The find that got me hooked!

[OuterCapeFlakeFlipper]

Hi all, I thought I would share this beauty that really started my passion for stone tools. I found this about ten years ago in North Kingstown, RI on the Narraganset Bay shoreline. I'm no typology expert but I believe this is a Bare Island? Hope you all enjoy looking at this as much as I do! Happy Hunting!

[gregszybala]

Beauty isn't it? You come across something like that, pick it up and just marvel at all the who, what, how and whys.

[BabaORiley]

That is a nice one man...that area is a long way from my realm here In Illinois so I am not gonna try but we have some folks from that area that can probably nail it down...

[JoshinMO]

Wow, that is a nice one.

[CMD]

How big is it? Not sure of type. Could be Bare Island, but they are almost indistinguishable from Merrimack points, and I'm not sure how to tell them apart to be honest. And both have mostly square stems, but the New England guide I rely on does show a couple of Bare Islands with expanding stems. What's really curious to me besides how big it is is the material. I don't think I've ever seen it in 60 years hunting RI, and I have never seen any of our local/regional materials weather like that with those cracks or striations. That is a very unusual lithic whatever it is.....

BTW, since we usually type based on the basal configuration, it's best to photograph looking straight down at the piece, rather then view the base at a slight oblique angle. Not that it would really make a difference here. Someone like myself could only give you a best guess most of the time anyway, but hard to know if it's an expanding stem, or a type of Side Notch like a Normanskill for example. You made a good guess, likely as good as any I could come up with......

[Havenhunter]

That's a beauty! My first find was a small stemmed point, not nearly as impressive as yours, but it sank it's hooks into me & dragged me along on a continual journey of discovery.

[Hoss]

Need better pictures with something for scale in the photo.

[pkfrey]

The material on this piece is actually argillite. But not the normal, dull, soft looking porous type stone that is normally seen. This argillite came from a bedrock strata that had under gone some odd geologic event. The area where ever this rock came from would show some significant folding in the strata, where heat and pressure caused the argillite to form in this odd layered look. It's kind of hard to explain. I've seen this in argillite when it starts approaching some rhyolite quarries. Better photos from different angles would help, and a close up would show the argillite better where it was flaked.

[CMD]

It must be the argillite from Pa/NJ, which Roger told me is actually argillaceous shale. Our argillite always patinates a green or blue and is actially argillaceous slate, and never has that appearance. We do see argillite from south of us, quite a bit in fact, but never seen it like that before....

[Looks2Much]

It's hard to tell from the angle of the pic, but it almost looks like it could be a Susquehanna Broad... nice find and a very cool material also.

[pkfrey]

I would type that point as a Lackawaxen, or Tocks Island, both which are in the series of many Archaic types, and argillite is one of the main lithics used for these. The rounded, expanding base would be a bit out of style for the Bare Islands, and the Piedmont stemmed Archaic points.

[TSUMS]

Arent tocks island points limited to a certain area in the pa nj border..

[CMD]

Man, typology is nothing if not confusing. Neither Curtiss Hoffman's MAS revision of Fowler's original New England typology, nor the first or revised edition of the late Jeff Boudreau's typology include Lackawaxen or Tocks Island as a type found in southern New England.


Boudreau's revised typology, which is 176 pages, and will likely serve as our most up to date typology guide for a generation or two, unfortunately is still unpublished. I am very fortunate in having an editor's proof, and hence am able to use it as my main guide already.

Boudreau included several essays in his revised guide, including one titled "Related Narrow Archaic Forms". In it, he states, "Numerous related Narrow blade forms are a characteristic of the late Middle Archaic and Late Archaic in the Northeast. The list is long: Bare Island, Guilford, Macpherson, Merrimack, Lackawaxen, Lamoka, Newmanstown, Normanskill, Piedmont, Piney Island, Poplar Island, Schuylkill, Squibnocket Stemmed, and Wading River".
For the remainder of the essay, he discusses New England types with morphological overlap among themselves (Poplar Island, Bare Island, Merrimack, and Wading River), and a comparison of New England types with apparent morphological overlap with types from outside New England.

Elsewhere in the revised edition, Boudreau states "Kinsey's description of the Bare Island type(in Ritchie 1961 rev. 1971), from the lower Susquehanna Valley, Pa., reported in 1959, is virtually identical to the description of the Merrimack type(Dincauze 1976)."

So that's why Merrimack and Bare Island will always likely confuse me. But neither Lackawaxen or Tocks Island are names used for points here, in Southeastern New England at least. But, that does not mean they might not show up here. Boudreau includes info, for instance, on rare Early Archaic types that do show up here, even though he does not include separate full pages for them, perhaps due to their rarity when found here.

