A Corner-Tang Artifact from Oregon

1944 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-451
Author(s):  
Robert L. Stephenson
Keyword(s):  
Columbia River ◽  
Projectile Points ◽  
Stone Artifacts ◽  
Chipped Stone ◽  
Columbia County

During the cataloging of a collection of some 650 tiny projectile points from the banks of the Columbia River in Columbia County, Oregon, an unusual specimen was brought to light. All but five of the points in the collection are under 3/4 inch in length and are proportionately narrow and thin. The five larger specimens were, then, immediately outstanding. Of these, one is of the corner-tang variety. It is 2.13 inches long, 1 inch wide, and 0.36 inch thick. It is made from a tan, slightly opalitic chalcedony,8 a material which is quite common in the collections of chipped stone artifacts from the lower Columbia River area.The specimen is of the type that Patterson has called “diagonal corner-tang” and possesses a small crescent notch on the side opposite the tang. The tang is quite narrow and pointed. The chipping is somewhat rough and uneven, and on one side there appears to be something of a channel groove running approximately two-thirds the length of the specimen. This is, in all probability, quite accidental.

4 Chipped Stone Tools

1969 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 31-45
Author(s):  
Roberta S. Greenwood
Keyword(s):  
Stone Tools ◽  
Projectile Points ◽  
Stone Artifacts ◽  
Chipped Stone ◽  
Elementary Technology

The chipped stone artifacts comprise a full tool kit. Ranging in size from the largest of the choppers to the tiniest of the flake scrapers, they conform to a characterization of generalized implements shaped with a minimum of modification. The broad and shallow flaking, unifacial percussion technique, use of flawed lithic material, re-working of artifacts from one kind to another, and the great number of tools retaining cortex and bulb of percussion are typical of the basic simplicity of all classes. Something of a paradox exists between the wide variety of shapes and sizes of the tools, which do tend to fall into groups, and the elementary technology of their manufacture. The major classifications include projectile points and blades, flake knives, drills, gravers, choppers, hammerstones, scrapers, picks, crescents, cores, and flakes.

6 Artifacts

1959 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 162-178
Author(s):  
Clarence H. Webb
Keyword(s):  
Projectile Points ◽  
Stone Artifacts ◽  
Chipped Stone ◽  
Thin Arrow ◽  
Basal Width

Stone artifacts are much less frequent at the Belcher site than either shell objects or pottery. Very few stone artifacts were placed with the burials. Only 155 chipped stone artifacts were recovered; 103 are projectile points, 52 of which were found on house floors, 27 with burials, and 24 on the surface (Table 4). All of the projectiles are small, thin arrow types, except one from the fill of Burial 9 which is large enough to be considered a dart point (Fig. 125 l).Bassett points (Fig. 125 a-d). This form appears to be the resident projectile type at the Belcher site at least for the last two occupation periods, the Belcher focus. There are 56 points of this type and 20 others which have broken stems but are probably Bassett forms. All recognizable Belcher focus burial offerings of projectile points are beautifully finished points of this type. They are thin, keen projectiles, 2 to 4 cm. in length and 1.2 to 1.5 cm. in basal width, made from flakes of tan chert or argillite. The sides are straight, slightly convex or recurved to flare outward at the barbs, which are long and keen; the tips are sharp, the edges finely flaked, and the bases deeply indented to produce narrow, triangular contracting stems.

Chipped Stone Artifacts

2008 ◽  
pp. 169-178
Author(s):  
Malgorzata Kaczanowska ◽  
Janusz K. Kozłowski
Keyword(s):  
Stone Artifacts ◽  
Chipped Stone

Stone Artifacts

1949 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 152-178
Author(s):  
Alex D. Krieger
Keyword(s):  
Projectile Point ◽  
Projectile Points ◽  
Stone Artifacts ◽  
Stratigraphic Position ◽  
Point Types ◽  
Three Phases

With some exceptions, notably the projectile points, the various artifacts of stone, flint, and pigment are simple in nature and will be but briefly described. Figures 53-61 provide illustrations of nearly every descriptive grouping, specimens having been selected to show ranges of variation; the more variation —as in projectile point types—the more specimens are shown.Tables 17-18 show the stratigraphic position of all stone artifacts and pigments found. Ordinary household artifacts such as milling stones, hammerstones, hones, knives, scrapers, and gravers were but sparsely represented in the mound, as might be expected. But since the mound provides our only sure stratigraphic control, the general dearth of utilitarian artifacts in it renders their occurrence in the three phases of occupation uncertain. That is, absence from one or more of the mound phases could be due to chance where only ten or a dozen (or fewer) specimens of a particular group came from the mound.

