An Examination of the Role of Miniature Projectile Points at the Lindenmeier Folsom Site, Colorado

ABSTRACT

Significantly smaller-than-average projectile points have been observed in many Folsom weaponry assemblages. However, while several hypotheses have been put forth suggesting the role these miniature items may have played in Paleoindian toolkits, none of these hypotheses have been explicitly tested. To make matters more confusing, a universal definition of what constitutes a miniature point has not been agreed upon. Utilizing morphological data obtained from the Smithsonian’s collection of projectile points from the Lindenmeier Folsom site in northern Colorado, this paper seeks to fill in some of these gaps in knowledge by (a) suggesting an explicit definition based on a statistical analysis of assemblages throughout the Folsom region; and (b) testing expectations derived from the hypotheses that suggest miniature points in the Folsom toolkit represent toys, ceremonial objects, raw-material conservation, or simply variation in the acceptable morphological attributes of Folsom weaponry.

KEYWORDS:

• Folsom
• Lindenmeier
• miniature projectile points

Acknowledgements

This study was made possible by a Senior Fellowship to Sellet from the Smithsonian Institution, a Faculty Research Award at the University of Northern Colorado, and through the generosity of Bob and Becky Brunswig; we would like to thank these institutions and individuals. This paper was presented during a symposium examining fluted projectile-point variability in the New World at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Washington DC. The authors would like to thank Heather Smith and Jesse Tune for inviting us to participate in this symposium. The authors would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers of this article, whose comments and constructive feedback were greatly appreciated and extremely helpful.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Michael Guarino is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. His research interests include Paleoindian lithic technologies and the archaeological implications of climatic changes. For his dissertation, he will be conducting an ethnoarchaeological investigation of the impacts of modern climate changes on traditional Alaskan subsistence practices.

Frédéric Sellet is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. His research revolves mainly around the study of stone tools in small-scale prehistoric societies, with a focus on issues such as technological organization, planning-depth, and human mobility. He has been conducting fieldwork in the American Plains and in the Rockies for the past 25 years.

ORCID

Michael Christopher Guarino http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2633-790X