"One of These Things Is (Not?) Like the Other:" A Reassessment of Middle and Late Archaic Projectile Point Types in the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains

Summary

Many Archaic projectile points from the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains are poorly defined stylistically and chronologically, particularly in contrast to those from the earlier Paleoindian Period. As a result, we suspect that projectile points are often classified as different types based solely on geographic location and not necessarily on variation in the point style or technological characteristics. Stemmed points in the Middle Archaic are called Duncan or Hanna in the north and Pinto in the south, and Middle-Late Archaic corner-notched points are Pelican Lake in the north and Elko in the south. We reassess these projectile point typologies from the Middle and Late Archaic to determine if the types differ significantly from one another when systematically compared morphologically and technological. If they do not, it is difficult to support continued use of different terminology for statistically identical specimens.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage