the crowfield and caradoc -...

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The Crowfield and Caradoc Sites, Ontario: Glimpses of Palaeo-Indian Sacred Ritual and World View

Christopher Ellis

AbstractAt both the Crowfield and Caradoc Palaeo-Indian sites, deposits consisting of large quan-tities of clearly very useful stone preforms and tools were found that had been purposefully destroyed by burning and mechanical breakage respectively. At Crowfield the artifacts had been placed in a pit arranged according to certain obvious categories but at Caradoc the artifacts were apparently left on the surface where they had been broken. These two instances and others in the Great Lakes area are good evidence of the symbolic values attached to these artifacts by their makers. While we cannot be certain of their precise meaning, one very plausible explanation might lie in the fact that as people advanced into uninhabited regions, creating such caches of useful items made of exotic raw materials were one way to imbue the landscape with cultural, historic and sacred meanings.

RésuméDans les sites paléoindiens de Crowfield et de Caradoc, on a trouvé des dépôts constitués de grandes quantités d’ébauches et d’outils manifestement très utiles, qui avaient été délibérément respectivement détruits par le feu et concassés. À Crowfield, les artefacts avaient été placés dans une fosse, disposés selon certaines catégories évidentes, mais à Caradoc ils ont apparemment été laissés sur le sol, là où on les avait brisés. Ces deux exemples et d’autres dans la région des Grands Lacs témoignent avec force de la valeur symbolique rattachée à ces artefacts par ceux qui les ont façonnés. Bien qu’il soit impossible d’établir leur signification avec certitude, une explication très plausible serait qu’à mesure que ces populations progressaient au cœur de régions inhabitées, la création de telles caches regroupant des objets utiles faits de matériaux exotiques était un moyen d’imprégner le nouveau territoire de sens culturel, historique et sacré.

IntroductionThis paper considers the evidence from two Palaeo-Indian sites in southwestern Ontario (Figure 1), located only about four kilometres apart, which I have had the good fortune,

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© 2009 Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation, ISBN 978-0-660-19912-2 Originally published in "Painting the Past with a Broad Brush: Papers in Honour of James Valliere Wright," edited by David L. Keenlyside and Jean-Luc Pilon, pp.319-52. Mercury Series Archaeology Paper 170. Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, 2009.

320 The Crowfield and Caradoc Sites, Ontario: Glimpses of Palaeo-Indian Sacred Ritual and World View

indeed privilege, to be involved in investigating, albeit over 15 years apart. The sites include a fluted point, or Early Palaeo-Indian, one called Crowfield investigated in 1980–81 (Deller 1988; Deller and Ellis 1984; Ellis 1984) and a Late Palaeo-Indian unfluted lanceolate point site called Caradoc examined in 1997 (Deller and Ellis 1999, 2001; Ellis and Deller 2002). The sites have yielded more than their fair share of exquisite Palaeo-Indian stone artifacts but their importance goes much beyond that fact. Both sites provide evidence for sacred ritual by Palaeo-Indians involving use of stone tools; that is, behaviour associated with religious beliefs and more broadly, how these peoples viewed the world.

It has long been suggested that Palaeo-Indians saw their stone tools as more than just tools simply on the basis of their superb workmanship (see, for example, Frison and Bradley 1981:15; Hayden 1982:118; Wheat 1971:28; Wormington 1957:68) or the fact they seem to have gone to great lengths to use exotic materials, sometimes demonstrably at the cost of ignoring other available sources of equal or better quality (e.g., Dickson 2006; Ellis 1989, 2004). Despite these facts, we tend to minimize Palaeo-Indian views in interpretations. There has been a real and often overwhelming tendency to see Palaeo-Indians from what Robert Hall (1977:499) called a “geocentric” perspective; that is, studies have focused on what they eat, how they move around the landscape, who they bred with, and so on and arguments ultimately relate Palaeo-Indian life to simply adapting to physical

Figure 1 Map showing location of Caradoc and Crowfield sites in southwestern Ontario.

321Christopher Ellis

characteristics of the environment. This focus seems natural considering extinct animals, knowledge of glacial geology, etc. are essential to their archaeological interpretation and that all we have are usually a few bits and pieces of stone tools or technology used for obtaining and/or processing raw materials or food resources. However, it still seems to me that we really have a bias to interpret the Palaeo-Indian archaeological record in more rigid “utilitarian” ways. We tend to see stone items as tools and little else to their makers. This argument may seem like jousting at windmills on my part, and there are examples of Palaeo-Indian scholarship where more ideological based interpretations are presented (e.g., Bement 1999; Collins 1999:173; Kornfeld et al. 1999; Stafford et al. 2002; Wright 1995:116), but there are several examples of interpretations or suggested interpretations of the evidence that suggest to me a decided bias against this viewpoint.

For instance, Kelly (1996:236) still seriously raises the possibility that a feature found at Crowfield, what we called Feature #1, is simply a “trash pit.” However, as I thought was clearly shown in an earlier paper (Deller and Ellis 1984), this possibility is way off the mark. Instead, Feature #1 represents, as James V. Wright (1995:48) phrased it, a “significant ceremonial act” and continuing research on the collections from that site, as discussed below, does nothing but reinforce the original conclusions. I would go so far as to say that Feature #1 represents the best and most unequivocal evidence ever reported for sacred ritual by Eastern Early Palaeo-Indian people and one of the best in all of the Americas.

As another example, there are several reported impressive Clovis stone artifact “caches” in the more northerly unglaciated areas of the West (e.g., Butler 1963; Gramly 1993; Hofman 1995; Lahren and Bonnichsen 1974; Stanford and Jodry 1988; Wilke et al. 1991); so impressive we now have coffee table books about them (Frison and Bradley 1999)! One interpretation is that these were utilitarian caches1; as the earliest inhabitants they did not know lithic sources so they cached stone tools around the landscape (e.g., Meltzer 2002:37–39). However, I think the evidence indicates they were more than this to Palaeo-Indians.

First, while I believe some of these caches, like Richey–Roberts in Washington State (Gramly 1993), are definitely not accompanying burials (see Deller and Ellis 2001:280), there is of course one that is, the cache at Anzick, Montana (Lahren and Bonnichsen 1974). Anzick differs very little from the assemblages found without human remains and this similarity suggests to me the caches had some significance beyond the utilitarian. After all, one is hard pressed to find later groups who included such impressive stone offerings with burials in those same areas. Moreover, it is of interest I think that the Anzick items were placed with a sub-adult who could not have made and used them in real life. They are not personal tool kits, so they are clearly offerings in this case.

