Title

Lithic Tools

Creation Date

600 BCE – 600 CE

Description

Artifacts found during the 2017-2018 Pope County Archaeological Survey.

Twenty-seven items were found at this location, including lithics (n=22), faunal remains (n=4), and historic ceramics (n=1). These were scattered through the field, with no clear concentrations.

Lithics included tools (n=4), flakes (n=15), and shatter (n=3). Raw materials include Swan River Chert (n=9), Prairie du Chien Chert (n=4), Red River Chert (n=1), Tongue River Silica (n=1), chert (n=2), quartz (n=2), quartzite (n=2) and basaltic rock (n=1). The tools included a projectile point, an end scraper, and two flake tools. The point is a small triangular form, made from Prairie du Chien Chert. The tip is missing. This is a flake point, made by limited retouch of a flake and with the underlying flake structure still apparent. Even though most of both faces are retouched, the underlying twist of the flake is clear. This makes the point somewhat asymmetrical. The length (minus tip) is 18 mm, width 17 mm, and thickness 4 mm. The quartz scraper is a thick flake or piece of shatter with steep retouch along one edge. This scraper element has small denticular projections between flake scars, possibly because of limitations of the raw material. A heat-treated Swan River Chert flake has irregular retouch along one edge. A medial fragment of another heat-treated Swan River Chert flake has parallel sides and fine scale, very regular retouch along the extant portion of both margins.

The faunal material includes a heavily-weathered fragment of large mammal long bone, and two large-mammal long bone fragment that are sawn. There is also part of a skull from a medium sized mammal. This looks like it might be recent and part of a natural death assemblage.

The historic ceramic sherd is whiteware.