ARTIFACTS OF KANSAS
j. Links to(PAK, AASCK, KSHS, KU, etc.)
Archaeology is the study of past societies using material remains. The material remains are items left behind by human beings – their garbage, things they lost and objects that were too big for them to move. People also leave behind different kinds of traces of their presence, traces that archaeologists call features. These include storage pits, fireplaces, mounds, house pits, and the like.
There are many kinds of archaeology. Biblical archaeology studies remains from the Holy Land during the periods of the Old and New Testaments. Classical archaeology studies the remains of the civilizations of Egypt, Greece and Rome. Historical archaeologists study societies that left written records, while prehistoric archaeologists study the remains of societies that did not have writing that we can read. In Kansas, the first written records date to AD 1541, so most of the material on this web page is prehistoric archaeology.
Don't be afraid to report it. Neither the state nor the universities nor any museum have the right to confiscate your collection nor to force an excavation project on you. They do not have that power. Some unscrupulous collectors purposefully mislead landowners about this; they want to collect year after year without ever sharing information.
If you report a site, personnel at the Kansas State Historical Society will help you with the process, and they won't make the location public. You won't have a flock of strangers bothering you because you reported a site. Records of archaeological site locations are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act; because sites are scarce and non-renewable resources, they are protected.
You can start by emailing vwulfkuhle@kshs.org
Or you can write to
Public Archeologist
Kansas State Historical Society
6425 SW Sixth Avenue
Topeka, KS 66615-1099
There are several benefits to reporting sites on your property. Having your sites recorded may cause some destructive projects to be routed away from your land. All federally licensed and funded projects are required to have a survey to determine whether a variety of resources, including archaeological sites, are in the project area. Known sites have to be tested and significant sites have to be excavated, all at a cost to the project.
Important sites can be placed on the National Register of Historic Places. This is a voluntary procedure on the part of the landowner. It does not involve relinquishment of title nor does it require public access to the site, and you can continue to use the land as you have previously. Having a National Register site does mean that most projects will be routed away from the site if at all possible.
There are provisions under Kansas law for giving an easement for archaeological purposes to the state or other non-profit organization such as a university. There can be tax benefits for such a donation.
If you find human skeletal remains or burial goods, you are required by state
law (or federal law if you are on federal or tribal land) to report them. An
accidental find of this nature is not regarded as criminal activity; in fact
it happens fairly frequently. You will not be subject to a fine if you report
it, although there is a fine if you don’t. The proper procedure is to call the
local law enforcement agency, which is usually the police or sheriff’s department.
Usually they will then call in an archaeologist or forensic anthropologist to
determine what should be done. The remains may be reburied in place if that
is a safe and reasonable solution, but it is more likely that they will be excavated
for later reburial or repatriation.
Rules for Collectors: Dos and Don'ts
Rule # 1: Do ask permission
Always ask permission from the landowner/tenant
Always, Always, ALWAYS!
If you collect without asking permission, you are trespassing and you are stealing; simple as that.
Rule # 2: Don't Buy and Sell
If you collect, do it yourself, following the guidelines laid out here. If you do the collecting, every item you find will have a story and a memory associated with it. If you buy, all you get is a thing, and the value of your collection will go down, not up. A well-documented collection in which the origin of every item is known has enormous potential for providing information about the past; one with artifacts from different regions and sites mixed together, combined with the fakes that are all over the market, is pretty much worthless.
And fakes are a real problem. Lots of people flake their own artifacts and then sell them. They may do so honestly, but once an item is in someone else's hands all bets are off. People who want to make a point look old know how to do it, and even an expert cannot tell a well-made replica from a fake. Furthermore, the more desirable an artifact is to collectors, the greater the chances of it being a fake.
An inevitable effect of buying and selling artifacts is that it leads to the wholesale looting of sites. This is happening all over the world. In one region of New Mexico, sites have to be protected with chain link fences topped with barbed wire to keep the looters out. There is a national organization called the Archaeological Conservancy whose job it is to buy and protect important sites from looters. If you enjoy your hobby of collecting things from the past, don't add to the destruction of the past by buying and selling artifacts.
Rule # 3: Do Keep Records
The single factor that is most important in letting collected artifacts retain their information value is the presence of good records about their origin. If you keep your collection organized according to where the items came from, you eventually will be able to see patterns even without training. Different kinds of points will come from different sites; one site will have lots of scrapers, another site only a few; certain kinds of stone will show up on only some sites; different kinds of stone may turn up only at certain spots within a site. You will be looking at the products of different groups of people from different eras and at different activity areas within a site.
To record site information really well, you need to do three simple things:
make a record of where the sites are
keep a notebook
label the artifacts by which site they came from.
Do Record site and artifact locations
The record of where the sites are can be as simple as using a county road map or aerial photos (available from the county NCRS office). You can find and print off both maps and aerial photos from the Terraserver web site (www.terraserver.com). Using a combination of both a map and an aerial photo is great; the map shows where the site is, while you can use the aerial to see exactly where in a field you are with respect to the trees and other features.
You can also record site locations using the legal description, if you are familiar with this system. A precise legal description might be the NE 1/4 of the SE 1/4 of the NW 1/4 of Section 2, Township 12 South, Range 2 West. You can figure out legal descriptions most readily from topographic maps, which are available from the Kansas Geological Survey, 1930 Constant Ave., Lawrence, KS 66047-3726. Topographic maps of whole counties are available as are more detailed quadrangle maps and are handy for use in the field. Even putting a site location on your map without figuring out the legal description is far better than nothing. The image is as good as the written record.
An even better way of recording locations is to use a GPS unit. These are widely available and allow you to record locations quite precisely. It is easiest to use the UTM locations, which are meters east and north of a known location. A GPS unit allows you to record locations within a site and so gradually to build up a picture of the site over many return visits. You can use a piece of graph paper to do this, recording the edges of a field while walking the perimeter and then collecting and recording the locations of artifacts within the site. Some collectors enjoy trying to put together broken artifacts by finding all of the pieces over repeat visits. Knowing the exact spot where you found an item last year is a great place to start.
Do Keep a notebook
Keep a notebook with you in the field. You can use it to record anything you want, and you will find it both useful and enjoyable later. Consider the following entry from a notebook kept by the late Dick Stauffer:
16 Apr 1960 Heard peculiar snort-stomp sounds. I’m staring at antlers – a buck. He’s pawing, hoofing the ground – some 75 yards away. I go about my business; he in turn does the same.
If you record what you find on each site visit, you can sort things out at home even if a bag breaks and artifacts from different sites get mixed together.
Notebooks are also helpful when you meet someone who gives you a lead on another site.
If you are using a GPS unit, you can record the exact location of all of your finds and keep them with the site record ready for your next visit.
If you use a small loose-leaf notebook, you can reorganize notes when you get home so that all of the information on each site is in a single place. If you do this, be sure to date the pages to help you remember each visit. And, regardless of what kind of notebook you take with you, you will find a strong rubber band handy to keep the pages from turning in the Kansas wind.
Do Number the artifacts
As you find sites, you can assign each one a number so that they do not become mixed with items from other sites. This need not be fancy; you can just start with site 1 and go from there. Whatever system you devise, be sure to write the site numbers on your maps and aerial photos.
You will want to use permanent ink of some sort and to keep the site numbers fairly small. A good policy is to look at the specimen and decide which is its good side for photography and to put the number on another side. Don't use tags with glue on the back; many eventually drop off. For dark and coarse-grained items, you will want to use a bit of white paint or white-out to give you a smooth surface on which your site number will be visible.
Rule # 4: Do Report your sites
Some collectors are afraid that if they report their sites that professional archaeologists or other collectors will beat then to the good artifacts. Some also fear that their artifacts will be confiscated. These fears are groundless. Professional archaeologists excavate only a few sites in Kansas per year, and this keeps them very busy. And the site locations you report are secret; other collectors will not learn the locations from the state historical society.
Rule # 5: Don't Dig without guidance
Excavation destroys sites. Careful excavation requires thorough training, and even so, professional archaeologists leave parts of sites intact whenever they can because they know that the future will bring new techniques that will generate kinds of information they can only dream about today.
Good excavation is slow and painstaking work that requires good technique and excellent record keeping. If you want to try your hand at excavating, attend the annual KATP.
Generations of collectors come and go without having much contact with the scientific literature that has accumulated over the years. They do tend to have contact with other collectors, and as a result, some misconceptions or myths about artifacts have built up and are widespread. We try to clear up some of them here.
That's one big arrowhead!
Stone arrowheads tend to be quite small because of the materials available to Native Americans. A well-designed arrow requires a balance between the weight of the point and the strength of the shaft. Stone points are thicker than metal points and weigh considerably more, and the wood available for shafts was fairly weak. Even the metal points used in the historic period tend to be less than 2 ½ inches long and an inch wide. A good way to decide whether your point is an arrowhead or a spear head is to look at the width of the base, between the notches if it is notched or at the junction of the blade and haft if it is stemmed. This is an indication of the diameter of the shaft to which it was attached. Arrow shafts were less than ½ inch in diameter.
Many people believe that small arrowheads were designed for shooting birds. This idea derives in part from the misconception that most spear points were actually arrowheads. See That's one big arrowhead!. A good argument against small points being designed especially for birds comes from the village sites of the Great Bend Mosaic. These sites contain thousands of so-called bird points (M01) and hardly any larger points (most of which are clearly old points that the Great Bend people had picked up). Yet the sites are filled with literally tons of bison bone – animals that had to have been hunted with those tiny points.
Blunts or big bird points
In some time periods, the natives of Kansas reworked their spear points into what some collectors call blunts or bunts (M02). These are always made on spear points, not arrow points, and they are tools, not weapons. They always have a steep rounded end flaked from one edge and were used as scrapers. Note the similarity between the working edges on these two specimens (M03).
Ogham
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Ogham is a form of writing that was used in Ireland and to a lesser extent in Wales and Scotland for writing on stone monuments in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. The symbols consist of straight lines that either extended from or crossed the corner of a stone or across a horizontal line if written on parchment. Most known examples of the use of Ogham on stone are boundary markers, and all of them look like this. http://ogham.lyberty.com/
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A man named Barry Fell wrote a series of books that claimed that there are Ogham inscriptions in the Americas (and Africa), but no Ogham expert agrees with him, and his examples look nothing like Ogham monuments (image needed). Nor are there any professional linguists who agree with his supposed translations. A link to a reasonable (and amusing) summary of the various arguments can be found at
http://www.netowne.com/historical/european/ogham.htm The following is a link to a website that deals with Celtic inscriptions on stone. www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/cisp/
Some collectors have begun to call a certain form of knife a Sekan, which is short for Southeast Kansas stiletto. There are two problems here. First, these knives are not restricted to southeast Kansas but instead are found over a much wider area. In Kansas, they were made by the ancestors of the Wichita Indians who had their villages in central Kansas. They hunted widely in eastern Kansas, leaving these distinctive tools behind, but they also ranged at least as far north as Waconda Lake on the Solomon River and southwest into Texas. In Nebraska, knives of the same type are found in Pawnee villages and camps. One was even reported from Pecos Pueblo in New Mexico.
The second problem is that these tools were not used as stilettos, which are stabbing weapons. When they were brand new, they were ovate in shape without the distinctive beveling and concave blade shape that led to the name (M06). Because they were mounted on wooden handles, they were resharpened with the blade held away from the person doing the work. A right handed person would hold the handle in his or her left hand and the flaking tool in their right, removing flakes from the bottom side of the left edge of the blade. Repeated resharpening of this kind (called unifacial resharpening) eventually produces a beveled edge with the steep side down. To resharpen the opposite edge, the person simply turned the blade over and repeated the process (G02).
The process of resharpening also changed the outline of the blade. Originally it would have been convex, but repeated use and resharpening affects the middle of the blade more than the tip or the base, and eventually it became straight and then concave. When it got really narrow, the knife was likely to break, and it was time to throw it away or to turn the remnant into a pipe drill (CS27).
Only men made stone tools
Boy is this one silly. Prehistoric Native American societies were dependent on stone for both men's and women's tools. While men did most of the hunting and are likely to have made and maintained the points, women did a lot of the butchering and hide working and are likely to have made and maintained their own tools. One cache of stone items found in MacPherson County contained a few cutting and hide scraping tools that almost certainly belonged to a woman along with a large supply of large stone flakes from which she could make other tools in the future (image needed). While we cannot project back in time which gender had which tasks with any certainty, among the historic Pawnees, women owned the axes and stone mauls, and men did the hideworking of elk and deer and would have owned bone beamers.
Many people see images in pieces of stone that they find. But the Native Americans who lived in Kansas hardly ever sculpted pieces of loose stone into images. They did, however, carve images onto rock walls (M08). To tell whether a piece of stone you have found might have been carved, try cutting a similar piece of stone with a sharp piece of flint or pecking (a line into a surface with a hard stone. That will show you what the image would look like if it had been made by human hands.
There are lots of good guides to point styles
Actually, there are a lot of misleading guides out there, which is one of the reasons for this web page. There are books published by collectors who buy and sell artifacts, and these are uniformly filled with misinformation. One illustrates supposed Besant points (found only in the northwestern plains) from Tennessee and Texas that don't even look like Besant points. They tend to give ages of points in the thousands of years, whereas most styles did not last nearly that long.
There is a set of old bulletins of the Oklahoma Anthropological Society that are better in some ways, but they were written in the 1950s and 1960s before radiocarbon dates were widely available. Hence the ages were based on guesswork and (unfortunately) on collections from some sites now understood to be of mixed ages.
The best guides currently on the market are by Noel Justice, a collector and flintknapper who understands how the points were made. His region of expertise, however, lies well to the east of Kansas, and his most complete book includes only a few styles that range as far west as Kansas.
Things to Read
Hoard, Robert J., and William E. Banks
2006 Kansas Archaeology. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
O'Brien, Patricia J.
1984 Archeology in Kansas. Public Education Series No. 9. Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas. This is a concise book written for the general reader.
Wedel, Waldo R.
1959 An Introduction to Kansas Archeology. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 174. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. This was the first substantial book on Kansas archaeology, based primarily on Wedel's own excavations combined with careful historic research.
1986 Central Plains Prehistory. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Written near the end of Wedel's long and productive career, this is a summary of the archaeological sequence on one river basin.
KSHS publications
KU publications
Blakeslee, Donald J.
1999 Waconda Lake: Prehistoric Swidden-Foragers in the Central Plains. Central Plains Archaeology, 7(1). Available from NAPA (link needed) This is a report intended for a professional audience. It resolves some issues and raises new questions about the Middle Ceramic period.
Current Archaeology in Kansas is an annual publication of the Professional Archaeologists of Kansas (link needed).
Kansas Anthropologist is published annually by the Kansas Anthropological Association. Membership costs $22 for an individual and includes a subscription to the journal. (link needed)
Central Plains Archaeology is an annual publication of the Nebraska Association of Professional Archaeologists. It carries articles pertinent to Nebraska and surrounding states. Membership currently costs $15. (link needed)
Plains Anthropologist is a journal for professionals. A subscription currently costs $45, $30X for students. (link needed)
KAA digs (link)
KAA meetings/own chapter (link)
AASCK (info)
your local museum
PAK
KSHS
KU collections
KSU
WSU
agate
This is a nickname for a category of stones. ‘Agate’ refers to stones that have
some translucency and (most often) for ones that have bands of different colors
(SS38).
Some of the prettiest points made by modern flintknappers are made from brightly
colored agates. Many varieties of chert are also banded, but they lack the translucent
quality of agate.
alternately beveled
If you have a chipped stone tool on which beveling is visible on one edge (left
or right), turn it over and see whether there is beveling on the other face
that shows up on the same side (G01).
If so, the item is alternately beveled. Harahey knives are
diamond-shaped and alternately beveled so that each face has two beveled edges
located kitty corner from one another, no matter which end and which face are
up. Repeated unifacial resharpening of a tool edge creates alternate beveling.
Here's where you can amaze your friends. A right handed person who resharpens a tool will produce a pattern of alternate beveling in which the bevel will be visible on the left hand side of the far (distal) end of the tool. About 90% of alternately beveled tools have this form. So, you can look at a tool and (if it is alternately beveled) you can say whether it was used by a right- or left-handed person (G02).
aspect
A level of classification for archaeological units that is no longer commonly
used. A set of similar sites would be grouped into a focus and a set of focuses
in an aspect, such as the Great Bend Aspect.
assemblage
The set of items found in a site is called the site assemblage. All of the objects
from a single feature are called a subassemblage.
atlatl
A device for throwing a light spear or dart with increased range. It consists
of a handle, shaft and hook. The spear is held with forefinger and thumb, while
the other three fingers hold the handle. The butt of the dart is concave and
it fits against the hook at the far end of the atlatl shaft (G03). The atlatl
increases the length of the arm and enhances the flicking motion of the wrist.
Stone weights called boatstones and bannerstones were attached to some atlatls.
auriculate
A fancy way of saying that a point has basal ears (G04).
barb
A projection from the base of the blade of a projectile point. Barbs can project
laterally, flare or point down (G05).
basal grinding
Purposeful blunting of the base of some types of projectile points, especially
early ones. Basal grinding may be confined to the point base or it may extend
along the lateral edges of a lanceolate or stemmed point or into side notches.
It is best detected by feeling the edges with your fingers to compare the basal
edges to the blade edges.
basal notch
Refers to a point with a single notch at the center of the base. Some arrow
points of the Middle Ceramic period have basal notches (G06).
When a stemmed point has a basal notch, however, the point is usually described
as either stemmed indented base or bifurcated stem.
basal thinning
Purposeful thinning of the base of a point by the removal of a line of fairly
narrow flakes from one or both faces (G09).
To be called basal thinning, the line of flake scars must extend far enough
into the point to have been useful in hafting; a line of short flake scars can
result from just the shaping of the base (G10).
The flake scars from basal thinning are more numerous, narrower and shorter
than flute scars.
base
The base of a point is the proximal edge, although many people call the lateral
edges near the base the basal edges.
base-notched
A base-notched point is one that has two notches extending up either vertically
or diagonally from the base (G07).
BCE
Before the Christian Era of before the common era. Some people attempt to be
politically correct by replacing BC (before Christ) with BCE. The numbers in
calendar years remain the same.
bifacial
Appearing on both faces or flat sides of a two sided artifact. The term is applied
both to purposeful flaking and to evidence of wear.
bifacially beveled
An edge of an artifact that becomes markedly steeper near the edge on both faces
(G11). Some projectile points
were purposefully made with bifacial beveling to create an especially strong
blade edge.
bifurcated
Split into two parts. This term is usually restricted to the description of
stemmed points that have a central basal notch (G12)
as opposed to a stem that has a concave base, in which case stemmed indented
base (G08) is more
appropriate.
BP
BP stands for radiocarbon years Before Present, with “present” defined as AD
1950, the approximate date of the invention of radiocarbon dating. BP is used
because radiocarbon years are only an estimate of the age of an item based on
how much radioactive carbon it still contains. The amount of 14C present in
living things has varied over time, making radiocarbon years different from
calendar years.
BP dates do not convert to BC/AD dates (also called calendar dates) simply by subtracting the BP date from AD 1950, but many people have taken that shortcut rather than using an up-to-date conversion table. So beware of AD/BC dates in books and reports unless the author specifies how they were calculated. A simple conversion table intended only to show the nature of the differences is on this web page (link)
bryozoan
A fossil mollusc colony found in some Kansas cherts. Bryozoan fossils often
resemble fragmentary nets (SS39).
bulb of percussion
When a flake is removed from a core or nodule by striking it with some sort
of hammer, there will be a thick, convex spot on the inner surface of the flake
just below the striking platform. This is the bulb of percussion (G13).
bulbar scar
On a flake scar, the bulb of percussion will leave a negative impression – an
indentation just below the striking platform. This is evidence that the flake
was removed by a blow of some sort but not necessarily that the blow was delivered
by a human being. The presence of a bulbar scar, however, does serve to separate
out flake scars produced by percussion from those produced by natural flaws
in the stone, frost cracking, and so on.
bulbous
A term that refers to the shape of either the haft element (G15)
or the basal ears (G16) of a projectile
point. It means rounded.
cache
A group of artifacts that were stored together in a compact group. Some caches
were simply for storage; others were religious offerings.
cache pit
A pit dug in the ground for the storage of food and other items. When used for
food, eventually insects, rodents or fungus would find their way into the pit
and it had to be abandoned. Since empty pits were a hazard in societies without
electric lights, the old pits were usually filled with trash, solving two problems
at once (G17).
caliche (kah-LEE-chay)
A calcium carbonate deposit that forms in some semi-arid soils. Caliche can
form thick beds, such as the capstone of the Llano Estacado in Texas, little
pebble-like bodies in soils, or a rough grayish deposit on the surface of artifacts
(SS40).
canid
A general term for the family of animals that includes dogs, wolves and coyotes.
Very often it is impossible to determine which species is present from a few
bones or teeth, so this term is a handy copout (G69).
chalcedony (kal-SED-o-nee)
This is the name applied to varieties of chippable stone that are translucent
but lack the bands of color typical of agates. Chalcedonies that occur in Kansas
sites brown Knife River chalcedony (SS30)
and pinkish Flattop chalcedony (SS28).
chert
The proper name for what most people call flint. Cherts form in limestones after
the limestone is deposited and are composed primarily of silica. Chert is a
general term that includes flints, jaspers and chalcedonies, but most people
do not use it that way. The Flint Hills are named for the cherts that occur
there.
There can be enormous variation in the appearance and quality of cherts from a single geologic formation and even from a single source. Often, the texture and color vary within a single nodule. To make things even more difficult, cherts from different geologic formations can resemble one another. As a result, correct identification of chert types is often difficult, and the smaller the artifact, the more difficult the identification becomes.
collateral
Refers to the pattern of flake scars seen on (especially) some PaleoIndian period
points in which the flakes are at right angles to the long axis of the point
and the flake scars that come in from opposite edges are lined up with one another
fairly well (G18).
CE
Christian era (or for some, “common era”), a politically correct term intended
to replace AD.
component
This refers to the evidence in a site that reflects a single usage of the site.
Sites can be single component or multi-component, and in multi-component sites,
the components can be stacked above one another (vertical stratification) or
at least partially separated horizontally (horizontal stratification) or thoroughly
mixed together (secondary context). An individual component may be formed in
a single day or over a long period of years.
concretion
A natural formation that develops inside soils and rocks. Concretions come in
a wide variety of unusual shapes, and some were collected by Native Americans
(SS42).
conglomerate
A stone formed by sand and pebbles that have become cemented together (image
needed). In rare cases, the cementing is so complete that the stone can be flaked
like chert.
constricted
Refers to the shape of a projectile point which is more or less lanceolate but
with a constriction fairly near the base (G19).
This differs from an expanding stem point by the gradualness of the change from
the convex distal portion of the blade to the concave proximal portion; that
is, a constricted point lacks a well-defined shoulder area (G20).
context
The relation an artifact has with all of the other items that surround it. The
majority of information contained in an archaeological site lies in the contexts
of the various items in it. The function of a tool may be revealed by the objects
with which it is found.
When a cultural deposit has not been disturbed since the items in it were deposited, it is said to be in primary context, while a deposit that has been disturbed by natural forces such as erosion or by human actions such as plowing or looting is said to be in secondary context.
contracting stem
A stem of a point or tool that contracts as it extends away from the blade or
bit (G21).
corner notched
A point on which the notches point diagonally up toward the tip and have removed
the corners of the preform (G22).
Corner notched points grade into expanded stem points with increasing notch
width and into base-notched and side-notched points depending on the exact placement
of the notches and one's estimate of where the corners of the preform lay.
corner removed
Corner removed is used to describe points which have a small wide portion of
the basal corners removed producing a wide, very short stem (G22a).
cortex
The outer layer of a nodule. The cortex on chert cobbles from bedrock sources
is limestone (G23), while the
cortex on stream cobbles is a thin layer of hard rock that may have a pebbly
structure (G24). If the outer
layer is a solid brown color, you are probably looking at the patina or rind
that develops on upland chert gravels (G25).
Cretaceous
The name of a geologic period during which bedrock formations were deposited
that are exposed in western Kansas.
crinoid stem
Fossil fragment of a marine animal. The stems of crinoids are a stack of interlocking
disks that usually have broken into their respective parts. Crinoid stem impressions
are typical of the Peoria variant of Warsaw chert (SS44).
crushing
This term refers to a kind of wear on the edge of a chipped stone tool that
results from applying a lot of force on a hard material. The result is a series
of short flakes that end in step fractures (G26).
decortication flake
A flake on which there is cortex present on the dorsal surface (G27).
Decortication flakes are usually produced early in the sequence required to
make a chipped stone tool, and many decortication flakes in a site suggest that
it lies near a quarry or other source of the raw stone.
demospongia
Name for a group of sponges that contain large silica spicules. Demospongia
fossils occur in some Permian cherts (SS52).
dendrite
A mineral inclusion in a chert that takes the appearance of a black mossy growth.
Dendrites are common in Hartville uplift chert but also occur in Smoky Hill
jasper (G74), making these two stone
sources difficult to differentiate on occasion.
diagnostic artifact
An artifact that is distinctive of a particular time period or archaeological
unit. The presence of diagnostic artifacts in a collection from a site allow
the archaeologist to say which and how many time periods are represented in
it. Artifacts of Kansas is our attempt to document the many kinds of diagnostic
artifacts in this state.
diorite
Diorite is a dark gray to greenish gray igneous rock that was used to make ground
stone celts (SS05)
and other tools. Diorite is appropriate for making ground stone but not chipped
stone tools. Nevertheless, one occasionally sees diorite artifacts that were
roughed out by chipping prior to pecking and grinding.
distal
A word that describes the end of a point or tool that lies farthest from a person's
hand when held for normal use or to the end of a bone that lies farthest from
the spine of an animal (G54).
dorsal
Refers to the outer surface of a flake or a tool made from a flake; the inner
face is called the ventral surface (G66).
A decortication flake has cortex on its dorsal surface. Usually, the flaking
on end scrapers is restricted to the dorsal surface.
ear
This term refers to projections from both sides of the basal edge of a point,
as opposed to barbs, which project from the base of the blade. Ears vary in
how sharp they are and whether they project down, flare or project laterally
(G29).
edge grinding
Purposeful dulling of the edge of an artifact, usually on the haft element.
Also called basal grinding. Edge grinding prevented the stone tool from cutting
through the binding that holds it onto a handle, shaft or foreshaft. Edge grinding
is best detected with your fingertips, comparing the dullness of the edges of
the haft to those of the working edge of the artifact.
end snap
When a flintknapper is making a biface by percussion flaking, and common error
occurs when thinning the base without providing adequate support for the pointed
end of the biface. The shock from the hammer blow is concentrated by the narrowing
of the biface, causing the distal end to come off (G30).
expanding stem
The stem of a point that expands toward the proximal end (G31).
Expanding stems can differ in length, width and the shapes of the lateral edges.
face
One of the flat sides of a two-sided tool such as a knife or point. A tool that
has flakes removed from only one face is called unifacial; one with flakes removed
from both faces is bifacial.
faceting
This term is usually applied to a particular form of blunting found on the bases,
sides of stems and shoulders of some styles of points. Faceting is created when
burin blows are used to create a flat edge on one or more of these edges (G32)
or when an original flat surface from the nodule is allowed to remain at the
base (G33).
feature
An item or set of items in a site that was/were a functional unit of some sort.
A fireplace is a feature; so is a house or a tool kit or a burial.
flint
Properly, flint is a high-quality chert that occurs in a bed of chalk. Some
people say it has to be black because the flint used in English flintlocks was
black (CS21).
Since we find French gunflints in Kansas, made from a honey-colored stone (CS22),
such restriction on the color of the stone is not appropriate.
flintknapping
The process of manufacturing chipped stone artifacts by percussion and/or pressure
flaking.
flute
A large flake scar that extends up from the base of a point that was used to
thin the base. Clovis points sometimes had more than one flute on each face
(image needed), while Folsom points have large single flutes (G35)
on each face (image). Some Dalton points are also fluted (G36).
focus
A term for a set of similar sites in a classification system that is no longer
in use. The Little River focus and the Lower Walnut focus are such units within
the Great Bend Aspect.
foreshaft
A detachable distal end on a spear, dart or arrow shaft. The stone (or bone,
antler, etc.) point is attached firmly to the foreshaft and the foreshaft fits
in a socket on the end of the main shaft. This allowed for rapid reloading of
thrusting spears when hunting large dangerous animals and for ease of recovery
of dart and arrow shafts (which normally were harder to make than chipped stone
points).
Frison effect
Named for the fine archaeologist from Wyoming, George Frison, it is the gradual
alteration from the original form of an artifact via use wear, breakage and
resharpening. A heavily used and resharpened artifact can look very different
from its original form (G71).
fusilinid
Fusilinids are single-celled animals whose shells look like grains of wheat
(SS45a)
or miniature footballs (SS45b).
They are abundant in some Pennsylvanian and Permian cherts.
galena
An ore of lead sulphide, galena can occur as silvery cubic crystals, although
these can be obscured by a layer of whitish oxide (SS50).
Galena was collected and traded in prehistoric Kansas.
glacial till
The sands and gravels carried by glaciers are called glacial till or drift.
In Kansas glacial deposits are restricted to the northeastern corner of the
state but are also present in adjacent parts of Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa.
The most commonly used varieties of stone from these tills are granite, Sioux
quartzite and Kansas pipestone.
granite
Granite is a coarse-grained igneous rock available in Kansas in the glacial
tills in the northeastern part of the state. It is comprised of crystals of
quartz, feldspar and mica. Depending on the variety of feldspar present, it
can have either a pink or a white tone (SS49).
groove and snap technique
This is a technique for making blanks for tools and ornaments from pieces of
bone. A graver or other sharp stone tool is used to cut two ring shaped grooves
around the circumference of a bone, and the ends are then snapped off (G37).
If an awl is desired, long grooves in a zig-zag pattern are incised into the
bone before the ends are snapped off. These are then pried apart and ground
to a point (G38).
haft
Also called a haft element. The portion of a point or tool that has been shaped
in order to fit onto a handle of some sort (G39).
haft wear
A polish or striations produced when a stone tool rubs against its handle. Haft
wear can be seen occasionally on tools that received fairly heavy use (G68).
heat treatment
Some varieties of chippable stone can be improved by prolonged exposure to high
temperatures which fuse some of the tiny flaws in the stone. Heat treatment
can be detected by changes in color (especially in yellowish and brownish stones
which turn to pinks, oranges and reds) (image needed). Flake scars from flakes
removed after heat treatment may have glassy surfaces.
hinge fracture
A flake or flake scar that ends abruptly in a recurved edge (G41).
Hinge fractures are usually the result of errors made during flintknapping.
historic
In general terms, the time frame for which historic documents are available.
When applied to a Native American site it implies that there are documents that
refer to that site. It is also used for all Euro-American and African-American
sites.
horizon
A short time frame in which one or more artifact types were widely traded or
shared.
impact fracture
When a projectile point strikes bone or other hard and resistant material, a
flake is driven down the length of the point from the tip (G42).
Occasionally, the same impact causes the haft to drive a flake upward from the
base.
in situ
Latin for “in place.” An artifact is said to be in situ when it has been exposed
but not removed from its location in the site. It is important to map, photograph
and otherwise record items in situ so that there is no question about their
context.
jasper
This term is applied to opaque cherts that have intense colors in shades of
red, brown or yellow. Smoky Hill jasper (SS15a)
was an important source of chippable stone. It outcrops in northwestern Kansas
and southwestern Nebraska.
knife
Any tool used for cutting (CS33).
Chipped stone knives have one or more fairly straight sharp edges. Resharpening
a stone knife may result in a beveled edge. There are a wide variety of chipped
stone knives in Kansas sites.
lag gravels
These are deposits of gravel found on hilltops and the ends of ridges that were
produced by erosion of the soils that originally contained the stones. In some
areas, lag gravels contain cherts and other chippable stones, and for much of
Kansas prehistory lag gravels were a major source for the stone from which tools
were made. Cherts from lag gravels can be identified by a caramel-colored patination
rind on their exterior (SS57),
and in the oldest gravels, this color often penetrates deeply into the interior
of the stone.
lanceolate
Used to describe the overall shape of long points that contract toward the proximal
end without recurving (G43); points
that recurve are called constricted base (G19).
metapodial
A bone of the foot of animals. Deer and antelope metapodials were often used
as raw material for the manufacture of awls (G44).
Mississippian period
Originally a term that referred to varieties of pottery, such as Upper Mississippian
and Middle Mississippian ceramics. Later the term came to be used for the time
period that begins at around AD 1000 and is simply called Mississippian. The
Middle and Late Ceramic periods in Kansas are the time equivalents of the Mississippian
period in the East. Middle Mississippian also refers to the cultural tradition
that developed the great center of Cahokia near St. Louis. In Kansas, the Steed-Kisker
phase is the only cultural unit that might be termed Middle Mississippian.
Mississippian chert
As it applies to stone sources, this is the name of a geologic period, deposits
of which outcrop in extreme southeastern Kansas and in Missouri and Iowa. Mississippian
limestones contain some excellent cherts, and they are the sources of the very
glossy white and pink cherts found in sites in eastern Kansas (SS58).
mosaic
A set of similar phases that share many traits and are roughly contemporaneous.
A more precise definition for some of the units that would otherwise be called
variants.
neck
The portion of a notched point that lies between the notches (G45).
The width of the neck is an indication of the diameter of the shaft to which
the point was attached.
nibbling
A form of wear on the used edge of a tool or flake that consists of fairly widely
spaced small flakes removed from one or both faces (G46).
Nibbling is produced by using a tool against a relatively hard and resistant
material.
nodule
A naturally occurring piece of chert or similar chippable stone (G47).
Once flakes have been removed from a nodule, we call it a core.
oolitic
Refers to a limestone or chert that is rich in small round particles called
oolites. These bodies consist (before chert formation) of particles that have
become coated with lime and rolled by water action, making them spherical. Nehawka
chert is often quite oolitic (SS48).
ovate
A term used to describe the overall shape of an artifact that is roughly oval
in shape but which may have one or both ends pointed (G75).
patina
A chemical alteration of the surface of a nodule or artifact. Chaldedonies tend
to develop a white filmy patina quite quickly (G48),
while upland chert gravels develop a thick opaque caramel colored patina that
turns red when heat treated (G25). Artifacts that have laid flat in the ground
may develop a patina on one face more than the other.
pecking
A method of shaping stone for ground stone tools that involves striking repeatedly
with a stone hammer, powdering a small portion of the surface with each blow
(G49).
pemmican
This is a food made from powdered buffalo jerky. Pemmican was easily stored
and transported. Often the meat was mixed with dried berries before it was powdered,
and it was either added to soups or mixed with bone grease before being eaten.
Pennsylvanian chert
This is the name of a geologic period. Bedrock of Pennsylvanian age outcrops
east of the Flint Hills. Several formations contain cherts that were used locally,
but most of them are of rather low quality. The majority come in brownish tones
which turn to pink and red when heated (SS54).
pentagonal
A term used to describe the overall shape of a point or other tool that has
a five distinct sides – a base and two lateral edges that exhibit a fairly sharp
angle separating their proximal and distal portions (G49a).
percussion flaking
The removal of flakes by striking with a hammer of some sort. The hammer can
be a stone (gs19a)
or a piece of antler or bone (b25).
Percussion flaking can be used to produce a finished tool, such as a Clovis
point (G50) or the final stages
of flaking can be accomplished with pressure flaking as in Folsom points (image
needed).
Permian chert
Bedrock of Permian age outcrops in the Flint Hills. The Florence formation,
among others, has abundant chert. Since the cherts from different formations
can be visually similar and outcrop in the same exposures, calling them all
Permian is a safe strategy.
phase
Currently the basic unit in the classification of archaeological sites – a set
of sites from the same time period and the same region that share many traits.
potlid
A kind of fracture that occurs in cherts and similar stones when they are heated
quickly. Water in the stone turns to steam and blows of a portion of the surface.
Potlid scars are roughly circular and basin shaped (G52).
Occasionally, one finds the potlid flakes produced by this process (G53).
prehistoric
In the time period before written documents become available for an area. In
Kansas, this is before AD 1541.
pressure flaking
A way of shaping a chipped stone artifact using a piece of bone or antler to
apply inward pressure followed by a rapid twist to remove a fairly small and
thin flake (G79).
primary context
The situation that exists when a site or part of a site has not been disturbed
since it was created. Primary contexts produce the greatest amounts of useful
information.
protohistoric
This term is used two different ways. Sometimes it is used for the time frame
immediately prior to the historic period and at other times it is applied to
an individual site and means that 1) the site falls into the historic period
(after AD 1541) but that 2) there is no historic documentation for the site.
provenance
The point of origin of the raw material from which an artifact was made.
provenience
The precise location of an artifact before it is excavated from a site.
proximal
Used to describe the end of a tool that lies closest to the user. The base of
a point is the proximal end, while the distal end is the pointy part. Proximal
is also used to describe the end of a bone that lies closest to the spine (G54).
quartzite
A kind of stone that is made up of cemented sand grains or quartz crystals.