Second, there are six or more of these “caches” now reported (all in the northern Plains to the Northwest) and, given their great age and the low population densities of these peoples, that seems like a large total. I imagine more will show up with time and in fact, Donald Simons (pers. comm..) has located what I am sure is a comparable cache in Michigan. I am aware that certain utilitarian caches are never retrieved for various practical reasons (no emergency need for them, people forgot the locations, etc.). Yet, the sheer frequency of these finds, despite their great antiquity and the apparent very low population densities of the Clovis groups, begs the question: if these are utilitarian caches, why were they not retrieved?


Third, these caches often include red ochre. It is possible that red ochre could be used in some utilitarian ways (see for example, Roper 1991; Tankersley et al. 1995:185), but it also can be used in ceremonial contexts. Moreover, as Roper (1996) notes, ochre is most strongly associated with these Clovis artifact “caches,” as opposed to other contexts and is often absent in later Palaeo-Indian caches, per se. The red ochre also seems to be more due to ritual rather than mundane uses at these Clovis sites. Of course, red ochre occurred liberally with the Anzick burial offerings reinforcing its ritual use (as it did at some later Palaeo-Indian burial sites; see Roper 1991:291) but even at the Richey–Roberts site, where the red ochre is stated to be restricted to the haft areas of two large points, this could be due to painted haft decoration (Gramly 1996:19)2 and hence, also be non-utilitarian. In fact, Stafford et al. (2002) have argued that the evidence from the Powers II red ochre mine in Wyoming indicates various Palaeo-Indian groups, including Clovis, were actually making offerings of used or worn-out projectile points to the red ochre source, perhaps in the context of “hunting magic” and the points have been referred to as being “painted with red ochre” (Tankersley et al. 1995:192). These sorts of evidence convince me the ochre in these caches relates to ideological beliefs, or that it is just as easy to “read the evidence” this way if one has no preconceptions.

Fourth, the caches often include extremely large fluted points or fluted preforms that many investigators, including me, have great difficulty interpreting simply as utilitarian objects (see also Amick 2004:139; Roper 1991:292–93; Walthall and Koldehoff 1998:267). The huge items from the Richey–Roberts site, apparently found largely peripheral to the main cluster of artifacts in the central feature, immediately come to mind and these are in fact the same ones that had red ochre on them as opposed to other items from that site, which appear more utilitarian (Gramly 1993:24, 27–30, 1996:19). To me these gargantuan Clovis artifacts are very reminiscent of the slightly later dating Dalton-age Sloan points, the ideological and social significance of which seems unmistakable (e.g.,Walthall and Koldehoff 1998:266–67). In fact, Amick (2004) has also reported a cache of oversized early stemmed bifaces from Nevada suggesting production of these kinds of items and ritual caching was even more widespread at an early time level.

Finally, the Clovis caches do not occur on sites yielding clear evidence of occupation debris or site local use for more mundane purposes. While David Meltzer (2002:38) attri-butes this isolated occurence to them being “stashed” away from occupation and kill sites, “perhaps with the intent of retrieving them later,” it is also very possible to argue that their isolated nature is due to the fact the locations are sacred ones and associate the lack of other activities to concepts of ritual pollution and the need to focus attention, charac-teristic cross-culturally of sacred ritual (Renfrew and Bahn 2004:416–17). I see no reason why utilitarian caches cannot occur in occupation sites and especially in areas worth returning to; in fact, caches of artifacts, which otherwise lack suggestions of sacred use, such as the presence of red ochre or extra large bifaces noted above, do occur on Palaeo-Indian occupation sites (e.g., Deller and Ellis 1992:99–100; MacDonald 1968:36; Storck and Tomenchuk 1990). Indeed, it is of significance that the oversized bifaces found in Clovis, Dalton and the early stemmed horizon from well-documented contexts seem to only occur in isolated caches and/or as definitive burial goods and not on pure occupation sites.


So, as a whole, and unless one has a built-in bias against such a view, it is just as viable, if not more so, to interpret these Clovis caches as non-utilitarian ones, as sacred caches/ritual offerings given in burial and non-burial contexts rather than simply utilitarian caches. In this context, the Crowfield and Caradoc sites stand out because in combination with data like the Western Clovis caches, excellence in stone tool manufacture and use of exotic raw materials, they help us see Palaeo-Indians more as people and force an understanding, at least a little bit, towards what Robert Hall (1977) called an “anthropocentric” perspective, or a bit more people-centred orientation.

The Crowfield SiteThe Crowfield site was excavated and only briefly reported on in the early 1980s (Deller and Ellis 1984) and we are just now in the process of finishing a detailed report. The site is located on a small knoll just northeast of an intermittently flowing tributary stream and, in addition to Palaeo-Indian materials, also has several other later components, ranging from a Middle Archaic Stanly-Neville-like one to a Late Woodland component. For brevity’s sake, I simply note here that one can sort out confidently the vast majority of Palaeo-Indian artifacts from those of later occupations based on detailed analyses of artifact form, raw material use and their spatial distributions. The Palaeo-Indian chert artifacts at the site are primarily on two materials obtained from bedrock outcrops: Onondaga chert from at least 100 km to the southeast of the site and Fossil Hill or Collingwood chert from some 200 km to the northeast, but some minor amounts of Ancaster chert from the west end of Lake Ontario about 100–120 km due east of Crowfield (Figure 1) are present.

Some of what was recovered at Crowfield is typical of most small Palaeo-Indian sites. Normal occupation site activities are indicated by the recovery of unheated stone artifactual material including 35 tools or preforms and 19 biface and uniface fragments, as well just under 300 waste flakes including largely smaller retouch flakes or flake fragments. Amongst the unheated artifacts are the only fluted preform from the site, broken and discarded in manufacture due to a split during fluting, some unfluted biface preforms broken in manufacture, two trianguloid end scrapers, and several denticulates, including a single example of the distinctive snapped edge form or “cutter” first recognized by Gramly (1982:41) in the Vail, Maine, assemblage.