Norton Hunters and Fisherfolk

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Dumond
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Coastal Areas ◽  
Coastal Resources ◽  
Bering Strait ◽  
The South ◽  
Alaska Peninsula ◽  
Stone Artifacts ◽  
Chipped Stone ◽  
The North ◽  
Northern Alaska

By the late centuries B.C., occupations assigned to Norton people are reported from a southern point on the Alaska Peninsula, then north and eastward along coastal areas to a point east of the present border with Canada. The relatively uniform material culture suggests origin from the north and west (pottery from Asia, chipped-stone artifacts from predecessors in northern Alaska), as well as from the south and east (lip ornaments or labrets, and pecked-stone lamps burning sea-mammal oil). In early centuries A.D., Norton people north and east of Bering Strait yielded to Asian-influenced peoples more strongly focused on coastal resources, while those south of the Strait collected in sites along salmon-rich streams where they developed with increasing sedentarism until about A.D. 1000, when final Thule-related expansion along coasts from the north displaced or incorporated Norton remnants.

The Earliest Cultures in the Western United States

1962 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex D. Krieger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Food Supply ◽  
Western United States ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Projectile Point ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Projectile Points ◽  
Chipped Stone ◽  
Point Types ◽  
Geological Position

AbstractNearly all writers on the antiquity of man in America assume that the oldest archaeological sites contain chipped-stone projectile points and therefore cannot exceed an age of some 12,000 to 15,000 years, the estimates usually given to such projectile-point types as Sandia and Clovis. Suggestions of older sites, with radiocarbon dates ranging from some 21,000 years to as much as “greater than 37,000 years,” with simpler artifacts and an absence of stone projectile points, are generally viewed with suspicion if not abhorrence.A recent paper by E. H. Sellards considers seven localities in the western United States and Baja California which, because of geological position and radiocarbon dates, are probably too old to contain stone projectile points. The writer agrees with Sellards that these localities are archaeological (except for that at Texas Street in San Diego, California), but disagrees that those in coastal locations are different from those in inland locations for “ecological” reasons such as food supply and availability of stone. The differences may be explained in that those sites on the shores of extinct lakes were never covered by overburden, whereas those which were covered by alluvium or sand are known to us now only by varying amounts of exposure by erosion or excavation (or both).

Bison Procurement in the Far West: A 2,100-Year-Old Kill Site on the Columbia Plateau

1995 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 751-763 ◽  
Author(s):  
James C. Chatters ◽  
Sarah K. Campbell ◽  
Grant D. Smith ◽  
Phillip E. Minthorn
Keyword(s):  
Channel Wall ◽  
Columbia River ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Faunal Remains ◽  
Columbia Plateau ◽  
Stone Artifacts ◽  
Local Topography ◽  
Evidence Analysis ◽  
Kill Site ◽  
Game Hunting

Bison bones are found in Columbia Plateau archaeological sites from throughout the Holocene, yet no information on people's tactics for procuring them has yet been reported. The discovery of the Tsulim Site, a 2,100-year-old bison kill near the Columbia River in central Washington, has provided the opportunity to investigate those tactics. Despite the deteriorated state of the evidence, analysis of stone artifacts, faunal remains, and site geology revealed that at least eight animals were killed in the apex of a parabolic dune during the early to mid-winter by hunters using both atlatl and bow. Local topography and meteorology make it most likely that the herd was encountered in a low paleochannel, driven northward between the limbs of the dune, up the steep channel wall, and into the kill area, a sort of inverted buffalo jump. Results not only illuminate the large-game hunting practices of the Plateau peoples, but also point out how much can be learned from disturbed, low-density scatters of debris that are often dismissed as insignificant.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document