Help with Determining Paleo or Archaic Lance?

[c_venture]

Can I get some opinions on Paleo or Archaic? I am leaning towards Archaic?

FOUND MARION COUNTY, OHIO ~
MEASURES 1-1/8" w. X 3-3/8"

Thanks Guys..

[Artifascination]

Looks like an archaic knife to me. Nice find!

[pkfrey]

An Early Archaic stemmed knife, and I believe it's Delaware/ Huronian chert. About the same thing. It may have been wider at the shoulders at one time having more of a stemmed base , but resharpenings have reduced this to a diminished basal look.

[Havenhunter]

Nice archaic knife. Pretty lithic.

[sailorjoe]

It is a knife. . It could be a stemmed point if when first made had a much wider blade with pronounced shoulders and the edges were worn down by repeated sharpenings as Paul suggests. But from what I see it could be a lanceolate shaped point to start with cause that is what it is now. As for age I am thinking it is anywhere from mid Archaic to early Woodland. I'm not familiar with Ohio artifacts so I did some looking at projectilepoints.net to see if anything I saw there might resemble what you have. I saw one type that I'm totally unfamiliar with that looks a lot like it may fit yours. It's called a Karnak. According to the distributional map it is found in southwestern Ohio over into Illinois which is a bit SW of Marion County but not so far as to be unlikely to be found in your area. It is grouped in what is called the Late Archaic stemmed cluster. There is a stemmed and unstemmed form and the stemmed forum has a somewhat stemless appearance so that it is hard to distinguish one form from the other. So if that is what Paul is thinking then I can certainly agree with him as to the form. I'm not making a call as to type. Archaic lanceolate shaped knifes can often be very hard to ID to type even when you have it in hand. And there are so many points we find that we can not assign to a particular type.Check on that website and see what you think. I looked in the Overstreet book and they don't even show the Karnak type from either the East Central or North Central regions. Looks like you got yourself a puzzler which is not at all uncommon.

[c_venture]

Hi guys, I actually have found several Karnak type points in the same area, but they were much smaller than this. Thank you for the info. I am still trying to figure out a good indicator for telling if a point is Archaic or Paleo. Would the flaking be finer and more uniform?

[sailorjoe]

To answer your question: not necessarily or sometimes yes, sometimes no. I believe if you would do a google search on the subject you would be able to learn more and from much more qualified people than I am. Read up on such subjects as core and blade technique for making paleo period points, fluting technique, etc. The basic manufacturing process is one of the things that are some of the distinguishing factors. But fineness or uniformity in flaking is not confined to points from any one period. In fact some of the finest points IMO were made thousands of years after the Paleo people.

[Sage hen jack]

My layman’s observation. It has a slight shouldered ground? stem that leads me to think possibly along lines of a very late transitional Paleo/ early Archaic. Not big difference in my book when you find something that awesome considered to be 8500+ years old. It’s a keeper. Real sweet artifact.