We also found evidence of two subsoil feature remnants. One of these was an ephemeral concentration at the northwest of our excavations we called Feature #2 (Figure 2). Although in the subsoil, this material was not in a feature with a visible outline but was widely distributed over about four-metre squares, in an area of heavy root and other disturbances. It included 52 bits and pieces of definitive heated and unheated tools and fragments (in-cluding some of the unheated items noted above), as well as 20 definitive waste flakes. There were also 60 flake fragments amongst the material, but we cannot tell if these are fragments of unifacial tools or flaking debris, and 90 heat-produced small fragments and popouts/potlids, the derivation of which, either from tools/preforms or flaking debris, cannot be determined. Interpreting this feature is difficult. The presence of definitive flaking debris, unheated debris and tools/preforms, and a high percentage of mechanically broken pieces (11 per cent), all of which are typical of normal occupation debris, suggests


it may be simply a hearth remnant, or a simple debris dump into which materials were discarded. If a simple debris dump, the burning could be due to post occupational disturbance such as root burns associated with European land clearing. Also, the subsoil artifacts included a small, heated, apparently heavily resharpened and incomplete fluted point, as well as two unheated preforms defi nit ely broken in manufacture, consistent with this view of the feature contents as discarded debris. Moreover, that suggested feature corresponds exactly to the main concentration of unheated ploughzone Palaeo-Indian material derived from normal occupation site activities (Figure 3A). On the other hand, most of the flaking debris in the subsoil is unheated (16 of 20 or 80 per cent) in contrast to the definitive tools and preforms (13/52 or only 25 per cent) and the location does have a secondary ploughzone concentration of heated debris (Figure 3B). This evidence suggests the subsoil heated material is not burned due to post-depositional events like root burns, and that the unheated material, including most of the flaking debris, may be intrusive and due to the extensive disturbance in the area. I personally think the bulk of the evidence indicates the feature represents normal occupation site activities centred around a former hearth, but Brian Deller is not so convinced and the concentration is certainly unusual when compared to what we have seen at other occupation sites.

Regardless of the status of what we call Feature #2, what we called Feature #1 is of more importance here and definitively not simple Palaeo-Indian garbage. This feature was discovered near the end of the first day of excavation on August 17, 1981 and its presence was signalled by a dense ploughzone concentration at the north end of a two-metre unit consisting of heat-fractured Palaeo-Indian debris. The stone material was so dense that when

Figure 2 Distributions of Features in Excavated Area, Crowfield Site.


Figure 3 Density of Unheated (A) and Heated (B) Paleoindian Artifacts and Fragments in Ploughzone, Crowfield Site.


placed in the screens used in ploughzone excavation, it literally sounded like glass breaking, and it is no surprise that this location corresponds to the densest concentration of heat-fractured debris at the site (Figure 3B). After the ploughzone was removed, it became clear that the debris continued down in to the subsoil. No outline of this subsoil feature was visible, but the subsurface concentration consisted of a large semi-circle of debris extending out from the north wall of the square and strongly suggested that a large circular feature was present. The north half of the feature was still buried under the intact ploughzone of the southern part of the two-metre square to the north. We returned to the site the next morning planning to remove the remaining overlying ploughzone to the north but, to put it mildly, to our chagrin, we found the centre of the exposed feature had been damaged by some elicit digging that had disturbed a linear 20–40-cm-wide area west to east across the centre of the feature (see Deller and Ellis 1984: Figures 4 & 5). We later learned this digging had been by local youths who had removed some artifacts which Brian Deller later managed to recover. The amount of information that was lost through this event cannot be underestimated, but we cleaned up the area and continued excavating, eventually recov ering 1,992 items in the subsoil alone.

Since there was no outline in the subsoil, we essentially piece-plotted most of the Feature #1 material in three dimensions and the piece-plotting strongly indicates a relatively circular pit of about 1.5 m across (Figure 4), and reveals the central west-to-east area of linear disturbance by the youths represented by an area of low density. Towards the northeast end, the pit had been disturbed by a root and this accounts for the somewhat ragged distribution in that area. A large root disturbance also cut across, and even undercut diag-onally, the southwest corner of this feature and materials had fallen down into it. Such disturbances are visible in profile views as on the grid west-to-east view (Figure 5A) where the deeper root-displaced material can be seen at the west end. In south-to-north view, the southwest root disturbance, where material collapsed down, again is visible at the south end (Figure 5B), as is the ragged root disturbance at the north end and the linear cut in the middle from the illicit digging. In general, excluding these disturbances, the evidence indicates a pit with a quite regular basin-shaped profile that extended some 20 cm into the subsoil and was probably more than 45 cm deep prior to ploughing.

We continue to do extensive refitting of the material and as a result have a better idea of what can be confidently associated with Feature #1 than we did in the earlier report (Deller and Ellis 1984). I note that there is nothing in the heated refits that clearly ties the activities centred in the Feature #2 area with Feature #1. With but few exceptions, the Feature #1, material has been heated (over 99 per cent) and is often heavily fragmented. Including overlying ploughzone material, and that from the vandalized area, we can definitely associate with Feature #1 some 4,131 separate pieces of heat-fractured artifacts. This total includes numerous small circular popout/potlid flakes and, combined with the generally high degree of fragmentation, clearly indicates the material was heated. Table 1 compares the degree of fragmentation of artifacts in four assemblages we have examined and one sees the high average of 4.7 pieces in refitted artifacts from Crowfield Feature #1 compared to normal occupation debris at the Parkhill and Thedford II sites where it is closer to one to one. Actually, only the Caradoc Late Palaeo-Indian site, to be discussed


below, where a number of unheated artifacts were purposefully smashed, comes close to Crowfield (Table 1). The degree of fragmentation indicates much of the material literally exploded, and experiments by Purdy (1975:136–37) suggest this fragmentation with popout flakes only results from exposing chert artifacts to temperatures rapidly increased to levels in excess of 400o C; this material had to be dumped in a raging fire or placed among a pile of flammable material that was then set ablaze, strongly suggesting purposeful burning.

The only in situ subsoil material from Feature #1 that was not heated was eight small waste flakes, including seven on Onondaga and one, the only Feature #1 object on this material, on Kettle Point chert from the Lake Huron area to the north. These small waste flakes could have easily intruded down worm holes and such, and four were actually in the large root disturbance at the southwest feature edge. There were also 11 very small fragments of calcined bone; some are definitely from small mammal but most are unidentifiable and my colleague, Michael Spence (pers. comm.), concurs with the opinion of earlier specialists as reported in Deller and Ellis (1984), that none of this material is human. Nine occurred in a 10-by-10-cm area of the northeast root disturbance at very shallow subsoil depths and the others were in definitive root disturbances or outside the main feature cluster. This bone seems intrusive and we believe relates to the large amounts of such bone associated with the Late Woodland component at the site that had features with lots of such material (Deller and Ellis 1984:48–49).

Figure 4 Distribution of Piece-Plotted Fragments in Plan View, Crowfield Site, Feature #1.


Turning to the stone items, by the latest counts there are at least 182 separate items we can confidently associate with Feature #1 (Table 2) of which 180 are on cherts. By defi-nition these items are all heated but two items, both bifaces, actually include cross-mended pieces that were not heated. In both cases the unheated pieces were not recovered from the subsoil: they were in the ploughzone in overlying or adjacent squares. One item

Figure 5 Distribution of Piece-Plotted Fragments in Profile Views, Crowfield Site, Feature #1. A: West (left) to east

(right) view parallelling excavation grid orientation; B: south (left) to north (right) view parallelling excavation grid

orientation.


(Figure 6A) was broken into three pieces by a very centrally placed blow and then only the one end was heated and refractured. Such a “radial” break is not due to manufacture (see Caradoc discussion below). The second example (Figure 6B) had simply a small unburned edge bit broken off before the rest of the item was heated.

Other than these unheated pieces, there are no other definitive unheated Palaeo-Indian objects we can associate with Feature #1. There are two other unheated Palaeo-Indian tool fragments in the feature’s vicinity, but these do not mend to Feature #1 objects. These include a single piece of the only fluted preform base split in manufacture (see Deller and Ellis 1984: Figure 20A), which was recovered one metre north of Feature #1, and one half of a mechanically snapped retouched flake tool found in the ploughzone beside the feature. The latter item is the only mechanically broken uniface, heated or unheated, in the Feature #1 area. In both these unheated cases, the items actually refit to other unheated fragments located in areas farther away from the feature. The other piece of the preform is two metres farther away to the northwest and the other half of the retouched flake was seven to eight metres to the west. In other words, these cross-mends suggest these unheated artifacts do not relate to the Feature #1 events, but rather to the concentration of unheated debris associated with Feature #2. We suspect these unheated fragments are closer to Feature #1 due to disturbances like plough-drag.

As I will discuss more below, the burned Feature #1 contents consist almost exclusively of relatively pristine items and there is no doubt they represent some kind of cache. The fact that the only reconjoined unheated pieces to the cache are the small fragments of

Table 1 Number of Fragments Per Artifact*

Number of Fragments

Feature #1, Crowfield Parkhill Thedford II Caradoc

1 6 (5.1%) 80 (77.7%) 50 (56.2%) 4 (9.3%)

2 20 (16.9%) 17 (16.5%) 21 (23.6%) 9 (20.9%)

3 26 (22.0%) 6 (5.8%) 12 (13.5%) 7 (16.3%)

4 26 (22.0%) - 4 (4.5%) 11 (25.6%)

5 14 (11.9%) - - 5 (11.6%)

6 9 (7.6%) - 1 (1.1%) 2 (4.7%)

7 5 (4.2%) - - 3 (7.0%)

8 5 (4.2%) - - 2 (4.7%)

> 8 7 (5.9%) - 1 (1.1%) -

Total 118 103 89 43

Mean4.3 fragments/

artifact1.3 fragments/



artifact

*based only on relatively complete artifacts and excludes minor fragment such as popouts. The two items from

Thedford II, made up of six and more than eight fragments respectively, are actually due to heat shattering.


bifaces produced by mechanical breaks (Figure 6, A-B), and that they do not include some complete pristine items that somehow escaped the fire, suggests to me that the small pieces may have been simply “missed” when the rest of the cache was burned. Both the radially broken biface and the biface with the small edge bite could be due to simple breakage when transporting the items around and eventually to the cache. It is easy to envision these broken bifaces being in a container such as a bag when transported to the site, perhaps even in individual pockets within such a bag, and being broken on the way. Then, when the container contents were removed to place them in the cache, the unheated fragments were simply missed and just left in the bottom of the container/pockets by the feature. Alternatively, at least the radially broken biface could have been deliberately broken and only half-heated as some kind of symbolic act, as radial breaks can and often do result from deliberate breakage and not knapping error (see Caradoc discussion below). Regardless, the lack of heating of only these smaller mechanically produced fragments, and their recovery right by the feature, suggests to me the Feature #1 items were deliberately burned. They were not burned by some post-depositional event such as accidental burning of a pre-existing cache during land clearing or by a natural event such as a brush fire. Otherwise, we would expect even the small fragments in the immediate

Table 2 Artifact Totals, Feature # 1 Crowfield Site

Artifact Class/Type Onondaga Fossil Hill Ancaster Other Total

Fluted Points 8 8 1 - 17

Shouldered Fluted Points 4 1 2 - 7

Fluted Preforms 2 2 - - 4

Shouldered Fluted Preform 1 - - - 1

Fluted Bifaces 1 - - - 1

Large Unrefined Bifaces 27 7 1 1 36

Small Unrefined Bifaces 4 6 3 - 13

Alternately Bevelled Bifaces 3 - - - 3

Normal Backed Bifaces 9 3 - - 12

Backed Biface on Fluted Preform 1 - - - 1

Leaf-Shaped Bifaces 1 - 6 - 7

Rod-like Bifaces 3 - - - 3

Other Bifaces 3 - - - 3

Flake Blanks 34 1 - - 35

Side-Scrapers 18 - - - 18

Retouched Flakes 13 - - - 13

Other Unifaces 5 1 - - 6

Non-Siliceous Artifacts - - - 2 2

TOTALS137

(75.3%)29

(15.9%)13

(7.1%)3

(1.7%)182


vicinity to be burned, and especially given the thorough burning of everything else we can associate with the feature, including even small objects like channel flakes (see below). In fact, if anything, I would expect accidental burning to miss damaging other items than simply these small mechanically produced fragments and expect to get some more pristine, unheated cache items as well. However, such are not present, again suggesting the smaller unheated fragments were accidentally missed or in the case of the radially broken biface, deliberately omitted.

There are six other items with mechanical breaks associated with Feature #1, but these were all represented by pieces heated subsequent to the mechanical breaks. Two of these items are simply fluted preforms with tiny portions of the tips (not recovered) removed during fluting (see below), while the others are all bifaces, including three preforms or what we call unrefined bifaces and the tip of a large thin knife. Save one exception, while they may have breaks, all the remaining fragments are still large and usable as cutting or other tools (see, for example Deller and Ellis 1984: Figure 17H) so

Figure 6 Feature #1 Heated Artifacts with Matching Unheated Fragments Found Nearby. A: Unrefined biface broken by

radial break. Lower two fragments are unheated; B:Unrefined heated biface with small unheated edge “bite.”


could have been retained because of this fact. The one exception is a completely heated unrefined biface that represents the only example where both matching halves of the mechanical break were recovered (see Deller and Ellis 1984: Figure 15A). Here one piece of the matching halves is a rather small snapped end segment of the biface. It is plausible that this single item represents a transport break like the items noted above with cross-mended unheated segments, but here the smaller snapped-off end was also placed in the feature prior to burning. The frequency of mechanical breaks in Feature #1 is only 2.8 per cent as opposed to over 11 per cent in the assemblage associated with Feature #2.

All other items, or 97 per cent, at Feature #1 were complete prior to heating and evidence no practical reason for discard like mechanical snaps or knapping errors. They include 30 fluted bifaces (Figures 7, 8B-C). No single Palaeo-Indian feature anywhere has ever yielded this many fluted items. Seventeen are simple finished fluted points (Figures 7A-B, 8B) while an additional seven items are fluted points with a shoulder on one edge (Figures 7C-D, 8C). In all cases, these latter points have been resharpened down the shouldered edge to form a smooth continuous working edge, whereas on the other edge the resharpening only went partially down and can end abruptly (e.g.,Figure 7D). We believe these are specialized knives and they have been reported elsewhere on points of this style at Reagen, Vermont (Ritchie 1957: Plate 15I) and at Bolton, Ontario (Deller and Ellis 1996). There are also five fluted preforms, including one with a shoulder on one

Figure 7 Normal (A-B) and Single-Shouldered (C-D) Fluted Points, Crowfield Site.


edge. As noted above, two of these preforms have slight tip breaks formed by plunging flutes but one can still make these into shorter finished points—it is obvious they are still usable. As a whole, the fluted bifaces are works of art being exceptionally thin, wide and incredibly straight in longitudinal profile and there are several items where knappers were able to draw large, broad flutes from preforms that had to be under 6 mm thick. There are few stone artifacts that have ever been recovered anywhere in the world that are of this quality.

Figure 8 Bifaces, Crowfield Site. A: Large Alternately Bevelled Biface; B: Fluted Point; C: Shouldered Fluted Point; D-E:

Leaf-Shaped Bifaces.


The most common bifaces are what we call unrefined bifaces, represented by 49 examples, and they seem to be preforms or roughouts for fluted bifaces and other tools (e.g., Figure 6). There are also some other very distinctive biface tools including three large bevelled-edged biface knives (e.g.,Figure 8A), as have been recovered from several occupation sites elsewhere, albeit in fragmentary condition (Ellis and Deller 1988:113–14), and 13 biface knives with a flat back along one edge (Figure 9). The most distinctive of these backed forms are asymmetrical with a quite pointed base (Figure 9A), which can also be a flat surface, and one suspects these narrow thick ends were also placed in hafts, probably sockets. Two other biface tool forms are noteworthy as we have never ever seen them before in any fluted point assemblage in Ontario or for that matter, anywhere in the East. There are at least four bifacial perforators (“drills”) with wider bases (Figure 10). As well, there are eight small, well-made items we call leaf-shaped bifaces (Figures 8D-E, 11). These artifacts have a roughly diamond-shaped plan outline and usually a thickened rounded base.

There are several types of simpler unifacial flake tools from Feature #1. Most common are 18 side-scrapers, a high percentage of which are concave-edged or spokeshave forms and several of which have distinct gravers (Figure 12A-D). There are also at least two beaks or beaked scrapers (Figure 12E-F), a single example of a specialized form of end-scraper with a very narrow bit we call nosed or narrow end-scrapers (Figure 12G; see Ellis and Deller 1988:117–18), and several briefly used retouched flakes. Finally, there are 35 unmodified

Figure 9 Backed Bifaces Crowfield Site.


flakes which are clearly blanks for unifacial tools. These are predominantly large and are the same kinds of blanks that occur as tools, such as side-scrapers in the assemblage including large flakes from biface cores and massive flakes with wedge-shaped cross-sections driven off the corners of quarry blocks. These clearly are not flaking debris, given the total absence of cores and mechanical shatter in the assemblage (heated or unheated) that should be expected if core reduction was taking place. There are a few, relatively small, unmodified but heated flakes, but these consist solely of a single example of a broad, biface thinning flake and five channel flakes or segments thereof from point fluting. Identical examples of these two kinds of small flakes occur used as tools in the assemblage, such as a bilaterally retouched channel

Figure 10 Bifacial Perforator, Crowfield Site.


flake, again suggesting they were retained as tool blanks. If these are simply flaking debris, one would expect to get the tiny retouch flakes from tool manufacture and resharpening, and from uniface as well as biface reduction, but these are not to be found. The two final artifacts associated with the feature are on granitic rock. One is a small, heavily heat-damaged, circular piece (possibly a small hammerstone?) found at the base of the ploughzone right above the feature. The other is a larger cobble with flaking around three margins; use is unknown.

Our most recent research on the Crowfield Feature #1 assemblage has been focusing on the spatial distribution of material in the feature itself (Ellis et al. 2006). While still in progress, this work clearly shows that the refitted fragments of specific artifacts found in the subsoil are in close juxtaposition, strongly indicating they were burned where found and not burned elsewhere and then returned to dump in the feature already fragmented. Of even more importance, it has become quite clear that many of the different artifact types are largely restricted in where they occur to different parts of the feature. As but three examples, of the

Figure 11 Leaf-Shaped Biface, Crowfield Site.


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18 fluted bifaces represented in situ, 16 are wholly in the southern half (Figure 13). The two fluted bifaces in the north half of the feature are so few as to suggest they were moved there by post-depositional disturbance and in both cases they actually have matching fragments in the south half with all the other fluted biface fragments. In direct contrast, the five leaf-shaped bifaces represented in situ are all in the northeast one-metre unit containing the feature, excepting a single refit fragment of one item in the northwest one-metre square (Figure 13). Similarly, the three bifacial perforators represented in place are all located in the north centre end straddling the juncture of the two northern one-metre squares (Figure 13).

Figure 13 Map of Feature #1 Showing Highlighted Locations of Fluted Bifaces (Circles), Bifacial Perforators (Squares)

and Leaf-Shaped Bifaces (Triangles). Edges of four one– metre units encompassing feature are shown.

Map by James Keron.


The distributional evidence, and in some cases the use of Occam’s razor (e.g., the simplest explanation is the best or preferable one), allows one to argue: 1) that the material was sorted and carefully placed in the feature by type/class; 2) suggests that at least some of the types or classes of artifacts we recognize match the conceptualizations of the Palaeo-Indians themselves, since they were sorted into these types and classes; 3) supports the idea the items were burned where found, as it is simpler to assume the types were not burned separately elsewhere and then carefully kept separate and carried to, and placed separately in, the feature; 4) suggests that it is more likely the feature includes an individual’s tool kit than contributions from several individuals because they were sorted by type or class and not a more randomly placed assortment; and 5) indicates that Palaeo-Indians transported their tool kits around sorted into types which had a different functional role in the artifact kit (e.g., tool blank versus tool) or which were used for different purposes. The last-named inference makes logical sense as it would be easier for an individual to find the right tool for a particular task if transported sorted into different functional types, and especially in the larger and complex tool kits produced by these groups. Historically known groups with complex tool kits used the same strategy, such as the Inuit and Alaskan Eskimo. However, this is the first good direct evidence anywhere that Palaeo-Indians followed the same strategy.

What is Feature #1? The obvious answer is I do not specifically know. We can con -clude though that:

1) the tools are everyday items, including unfinished tools and even resharpened, and in a few cases apparently recycled, ones, but they are not simply worn out and discarded items. There are no pragmatic reasons, other than alternatives such as utilitarian or ritual caching, for the placement of this material in the feature;

2) the very large amount of material is unheard of for Palaeo-Indian sites and I note that the estimates here of the number of artifacts are very much minimal ones because of the extensive amount of heat damage and fragmentation. Again, this quantity suggests caching for utilitarian or ritual practices—how many garbage pits have 30 complete fluted bifaces, 49 unfluted preforms, 16 biface knives of various forms, etc.? No Palaeo-Indian feature anywhere has this much lithic debris, whether it is in pristine condition or not;

3) the differential distribution of the different artifact types within the feature indicates it was placed rather carefully in the pit and of course, also indicates this is not a garbage pit;

4) all the material definitely in the pit (e.g., in the subsoil) was burned and the few unburned items still found in situ, which are exclusively a few tiny retouch flakes, mainly in obvious root disturbances, are undoubtedly intrusive;

5) the material was purposefully burned or destroyed, as indicated by its dense concentration and thorough destruction in one pit feature, and the fact the only unheated pieces in the immediate feature area are three small pieces produced by mechanical fractures that can be reconjoined to heated fragments and could easily have been missed in placing the material into the pit;

and 6) the material was burned where found as indicated by the close spacing of cross-mended fragments of individual artifacts in situ and the differential distribution of different artifact types and classes in the feature itself.

Given the large amount of material, that it is all in a usable condition and that it was


purposefully destroyed, one must conclude that this assemblage represents a non-utilitarian behaviour involving stone tools. It could be grave goods associated with a cremation (Deller and Ellis 1984), it could be simply a non-burial but sacred offering (Wright 1995), but whatever the case, the creator(s) of this assemblage set out to purposefully destroy a large number of useable stone artefacts ... and succeeded.

The Caradoc SiteThe Caradoc site was discovered in the spring of 1997 by a local resident, James McLeod, who recovered 29 pieces of broken lithic tools on a knoll surface that had been in pasture for 50+ years but had not been cultivated before. Many of these items were apparently found within a very small spatial area of about one-metre-square, although a few items were said to have been more widely distributed. Brian Deller immediately thought this was an early site, and when he showed the material to me I had to concur. Of especial note was the fact the assemblage included a number of large biface fragments and derivative large used biface thinning flakes. The use of such bifaces and their flakes for tool blank production is characteristic of Palaeo-Indian assemblages in the area, as well as elsewhere. Also, the assemblage was totally on Bayport chert from Michigan located some 175 to 200 km north west of the site (Figure 1). In southwestern Ontario, the use of Bayport chert was relatively heavy in Palaeo-Indian versus later times, although we had never seen an Ontario assemblage completely on Bayport chert previously. Finally, Bayport chert is a light grey colour but it weathers by reacting to moisture and iron content in the soil to a chocolate brown colour. In our experience, such weathering only occurs on older materials and in fact, we had only seen such heavily weathered Bayport chert on the fluted point materials from the Parkhill site in Ontario (Ellis and Deller 2000).

Besides the age of the site, we were intrigued by the large amount of material that was recovered and also, by the breakage patterns. As shown on Table 1, excluding assemblages, the material was much more fragmentary than other unheated occupation assemblages, averaging almost four separate fragments per re-mended artifact. With very few exceptions, the break surfaces were weathered and were easily distinguishable from the relatively few recent breaks that showed the grey, unweathered Bayport chert surface and so we concluded they were broken in antiquity. In subsequent surface examination, we recovered several more pieces including a complete lanceolate concave-based but unfluted point (Figure 14A) and thought that clearly the site deserved excavations.

Like Crowfield, Caradoc is located on a low knoll/ridge just northeast of a small intermittently flowing tributary creek. In excavation, all ploughzone soil was screened one shovel-load at a time and almost all artifact recoveries piece-plotted to the area of the removed shovel-load. Thirty-five square metres were excavated in this way. Including the surface-collected material, 286 separate artifacts or pieces thereof were recovered that fit together to form 70+ items. Most of the material (>98 per cent) was recovered from the ploughzone. The ploughzone itself varied considerably in thickness versus other sites in the area, and was as shallow as 10 cm in some areas. We attribute the thickness variation to the fact the site had only been cultivated once and the equipment bounces. In areas with


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a shallow ploughzone, such as those in the centre of the excavation, a number of the items were recovered right at the base of that ploughzone and the subsoil surface in the same areas had much more evidence of subsoil disturbance, such as root stains and worm and grub holes/burrows. This evidence of more organic disturbance, is undoubtedly due to the fact the subsoil in those same shallow ploughzone areas was closer to the original ground surface and more disturbed. Some subsoil artifacts were recovered mainly in the south-central part of the excavated area and coincided exclusively with the areas of shallow ploughzone and maximum evidence of organic disturbance. With but one or two exceptions, all appeared to be in disturbed context, occurring in rodent burrows, worm holes or root holes.

Only one major concentration of material of some 12 m2 was present, based on density plotting of the artifacts (Figure 15A) although one area just to the north of the centre of the main concentration where the site discoverer had removed material had a low yield. The density of material drops off rapidly in all directions with declines on the order of from 20 to 0 artifact recoveries in adjacent one-metre units. The spacing of individual pieces making up refits is most often close together, suggesting artifacts were located horizontally near their original depositional location and you can get some impression of this from some selected plots (Figure 15B). This evidence suggests that most artifacts were broken at or very close to where they were deposited. Plotting of some selected objects (Figure 15B) also shows that while individual pieces of the same objects were found in close proximity, the separate objects themselves were found over a substantial area up to 3–4 m apart at opposite edges of the concentration. Since ploughing and land clearing would not separate and spread the same pieces of the same object over such an area, so the material was not originally in a single small localized feature but was spread over a large area initially. The simplest explanation is they were broken where found and left on the ground surface.

All artifact recoveries from the site were pieces of lithic items and all of these had to be brought in by human action as the field is stone free. After refitting, some 71 separate artifacts are present (Table 3). Of these, 62 are chert items and, with one possible exception, all are on Bayport chert from Michigan. The single point (Figure 14A) does not really fall into any named type, but it blends characteristics of the Great Lakes Holcombe and Hi-Lo types so we have started to call them colloquially Hi-Ho points. These are guess-dated to just before 10,000 BP. Three other bifacial tools were recovered including a lanceolate knife (Figure 14C) and a large biface with alternate tip bevelling (Figure 14B) as have been reported from several fluted point sites across North America, including the three mentioned earlier from Crowfield Feature #1. The remainder of the bifaces all appear to be unfinished tools or cores. One type (Figures 16, 17A), represented by 13 examples, includes large, ovate bifaces that are cores or preforms or more likely served both functions. A sec-ond type, represented by about 17 examples (Figure 14C-D) is smaller and more parallel-sided. The other artifacts are all unifaces, of which five are large side-scrapers identical in form to those seen on fluted point sites. All the other 22 Caradoc chert tools are briefly used flakes of which some large examples (e.g., Figure 17B) could simply be unresharpened side-scrapers. Several of these are on large “blade-flakes” from unidirectional worked cores, which is typical of Palaeo-Indian sites in the area. There are also some smaller used flakes and several of these are made on flakes from large bifaces, again this is typical of earlier fluted point sites.


Figure 15 Maps of Stone Fragment Density (A) and Select Cross-Mends (B), Caradoc Site. From Ellis and Deller (2002).


The items not on cherts are mostly nondescript and include a large hammerstone/anvil cobble, an iron pyrite concretion that may be part of a fire-making kit, a very fragmentary expedient slate artifact, and five fractured and worn sandstone/siltstone pebbles, which, if not for their context, we would see as just rocks.

As implied above, except for five chert items that appear complete, all the remaining 57 chert items are quite fragmentary and there is no doubt they were purposefully smashed. In order to aid interpretation, I carried out experiments in breaking a series of replicas under a variety of conditions. Bayport chert was provided by Donald Simons and these items were produced by master flintknapper Dan Long. Based on these experiments and the fractures, usually one blow or fracture initiation was used to shatter an object, but in a third of the Caradoc cases two or three were employed. The most common breakage by far was of two kinds. Thirty-four per cent of the items had “snaps” where the item had simply split in two (e.g., Figures 14E, 16). Often, on one half of the conjoined snapped surface is a clear swelling resulting from the delivery of the breakage blow to the surface. The other and most common breakage pattern, present on 50 per cent of the artifacts, is the radial break where the object split into a series of triangular segments (e.g., Figures 14B-D, 17).

There are many things that indicate this breakage was purposeful and not a product of knapping or even equipment, such as plough damage. The absence of flaking debris is great evidence of non-manufacture breakage as is the absence of any definitive manufacture breaks such as perverse fractures, overshots and so on. The weathering of the breaks is

Table 3 Caradoc Site Artifact Totals

Artifact Type Number of Items

Hi-Ho Point 1

Alternately Bevelled Biface 1

Leaf-Shaped Finished Biface 1

Thin Finished Oval Biface Base 1

Small Oval Preform? 1

Ovate Bifaces 13

Normal Linear Bifaces 12

Narrowed Linear Bifaces 5

Side-Scrapers 5

Small Retouched Flakes 16

Large Retouched Flakes 6

Slate Item (in six pieces) 1

Granitic Tool Fragment (in two pieces) 1

Fractured and Worn Sandstone Pebbles 5

Iron Pyrite Concretion 1

Large Hammerstone/Anvil 1

Total 71


Figure 16 Large Ovate Biface, Caradoc Site. From Ellis and Deller (2002).

Figure 17 Radially fractured Large Ovate Biface (A) and Retouched Flake (B), Caradoc Site. Arrow indicates recent,

post-depositional break.


clear evidence they are ancient and not due to equipment, but there are several other things that indicate this too. For example, there are no breaks which originated at the edges of objects; all are from facial blows and equipment would not favour faces to that extent. By examining publications on plough-disturbed caches or even those run over by bulldozers and the like, they all have over 17 per cent edge-induced breaks as compared to zero at Caradoc (Ellis and Deller 2002:64). Similarly, the most common breakage form in the experiments was radial breaks at around 50 per cent or almost identical to the Caradoc assemblage. Again, no equipment-disturbed caches have near that frequency of radial breaks having under, and usually much less than 30 per cent (Ellis and Deller 2002: Table 3.1). The reason is radials occur through facial blows and not by striking the edges. Equipment does not favour striking solely faces of the objects. A final aspect I will mention showing purposeful breakage are what I call fracture flakes or rebound flakes. Several Caradoc artifacts had evidence they were struck on one face, but they also exhibited flake removals that were driven off the fracture surface and originated from the opposite face to that where the breakage blow was delivered. I achieved the same results in the experiments, but I only got these fractures when the item was broken on a stone anvil or support; they are rebound flakes because when the artifact is forced against the anvil by the breakage blow, the flakes are knocked off from the opposite direction across the fracture surface by contact with that underlying anvil. This kind of fracture is clear evidence that the Caradoc items were purposefully broken and also, that an anvil was used to break some or all of them—maybe even the large, pitted anvil stone recovered from the site surface.

To sum up, what we have here again is a cache of stone items that were purposefully broken or wasted, although, unlike Crowfield, they were not burned to destroy them.

Discussion and ConclusionsAt both Crowfield and Caradoc, we have evidence for the deliberate breakage of pristine objects and this evidence clearly shows they were offerings of some kind and involved sacred ritual. Historically, at a worldwide scale, sacred ritual often involves or involved the offering of material objects as a connection to, or severing of relationships with, different perceived realms of human existence (see, for example, Renfrew and Bahn 2004:417). Moreover, it often was a considerable sacrifice, as at the sites reported here. At Crowfield over 4.5 kg of chert brought in from 100 km or more away was destroyed and at Caradoc over 2.6 kg of useful Bayport chert items carried in from more than 175 kilometres away were “wasted.” Also, much of the sacrificed material at both sites are objects with much utility remaining, such as preforms and tool blanks. We rarely get preforms, and never get blanks, from Palaeo-Indian occupation sites because they are usually carefully husbanded and made into tools such as points and scrapers respectively.

The deliberate destruction of the artifacts at both Crowfield and Caradoc is superb evidence that stone tools had a deeper meaning to Palaeo-Indians, as are several Late Palaeo-Indian sites in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, at least one of which is definitely a burial (again of a sub-adult), where stone artifacts were purposefully burned (Buckmaster and Paquette 1988; Mason and Irwin 1960; Meinholz and Kuehn 1996;


Ritzenthaler 1972). It may be, as Jim Wright (1995:116) argued, that these examples indicate “animisim was an essential element of their spiritual belief system.” Regardless, the use of stone items in ritual caches including burials is, I think, significant as we do not have any evidence of the extensive use of stone tools in comparable ritual by later groups in areas such as the central Great Lakes until almost the appearance of real cemeteries about 9,000 to 10,000 sidereal years later.

