FLUTED POINT
SUGARLOAF SITE
SOUTH DEERFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
COPYRIGHT
JANUARY 31, 2014 PETER A. BOSTROM
CAST ILLUSTRATED
CAST
#P-115
FLUTED POINT
SUGARLOAF SITE
SOUTH DEERFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
by Richard Michael Gramly, PhD
This remarkable fluted point,
radiocarbon-dated to 12,350 +/- 50 calendar years before present, was
excavated in September, 2013 at the Sugarloaf habitation site, Franklin
County, Massachusetts. Covering four acres, the Sugarloaf Paleo-American
site is perhaps the largest encampment of its era in northern North
America.
It is hypothesized that Sugarloaf occupants intercepted caribou
herds moving south for the winter from calving grounds in southern
Vermont and New Hampshire. This large fluted point may have been
intended for tipping a lance used to spear caribou.
This point is restored from two fragments (SLF-76 and SLF-79) and
was broken during final manufacture. Its basal edges are unground
proving that it had not yet been hafted. The "reversed" flake emanating
from the break-line is an unique feature. The raw material is
Normanskill chert from sources in the Hudson River Valley, 100-150 km to
the west.
Multiple channel-flaking - the scars being adjacent to one another
- was commonly performed by descendant Clovis knappers in New England
and thousands of kilometers to the west in northern and central Alaska.
For both of these widely-separated populations caribou may have been
their economic mainstay. This point measures 12.7 cm (5 inches) long.
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