With the point above, if the upper edges of the shoulders had damage, and at least one looks like it did, I also wondered if it might in fact be a narrow example of Susquehanna. There are examples in Boudreau's sample that are very similar, but I don't know if the upper edges of the notches in the point seen here are damaged enough such that the shoulders were wider originally. That's one reason why I would have preferred a photo looking straight down at the base, and not an oblique angle. Also questionable is whether the argillaceous shale from south of here would be used for Susquehanna. I know that Paul mentioned once that slate was never used for Susquehanna, but here, our argillite, which is argillaceous slate, was indeed used frequently for Susquehanna points.

I'm long winded, but if Lackawaxens or Tocks Island are indeed found here, none of our New England typologies include that type. There is a reason I've mentioned elsewhere that the typology I created for the Northeast in our info center is southern New England-centric, and therefore of limited value. It's because we use some type names not seen elsewhere in the Northeast, and there are names used elsewhere in the Northeast that are not used here.

[pkfrey]

I checked the site, projectilepoints.net, and if that is accurate, it shows the home area for the Lackawaxen all the way up through the New England states. I've had a few from the Harry Schoff collection that were found in Mass., and N.Y. Every artifact type known has a " home " area and is centralized to that area, but they also have a perimeter out side the home area where they can be found. If you look at the Tocks Island points illustrated outline on that site, it's identical to the point in question, although the Tocks Islands are restricted to the central Delaware River area, in both Pa., and N.J. When I referred to slate as not being used, I meant the slate that was used for a lot of Archaic types, and for ground slate artifacts from the upper northeast. I don't know where argillite turns into argilliceous slate. Argillite. in it's state of argillite, was not common, but was used for Susquehanna Broad points, as well as Perkiomen points, but it's a minority material.

[CMD]

Roger Lawrence explained it to us once, but not sure I'd be able to find that old thread. What happened was every time I posted an argillite point from RI, either here, or one of the other forums, folks would object and tell me, in so many words, "that's not argillite". In fact, our varieties of argillite, Nantasket Argillite from Ma., and Barrington Argillite from RI, looks and patinates remarkably like slate from the Carolina slate belt. Some of the pieces Butch Wilson used to post made of Carolina slate looked indistinguishable from southern New England argillite. It would drive me nuts, which is not all that difficult, lol, when folks in the South would tell me my RI point was not made of argillite. Finally, Roger explained the difference. Neither NJ argillite nor RI argillite are, from a geologist's perspective, actually argillite, according to Roger. Roger claimed the archaeologists who call the stuff argillite are being a little loose with their geological facts. He told us NJ/Pa argillite was in fact argillaceous shale, and Ma/RI argillite was actually argillaceous slate. Neither of which, according to Roger were "pure" argillite, if I might put it that way.

Yes, I understand home "areas" and I have seen distribution maps for Lackawaxen that include western portions of southern New England. That's why I indicated that they are types that might show up here. For whatever reason, none of the guides created by our typologists here, at least archaeologists Curtiss Hoffman, and the late Jeff Boudreau, both associated with the Massachusetts Archaeology Society, chose to include the type in our typology guides. So, New England collectors are unlikely to recognize the type name. There has to be a reason Jeff left that type out of his guide, but unfortunately I can't ask him why at this point, but it must have been for a good reason, since there was nobody better where our regional types in New England were concerned. His revised guide will be my type bible for life, lol. So, it will cause confusion since the type name just isn't used here. But, yes, I see points in Overstreet, etc that are also not used here, but are shown as occurring here on distribution maps. We also have quite a few types here that are extremely local. We're all familiar with Orient Fishtails in the Northeast. But probably not Orient Stemmed, apparently a local adoptation by the Small Stem Tradition of the Orient point, but found only in the Narragansett Basin.

[pkfrey]

Well Charlie, now that you have driven me nuts, I'll also add, you have to consider which authors opinion is closer to be more accurate. Anyone who authors and publishes a book on typology or lithics, will do so based on his/her research. These people really don't argue to make a point, but their opinions may vary, to the point you really don't know which one is closest to being the most accurate. I bet if the Indians would have known they were causing so much confusion among the educated collectors, they might have flaked some weird looking points, on purpose, just to drive us more nuts than we already are!! But with that said, I do see a considerable difference in form, outline, and shape of the same point between Pa. and N.Y., and the northeast. Especially in the Transitional Period. The Perkiomen Broad point is a good example. Most of the Pa. Perks are asymetrical at the shoulders, while N.Y. Perks have a more symmetrical balanced shoulder area, with a smaller, button type base. A lot of this also comes down to the fact that, " There are exceptions to every rule."