mammal carnivores. On good days, Paleoindians were at or near the top of the food chain, but I am sure there were days when the human hunters became the hunted. With only their stone-tipped spears and a heartful of courage, Paleoindians faced more than just a few formidable adversaries from the animal kingdom. 

Figure Two - CLICK for the SECOND EDITION

In the second edition of my prehistoric adventure titled CROW and the CAVE, two super mammal predators appeared in my story. I took some liberty in introducing these beasts during the time of the Folsom Complex around 12,600 years ago, even though there is no archaeological evidence that this particular species was still around that late in prehistory. See, it went extinct about that time, like many species within the Pleistocene megafauna. Currently, the last recorded occurrence for this species came at the Lubbock Lake site during the Clovis Complex (Johnson 1987:88), some two to three hundred years before my book began. However, I am a realist and believe that as more Paleoindian sites are found and studied, some of these extinct animal species from the Pleistocene might show up in the archaeological record later than anyone expected.  

Below in red is a short passage from CROW and the CAVE that introduces these beasts to you and my book readers:

Hoka hobbled up the ridge, heading westward. Cansha and Heesha caught up to their father. They were not going to wait around to see what happened next. Centuries of combustible material on the cave floor ignited into flames. A short-faced bear, taller than a bison, burst from the cave. The bear stood outside the cave grumbling and peering around in search of whatever disturbed its rest. Smoke from the den billowed upward. The warriors stood paralyzed. A couple of them defecated right there on the spot. None of them had ever seen such a gigantic monster before with huge teeth and long curved claws. Some had heard campfire tales about such a beast but seeing one in person was much more salient than hearing stories.

The gigantic bear glared at the warriors while sniffing the air. It opened its massive jaws and tilted its head to the side. Its yellowish teeth glinted in the bright winter sun. Then, another short-faced bear exploded out of the smoke-filled den and stood alongside the first bear. This bear was smaller, perhaps a yearling or two-year-old, but it was still bigger than several warriors. Its singed fur smoldered in the frosty air. It had been a long winter for the bears. The bears’ appetites had awakened along with their surly dispositions.  

The now-extinct Arctodus simus, or short-faced bear, was quite a specimen. Based on fossil remains, scientists estimate that Arctodus simus stood a good five and a half feet tall at its shoulders, tall enough to look most Paleoindians straight in the eyes while standing on four legs. The short-faced bear reached ten feet long, and if it stood up on its hind legs like a modern bear species does, a good-sized male stood eleven to twelve feet with a fourteen-foot vertical arm reach. It is estimated that a good-sized male could weigh as much as two thousand pounds. A one-ton bear is nothing to sneeze at. Scientists estimate that male bears were around fifteen percent larger than females. Based on skeletal remains, the size of the short-faced bears seemed to fluctuate with climate, perhaps adhering to Bergmann’s Rule which states that birds and mammals in cold regions are bulkier than individuals of the same species in warm regions.

Figure Three - Not sure if this is accurate to scale, but you 

get an idea of the size of the Arctodus simus. A giant 

short-faced bear was no laughing matter for Paleoindians.   

Arctodus simus, or short-faced bears, possessed short faces with wide muzzles resembling more of a big cat than a modern bear. Arctodus simus's broad, high vaulted heads differed from narrow-skulled, long-nosed modern bears such as brown and black bears. Based on skeletal remains, Arctodus simus appeared to be fleet of foot. Ursine bears, such as brown and black bear,s are pigeon-toed and tend to waddle back and forth when they walk or run. Arctodus simus walked and ran in a straight line. Scientists estimate that the giant short-faced bear could run anywhere between thirty and forty miles per hour, fast enough to run down most prey, including humans. From this estimated speed, short-faced bears could even run down speedy wild horses and pronghorn over a short stretch of land. 

Arctodus simus was the most powerful predator of the American Pleistocene! (Anderson 1984: 55).  

What did Arctodus simus eat?  

Matheus et al. (2003) studied the oxygen and nitrogen levels in fossil bone collagen for lions, scimitar cats, short-faced bears, wolves, and wolverines in East Beringia, and found that all these predators ate bison, horse, and mammoth, and to a lesser extent, caribou and musk ox. The scientists determined that while scimitar cats ate mostly mammoth meat, lions ate mostly bison. The scientists established that although short-faced bears and wolves loved mammoth meat, their diets were quite diverse, and they ate meat from a variety of mammals. Based on their study, the scientists concluded that Arctodus simus was a pure carnivore that scavenged prey mammal carcasses.  

Another analysis on food intake for Arctodus simus came from Wise About Bears (wiseaboutbears.org). They reported that "its [short-faced bear] skull and shearing type of teeth indicate a highly carnivorous way of life. Its eye sockets are set wide apart and face forward, giving it excellent vision. Its short, broad snout had a huge nasal passage, which probably means it had a keen sense of smell and could inhale great volumes of oxygen while pursuing prey. The large width of the jaws in relation to their shortness, plus the huge insertions for biting muscles, gave this bear a vise-like killing bite and the ability to crush bones to obtain marrow. Tests of bone samples show a very high ratio of nitrogen-15 to nitrogen-14, a nitrogen “signature” that indicates a true carnivore. Everything considered, paleobiologists conclude that the giant short-faced bear ate only meat."

Based on its powerful jaws and humongous teeth, the short-faced bear devoured almost anything it wanted, but it appears it was more scavenger than killer, although it probably was proficient at both.

Figure Four - A saber-toothed cat faces off with a short-faced bear over the eating rights
of a horse carcass. The landscape looks like my typical stomping grounds. 
The source of this painting is unknown.   

Arctodus simus was probably quite intimidating to most species, and with its long gait and locomotion capability, the species probably covered a lot of ground. So, what happened to it? Why did it go extinct? At the same time that the short-faced bear and large Pleistocene herbivorous megafauna were struggling to survive, along came more efficient omnivores, the grizzly and brown bears. When the Pleistocene herbivorous megafauna went extinct, it must have heavily influenced the survival of Arctodus simus. 

The fossil record cannot tell us anything about the short-faced bear's temperament. Was it aggressive toward other animals? Humans? Was it moody and cantankerous like grizzly bears, or did it have a more tolerant temperament like black bears? One thing is for sure: I would not want to cross paths with a hungry Arctodus simus! When you read CROW and the CAVE, you will understand why.  

Read the entire SHADOWS on the TRAIL Hexalogy series for all my stories.    

    

      

Figure Five - CLICK to ORDER SHADOWS on the TRAIL, the Second Edition

1984    Anderson, Elaine

           Who's Who in the Pleistocene: a Mammalian Bestiary in Quaternary Extinctions - a              Prehistoric Revolution, edited by Paul S. Martin and Richard G. Klein. The                            University of Arizona Press. Tucson. 

1987    Johnson, Eileen.

            Lubbock Lake - Late Quaternary Studies on the Southern High Plains. Texas A & M             University Press. College Station. 

2003  Matheus, P., R.D. Guthrie, and M.L. Kunz. 

             Predator-prey links in Pleistocene East Beringea. Evidence from stable isotopes.                    Third International Mammoth Conference, 2003: Program and Abstracts: 80.                         Occasional Papers in Earth Sciences No. 5. Paleontology Program,                                         Government of the Yukon.              

        

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. 

       

Midland v. Folsom and the Shadows on the Trail

Figure One - 2.0-inch long projectile point from Wyoming. Some might call this a Folsom 

point made on a flake (pseudo flute) while others might call it a Midland point. 

John Bradford Branney Collection.    

Fourth Edition 

I love researching archaeological reports about Paleoindians for my historical fiction books. I take what I learn about Paleoindian lifestyles and spin a yarn that portrays how Paleoindians might have lived. I love breathing life into Paleoindians and the challenges they faced 12,600 years ago. From what we know in the archaeological record, 'word of mouth' and 'hands-on' instruction were most likely the methods used for Paleoindians to pass on traditions to the younger generation. Archaeologists have not found any written documentation dating back to the time of Paleoindians in North America. 

The passage below in red is from the third book in my five-book, historical fiction series on Paleoindians. This particular book is titled WINDS of EDEN from the SHADOWS on the TRAIL Pentalogy. The series takes place around 12,500 years ago on the high plains of Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota. In this passage, an elderly man is showing his grandchild how to make a fluted projectile point that we now call a Folsom point. Here is a tiny taste of WINDS of EDEN;  

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The old man woke up from his nap when the sun was starting its descent in the sky. He reached over and picked up his satchel. He pulled out a large red and gray striped rock and sat staring at it. He rubbed the rock between his thumb and forefinger while thinking about everything that had happened to him since he had carried the rock from the canyon. Much had happened in his life since then, some of it good and some of it bad. When the old man finished reminiscing, he gently placed the red and gray striped rock back into the satchel. Then, with satchel in hand, the old man stood up and left his tipi. When he was outside the tipi, he had to shield his aged eyes from the bright sun. He slowly edged his way to a flat boulder next to his campfire where he sat down. Then, he pulled five unfinished spear points from the satchel. He laid the unfinished spear points down on the boulder next to him and then dug through the satchel, pulling out a cylinder–shaped punch made from an antler, a large antler hammer, small squares of bison hide, and a sharp deer antler tine. He placed these items next to the five unfinished spear points. He leaned over and picked up a flat rock at the base of the boulder. He set the flat rock down next to his other supplies. 