The cement is good enough that the material breaks through the individual grains
when a flake is removed; otherwise the material is called sandstone.
recurved
Used to describe the overall shape of a point which starts out with convex edges
near the distal end but gradually changes to concave edges near the proximal
end or base of blade. On stemmed points, a recurved blade edge (G76)
may result from resharpening.
residue
Sometimes, a tool retains material that accumulated during use on its surface.
Pottery may also retain residues in voids in the vessel walls. Blood, lipids
(which are constituents of fats), and even starch grains have been identified
in recent years. Residues are usually visible only if the material was charred
(CS53).
retouch
The final series of flakes (usually pressure flakes) removed from an artifact
to give an edge its final form are called retouch (G55).
ribbon flaking
A pattern of flaking that consists of the removal of long narrow flakes that
are diagonal with respect to the long axis of the point and are parallel to
one another. Flakes removed from both edges are parallel to one another and
can give the impression of the removal of a single long flake that extends from
one edge to the other. Typical of the late PaleoIndian Allen point (G56),
it is also called oblique transverse flaking.
ripples
Undulations on the ventral surface of a flake that are a byproduct of percussion
flaking (G73). They look like the waves created
by throwing a pebble into a pond.
rounding
A form of wear one the edge of a tool. Rounding can be produced by cutting relatively
soft materials such as leather, but an extreme form of rounding is produced
by using a chipped stone tool to cut pipestones such as limestones, Kansas pipestone
and catlinite (G57).
secondary context
A situation in which the items left in a site have been moved around by either
natural or human actions, destroying the original relationships among the artifacts.
selenite
This is a crystalline form of gypsum that is sometimes jokingly called Kansas
diamonds. It is found occasionally in archaeological sites, but we do not know
why prehistoric people collected it.
serrated
This term is used to describe the edge of a point that have been purposefully
flaked so as to leave a series of teeth projecting out from the edge (G58).
When somewhat broader teeth are left on the edge(s) of a cutting tool, the edge
is often called denticulate (G58b).
shoulder
The area on a stemmed point where the stem joins the blade – where the width
suddenly narrows over a relatively short distance (G78).
side notched
A point on which the haft element is formed by a pair of notches that cut into
its sides at roughly right angles to the axis of the point. Side-notched points
vary in the width and depth of the notches and in how far up from the base they
are placed (G59).
silicified sediment
A kind of chippable stone that formed when the individual grains of a fine-grained
sediment became cemented together tightly. The term is usually restricted to
varieties of stone that are finer-grained than quartzites, which are made up
of cemented sand-size granules. There is a silicified sediment found in gravels
of the Ogallala formation (image needed).
site
A place where evidence of past human activities can be found.
stem/stemmed
The haft element of a point formed by rapid narrowing below the blade at the
point called the shoulder. Stems come in a wide variety of lengths and shapes
(G61).
stratification
The presence of vertical or horizontal separation between deposits of varying
ages in a site.
striking platform
The spot where a piece of stone is struck to remove a flake. When the striking
platform remains on the flake, its form gives clues as to the object from which
the flake was removed (G63).
tang
Generally, any projection from the body of an artifact. Some people call basal
ears tangs. Here it is restricted to a rectangular to rounded haft element on
scrapers, axes and adzes (G64).
tradition
A unit of archaeological classification that recognizes continuity through time
in a set of phases.
type
A category in a classification system for artifacts. Named types should have
a known age and distribution.
ulna
The bone of a human forearm or an animal's lower foreleg. Deer and canid ulnas
were sometimes used to manufacture awls (G65).
uniface
A tool formed by flaking only one face of an edge. Unifacial tools were used
during all times periods in Kansas, but they are especially plentiful in the
PaleoIndian and Late Ceramic periods.
variant
A unit of archaeological classification that is bigger than a phase. It is used
differently depending on the archaeologist, so some variants consist of a set
of contemporaneous phases, some a set of sequential phases, and one consists
of two sets of two phases each, with the sets following one another in time.
ventral
The inner surface of a flake – the one on which the bulb of percussion can be
seen (G66).
weak
A poorly defined term that usually refers to shoulders on points that are both
narrow and insloping (G67).
Some people use it to describe all very narrow shoulders regardless of orientation.
wing
Synonymous with barb; a projection from the proximal end of the blade of a point.
Woodland
A term first applied to a general style of pottery, then to a cultural tradition
and a time period. In Kansas, we use Early Ceramic for the time period that
yields Woodland pottery. Also, in the Eastern Woodlands, the Woodland period
begins at 1,000 BC, while in Kansas there is little evidence for pottery until
about a millennium later.
In the Eastern Woodlands and father north on the Plains than Kansas, the Early
Ceramic period can be subdivided into two subperiods that are called Middle
Woodland and Late Woodland. Over much of Kansas, the changes in ceramics that
mark the difference between the two subperiods is not as clear as in these other
regions, but over the eastern third of the state (with scattered occurrences
farther west) there are sites and complexes that clearly belong in the Middle
Woodland because they contain pottery decorated in Middle Woodland styles. What
is not yet clear is whether there are non-Hopewellian Middle Woodland ceramics
farther west.
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