The Sweetwater Biface

[QSVC]

Many of you are familiar with this incredible artifact (attachment 1). It’s almost impossibly wide for being as thin as it is.

I started looking around for information on it the other day. It appears most people who they pay to know these things put it between 1300-1500 AD. Specifically the bipointed and ovoid nature had them place it in the Harahey knife cluster of the Caddoan Culture. Attachment 2 is an example of a Harahey knife.

I started thinking though that the Harahey Knives looks Solutrean a little bit (attachments 3 & 4). Then I looked at the distribution of these knives. Looks like there was a wide area that the cultures using these knives inhabited farther up north that tapered off as they migrated from the north to south (map-attachment 5)-of course this could be indicative of spreading from south to north but just for the sake of argument.

If that’s the case possibly they are a lot older than previously thought. Or it’s just a coincidence as people are people and there is only a certain amount of shapes that they are going to conceive of. Anyway, just academic food for thought. It’s still fun to look at such and incredible example of lithic craftsmanship every once in a while.

 

[Nicodemus]

The Sweetwater Biface is one of, if not the most incredible piece of percussion work in the world. Literally too thin to be a working piece, it`s like the knapper just showing his skill and seeing just how thin he could make it.

Last year I challenged a friend of mine, an old knapper from way back, to duplicate it. So far he hasn`t, but he has come close, and at the rate he`s going he`ll get it soon.

 

[QSVC]

Nick you and Ben were the one's that first brought it to my attention. I couldn't believe how thin it was. It impresses me more than stuff like what's in the Duck River cache. Those pieces are just big (but of course incredible in their own right).

 

[NCHillbilly]

I’ve held and examined a cast of the biface that is supposed to be an exact replica. It is amazing workmanship.

 

[Tentwing]

WOW!.... Those are amazing.

 

[Tentwing]

Nic , NC Hillbilly, with them being that thin?? What did they use them for? I found this a few years back on the banks of the Buffalo River in middle Tennessee (great smallmouth fishing by the way.) What do you guys think it was ?

 

[NCHillbilly]

Nic , NC Hillbilly, with them being that thin?? What did they use them for? I found this a few years back on the banks of the Buffalo River in middle Tennessee (great smallmouth fishing by the way.) What do you guys think it was ?

I'm like Nic-once you get so thin, it's not really usable for most things, because it's too weak. On the cast of the Sweetwater I looked at, there were places in the middle where the ends of the thinning flakes dived before separating that were literally paper-thin. I think it was more of a ceremonial or "lookwhatImade" piece.

The one in your pics looks like a very thin unfinished preform made from Buffalo River chert. If the color on the last pic is anywhere near true, it was heat-treated.

 

[NCHillbilly]

As for the Solutrean connection, I'm pretty well sold on it. Scott Silsby showed me detailed pics several years ago of a biface dredged up off the coast of Virginia in a trawl net. It was in an area that would have been dry land during the last Ice Age. It was an almost-perfect classic Solutrean laurel-leaf biface. It was made from Pennsylvania rhyolite.

 

[Tentwing]

NCHillbilly, I read an article that sounds much like your post. It was about a wooly mammoth remains that came to the surface in a trawling net off the coast of Virginia. There was what was described as a willow leaf blade that was among the remains of the mammoth. They stated in the article that the technology to make the blade originated in France. They also stated that the mammoth went extinct maybe 24,000 years ago roughly 6,000 years before the first man could have come across the Bering Straits.

 

[Tentwing]

My apologies to QSVC. I think I may have unintentionally high jacked your thread.

 

[QSVC]

No sir I’m just trying to prompt discussion. High jack away!

 

[QSVC]

Plus I’m trying to put these kids to bed which takes upwards of several hours so I need someone to take lead

 

[NCHillbilly]

NCHillbilly, I read an article that sounds much like your post. It was about a wooly mammoth remains that came to the surface in a trawling net off the coast of Virginia. There was what was described as a willow leaf blade that was among the remains of the mammoth. They stated in the article that the technology to make the blade originated in France. They also stated that the mammoth went extinct maybe 24,000 years ago roughly 6,000 years before the first man could have come across the Bering Straits.

That's the one. Scott was involved in the study, and may have written the article you're talking about.

Except that is incorrect about the mammoths, they were here with people for a long time. There are quite a few documented mammoth kill sites that have been dug and studied. Some had Clovis points still in the mammoth.

Mammoths are generally considered to have gone extinct in most of North America about 10,000 BC, long after humans arrived. They have discovered a couple of islands off Alaska where they lived much longer, up to maybe about 3500 BC, and a Russian island that still had mammoths until about 1650 BC.

 

[Tentwing]

NCHillbilly I read another article a few years back that was similar to the one above where the blade was wedged between the radius and ulnar bones of the mammoth's front leg. The author of the article suggested that the mammoth kill site was 20,000 to 22,000 years old, and the blade technology was Western European. He also suggested that because of this time frame that the killers of this mammoth were not immigrants from Asia,because of the accepted Bering Straits timeframe, and the blade technology.

Man this is pretty cool stuff. Anybody have any suggestions on a entry level book for a newby ....Thanks Tentwing

 

[Nicodemus]

NCHillbilly I read another article a few years back that was similar to the one above where the blade was wedged between the radius and ulnar bones of the mammoth's front leg. The author of the article suggested that the mammoth kill site was 20,000 to 22,000 years old, and the blade technology was Western European. He also suggested that because of this time frame that the killers of this mammoth were not immigrants from Asia,because of the accepted Bering Straits timeframe, and the blade technology.

Man this is pretty cool stuff. Anybody have any suggestions on a entry level book for a newby ....Thanks Tentwing

This is an excellent one to add to your library.


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/303112.In_Search_of_Ice_Age_Americans

 

[NCHillbilly]

I second Nic's recommendation. I would also add Bruce Bradley's Across Atlantic Ice for more good speculation on the Solutrean theory.

For an excellent study of American Paleo lithic technology written by an accomplished flintknapper and historical researcher, I recommend Bob Patten's Peoples of the Flute: A Study in Antropolithic Forensics.

 

[Tentwing]

Thanks fellas for the recommendations. NC now that you have brought it to mind the Virginia trawler article may have said that the mammoth in the article met its demise around that time period not the whole species. My memory is kind of like Swiss cheese ( full of holes) I can't even remember the periodical that I read it in, however I can tell you that I was waiting in a chair at the barber shop in Livingston TN. I usually read the gun magazines that he put out while I waited. Thanks Tentwing

 

[Nicodemus]

Here`s another to read. Although there is much controversy about parts of it, it has some good information and some great photos.


https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Americans-Frank-C-Hibben/dp/069051011X

 

[Tentwing]

Just ordered three books off of Amazon. Maybe in the future I will know what you guys mean when you use terms like "fluted and ground bases" .... heck I might even be able to identify some of my own points?? That last one might be a little ambitious. ?. .....Thanks Tentwing

 

[QSVC]

Great recommendations all around. Across Atlantic Ice is compelling. Detractors seem to be in the “We pretty much know most of it already” camp the nameless faceless likes of which litter history. For every Copernicus there are a million people who go along with any given narrative.

Not Native America centric but I’d read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. It really puts all the modern silliness in perspective.

And lastly if you really want to go down the rabbit hole read some of Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson’s research. I heard them interviewed and first rolled my eyes but then they started making a lot of sense....