Evaluating "Folsom" Points in the Blackwater Draw Museum’s Calvin Smith Collection

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Folsom projectile points are housed and displayed by museums around the country, but many are donated by collectors without the accompaniment of information documenting their original archaeological context. As a result, questions surrounding their authenticity hamper their ability to contribute to collections-based archaeological research of the Folsom time period. This poster presents the results of a technological and morphological analysis of Folsom points recovered from a variety of secure archaeological contexts. Observations of fundamental characteristics present in this dataset were used to evaluate the authenticity of a collection of projectile points donated to Eastern New Mexico University’s Blackwater Draw Museum and Curation facility that were labeled as "Folsom points". The goal of this research is to provide the museum with an empirical investigation that may validate reference to the artifacts as "Folsom" and their inclusion into Folsom-era research, and generate a method for authentication that may be useful for other institutions across the country.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25323