Use-Wear on Late Archaic Cache Bifaces from Two Sites in the Great Lakes

Katherine Mary Sterner, Ph. D. (UWM-CRM at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)

Abstract:

During the Late Archaic to Early Woodland transition, caches of blue gray chert bifaces were deposited throughout the Midwest, often in association with burials. Despite a large degree of variation in their formal expression, these bifaces are usually all grouped together as one artifact type in cache contexts. Their utility between manufacture and deposition has long been the subject of speculation. In 2017, comprehensive use-wear analysis of a sample of bipointed bifaces from the Riverside site, often considered to be blanks for Turkey Tail projectile points, demonstrated that they were, in fact, used prior to deposition. These data are compared to use-wear on a cache of finished Turkey Tail points from the Altenburg View site, located approximately 120 miles southwest of the Riverside site. Use-wear analysis comparing two different formal expressions of these bifaces allows us to expand the conversation about their significance to include not only information about their depositional and formal characteristics but their active social and economic characteristics as well.