On The Waterfront...Or Not: Investigating the Relationship Between Late Archaic Landuse Patterns and Hafted Biface Curation in the Midsouth

Summary

During the Late Archaic period in the Midsouth United States people appear to have practiced seasonal

landuse patterns. Warm weather aggregation sites were located along major rivers in the region, while

upland site locations reflect occupations of dispersed populations during colder periods. To understand

how people organized biface technology within such a seasonal mobility pattern, we analyzed the

relative curation rate of hafted bifaces from multiple sites. Magnolia Valley (40RD314) and Fernvale

(40WM51) are both Late Archaic sites in the Harpeth River Watershed in middle Tennessee. Magnolia

Valley is located in an upland valley, while Fernvale is located on the South Harpeth River. We predict

that the level of biface curation was not constant throughout the year, and thus, biface curation

values will vary between site types. With this lithic curation analysis, relationships between locale and

technological organization will be identified.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage