Early Archaic Point?

[RichPA]

This point is 1 ¾” long with a ground concave base and found in SWPA. The barbs appear to have been delicate and pointed. One side retains much of the original flake. Is this base considered bifurcate? What’s your opinion on time frame and why?

I’m starting to learn a lot thanks to the help from members on this forum. I’ve been fortunate enough to find flakes or artifacts on every hunt, but the real challenge is ID’ing types and time frames. This point was found Monday on a short scouting hunt. The site seems promising because flakes of three different materials were found, and the farmer said the site hasn’t been hunted in over 20 years. I’m hoping it is an early archaic site.

 

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[Th3rty7]

Yeah man you're into some early archaic. That's a Charleston Pine Tree, the long flakes toward the center of the blade are a ringer for early archaic. The ground base is another indicator of the archaic period.I would call that more of a straight base, but they can be concave, convex, bifurcated, and straight. The type originated in WV, and is known as simply Pine Tree in the southeast.

Good luck on that spot.

 

[RichPA]

Thirty7,

I was leaning towards Charleston Pine Tree but wanted some added certainty. The flaking from the center and ground base are early archaic indicators that I'm learning. Thanks for the feedback and helping me thru the learning process.

This site is a flat area on a slope half way up a ridge. The site overlooks a stream valley with deep cut headwater springs on each side. The geography of this site meets the criteria of early sites in the area.

 

[Keokukjeff]

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[Tnmountains]

Nice still on them it looks like Rich. Going to be a good yea.
Good luck and nice point.
HH
TnMountains

 

[pickaway]

Nice find ,congrats...

 

[uniface]

For what it's worth (assuming anything), there are Early Archaic point types that are consistent down through time and across space (Plevna Dovetails would be an example). But there are a lot of styles that exist both as more-or-less pure types and as hybrids with other styles. Texas has the same problem from the same era with a whole slew of names for lanceolate points that hybridise and overlap.

As I understand it, the Pine Tree Site in Alabama was excavated early on, making the point style and name familiar. Pine Trees, proper, are later in the EA, and tend to be thin and delicate. When similar-looking points turned up in a West Virginia excavation, they ended up tagged as Charleston Pine Trees. Problem is, for one, that these date from much earlier in time (apparently, from the first colonists after the Paleo die-off). They're thicker (as yours is), and their plano-convex cross section is accordingly more pronounced (nearly flat bottoms with highly arched, humpy top sides). Their bases and notches are more heavily ground, their notches are deeper, and they very commonly have one or both shoulders, toes, or some combination of these removed by burin flaking (as both shoulders of yours were. One I posted a while ago has the left side protrusions burined-off, leaving the right side intact). Finally, Charleston's seem to be restricted to the Northeast and more uniform in size than Pinetrees, but the size generalisation may be from them being much scarcer (with a larger sample size there might be more size variation). Another possible point of difference is that while Pine Trees were made of both top quality lithics and pretty nondescript but serviceable cherts across their range (Alabama through at least Pennsylvania), the few Charleston's I've seen are invariably of "the good stuff" -- Williamsport Black, Onondaga, Zaleski &c.

Similar-looking points (Palmers) from the mid-Atlantic coast made of crystal- or good vein- (milky) quartz, unfortunately seem to lack dates (stratification problems), making their correlation with Charleston or Pine Tree points moot.