When the old man looked up, a young boy was running like the wind towards him.

“Haw! – Hello!” the old man said to the young boy when he arrived at the campfire.

“Haw!” the boy replied, somewhat out of breath. “I want to watch you.”

“Waste! – Good!” the old man declared with a grin.

The young boy sat down as close to the old man as possible without actually sitting on the old man’s lap. The old man picked up the first spear point and handed it to the young boy.

“He táku hwo? – What is it?” the old man asked.

The boy studied the piece of chert, his face frozen in a frown as he concentrated on the old man’s question. The young boy flipped the rock over in his hands, studying every surface. His eyes narrowed as he scrutinized the base of the spear point. Between the two sharp ears at the corners of the base of the spear point, the young boy spotted a tiny knob of chert, jutting out at the middle of the base.

“Tóka he? – What is wrong?” the old man asked, a whimsical smile on his face.

The boy flicked the tiny knob with his thumbnail and replied, “You have dulled this part.”

The young boy then ran his thumb across the small knobbed platform and said, “It is smooth.”

The fluted projectile point that the old man and the boy made was so distinctive that there is no mistaking a fluted Folsom point when found today.  

Headline: Pleistocene Woman Discovered at Midland, Texas 

In 1953, an avocational archaeologist 

by the name of Keith Glasscock 

discovered fossilized human remains

Figure two. A Kansas-found Folsom point and
a Colorado-found Midland point, both
made from Alibates agatized dolomite.
John Bradford Branney Collection.

remains in a sand blowout six miles southwest of Midland, Texas. In the same blowout, Mr. Glasscock found several fluted Folsom projectile points and a similarly made unfluted Folsom-like projectile point. Mr. Glasscock understood the archaeological significance of the fossilized human remains associated with the artifacts. He reported his findings to archaeologist Fred Wendorf. Wendorf, Glasscock, and other archaeologists investigated the site In all, Glasscock and the archaeologists found seven fluted Folsom projectile points and twenty-one unfluted Folsom-like points during their investigation. 

Wendorf and his colleagues named the site Scharbauer after the landowner and initially coined the term "unfluted Folsom point" to describe the Folsom-like projectile points found associated with the fluted Folsom points. In their study of the "unfluted Folsom points", the archaeologists came up with the similarities and differences between the fluted and unfluted points found at the site. They evaluated the raw material to see if the fluted and the "unfluted Folsom points" came from different geographical locations. The archaeologists concluded that the makers of the two projectile point styles used the same material. Their studies led the archaeologists to propose that several of the "unfluted Folsom points" were purposely made without flutes and that they were just not fluted Folsom point rejects. Later on and based on the high volume of unfluted Folsom points found at the Scharbauer site, Wendorf proposed a new projectile point type for the "unfluted Folsom points", calling them Midland after a nearby town. The name Midland stuck.      



Figure three. Colorado Folsom and
Midland projectile points.
John Bradford Branney Collection.

The investigation of the blowout at the Scharbauer site led the archaeologists to conclude that the human remains belonged to a woman who died in the late Pleistocene and that the associated Folsom / Midland artifacts came after her death. The archaeologists postulated that the woman could be a Folsom / Midland Paleoindian, but more likely she belonged to an earlier Paleoindian culture. Based on the geological analysis, the archaeologists suggested that there was a possibility that the Folsom and Midland projectile points came from the same Paleoindian culture, but their evidence was inconclusive. 

So where do Midland points belong?

Perhaps, Midland points were reworked Folsom points or were made from Folsom channel flakes. Maybe, Midland preform points were just too thin to flute. A few people argue that Midland was an archaeological complex separate from Folsom. These people call attention to a Midland-only site named Winkler-1, discovered in southeastern New Mexico by an amateur archaeologist who throughout the years surface collected Midland points from an active sand blowout. Food for thought, huh? 

If Midland was a separate archaeological complex, perhaps there was a transition period between fluted Folsom and unfluted Midland projectile points? 

What are your thoughts? 

Bradley, Bruce 
2010    Paleoindian Flaked Stone Technology on the Plains and in the Rockies. In Prehistoric Hunters-Gatherers of the High Plains and Rockies by Marcel Kornfeld, George C. Frison, and Mary Lou Larson, pp. 474-475. Left Coast Press. Walnut Creek, California.  

Wendorf, Fred, Alex D. Krieger, and Claude C. Albritton

1955    The Midland Discovery. Greenwood Press. Westport, Connecticut

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