Sourcing Quartzite Projectile Points from 39FA65, The Ray Long Site, Fall River County, South Dakota

Summary

The purpose of this research was to determine if the tool stone used for two quartzite Angostura projectile points from the Ray Long site (39FA65), Fall River County, South Dakota, could be linked to a specific quarry or geologic formation. The Ray Long site is the type-site for the Paleoindian period Angostura complex which has a regional distribution of Utah, Colorado, southeastern Idaho, Wyoming, southwestern South Dakota, and western Nebraska. The seven quarries selected for the study are located in the Black Hills Uplift in South Dakota and the Hartville Uplift in Wyoming. The study applied macroscopic and microscopic examination to lithologically describe and XRF testing to define initial XRF signatures for the quarries and the two projectile points. Results suggest that the tool stone material used to produce the projectile points likely originated in the Spanish Diggings quarry complex in the Cloverly Formation of the Hartville Uplift.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Those Dam Sites: Recent Archaeological Research in the Dakotas

Keywords

Spatial Coverage