The later cemeteries are often interpreted as evidence of increasing population packing and territoriality, or more broadly, increasing societal complexity. I do not think we can easily interpret the Palaeo-Indian behaviours as evidence of societal complexity; to me the bulk of the evidence still indicates Palaeo-Indians were most similar to the small- scale, low-population-density band societies known from recent times. Rather, the Palaeo-Indian use of stone tools is, I think, more related to their world view or their internal perceptions and ultimately, to their history. Perhaps, as is the case historically among the foragers of Australia (e.g., Morphy 1995; Taçon 1991), they had sacred associa-tions with places such as the locations where the raw materials used for these tools came from, places that were strongly associated with ancestral beings and important events— a function both religious and social. Even a passing familiarity with the ethnographic and ethno-historic literature reveals that “flint” also had a large number of widespread cognitive and symbolic associations amongst Canadian First Nations and Native Ameri- cans (for a good summary of some of these associations, see Hall 1983). As in Australia, stone was not simply the medium or material in which tools were made, but it had a whole series of much deeper meanings and associations with supernatural beings and mythical events. In this way, “flint” related to their view of the world and of course, to the origin and place of humans within it. Surely Palaeo-Indians would have had comparable views to their much later descendants, and perhaps even more so, given how they treated stone artifacts.

I am even willing to speculate that the clear evidence of deeper associations as a whole among these early peoples might relate ultimately to their colonization of new areas as David Meltzer (2002) has argued for the Clovis caches, but rather than relate those caches to simple practical motives I would go farther. It is clear that all modern hunter-gatherers have a strong sense of place and that it highly structures their world view. They view and construct the landscape, and imbue it with mythical and symbolic significance, peopling it as a cultural landscape of past individuals, groups and events (see, for example, Kelly 2003:45–47). As such, it is central to their view of their own heritage and in shaping and reshaping their identity (e.g., Morphy 1995). In colonizing new areas, there is no existing culturally constructed and known landscape. People must create this cultural overlay and they must create and bring that sense of place with them. In these situations Kornfeld et al. (1999:155, 158–59) have argued they may have had to have had a “mobile sense of place” and that certain Clovis technological practices, including caching3, may have been means of “socializing,” or as I prefer, “culturalizing,” the landscape. I have always been impressed by the fact that Palaeo-Indians used distinctive stone materials that are easily visually identifiable and are more spatially variable in appearance than other kinds of raw materials, and that therefore can be more easily tied to specific locations on the landscape


(see Ellis 1989:157). By making offerings of stone items as sacred caches, items that can be tied to known places on the already explored landscape, they may have brought that sense of place with them, and in doing so, incorporated new places into their cultural repertoire, their history and their identity. By continuing to use particular sources into subsequent later Palaeo-Indian times, they substantiated their origins, recounted their histories, and reinforced and remade, I am sure often, their identities. It may be simply coincidence, but the areal distribution of the Clovis non-blade caches, which are exclu-sively located in the northern Plains to the Northwest, have long been pointed to as the point of entry of Clovis peoples to the areas south of the continental ice-sheets, whether they got there by an ice-free corridor to the north or the coast just to the west. Therefore, to climb out further on a limb, it could mark the trail of their initial entry.

I remember being asked at my Ph.D. defence, over 20 years ago, by one of my committee members,4 who was in a reflective mood at the time as committee members are wont to be on such occasions, whether having written a 600+ page dissertation on Palaeo-Indian stone tools and debris (Ellis 1984) did I really think that stone tools were all that important in the daily life of Palaeo-Indians, or did they only loom large in the world view of Palaeo-Indian archaeologists as it was all we had to go on. I responded at that time that I really did not know exactly how important they were, but upon reflection, that certain characteristics of the workmanship and so on indicated to me that they were certainly much more relatively important to them than they were to later descendant groups. I remain unconvinced that we can understand, or even fully appreciate, Palaeo-Indian stone tool production and use solely or simply in terms of environmentally deterministic, utilitarian and least-effort models. The contexts and manners in which we find stone artifacts used, such as at Crowfield Feature #1 and Caradoc, do nothing but reinforce and strengthen that viewpoint. Indeed, I think they demand a wider interpretive scope to our thinking.

AcknowledgementsI am very pleased to be able to contribute this paper to a volume in honour of James V. Wright. While some archaeologists were sceptical of the Crowfield site finds when they were first reported by Brian Deller and I, and apparently continue to remain so, there was absolutely no doubt in Jim Wright’s mind of their significance. Jim and I were both sure that Palaeo-Indians thought more of their stone tools than many archaeologists! I vividly remember Jim’s excitement and enthusiasm when he first had a chance to view the Crowfield site materials in person in the early 1980s.

The research reported here was made possible by grants from the Ontario Heritage Foundation to Brian Deller and from the Agnes Cole Dark Fund, University of Western Ontario, to Ellis and Roger King. I obviously owe a tremendous amount of thanks to several people mentioned in the paper such as Don Simons, Dan Long, Mike Spence and of course, Brian Deller. I cannot thank them enough for their help, although for some reason Dan declined to watch me or help me break the artifact replicas he had made. Don and Phyllis Simons are also owed a great deal of thanks, along with Juliet and Peggy Garfit, for their assistance in piece-plotting the Feature #1 materials at Crowfield during those long, hot days in the field. Roger King and James Keron have also been of immense aid in the


ongoing spatial and soil analyses of the Crowfield materials and they provided the Feature #1 graphics included here. Bill Fox identified the Ancaster chert artifacts at Crowfield and is heartily thanked for his assistance. I acknowledge Neal Ferris and Brooke Milne, who through comment and discussion have expanded my theoretical horizons. Of course, none of them is responsible for any flights of fancy in which I may have indulged (and there are several in this paper!). I also thank the London Chapter, Ontario Archaeological Society for permission to reproduce some of the Caradoc figures for this paper from Ellis and Deller (2002) and Jim McLeod for bringing the Caradoc site to our attention. All artifact drawings are by Cesare D’Annibale. Finally, an earlier version of this paper was developed for the 2004 Symposium of the Archaeological Society of Ohio on the Peopling of the Americas. I want to give a special thanks to the Ohio Society and especially, Brian Foltz, for inviting me to participate in a truly memorable conference and for all of their hospitality.

Notes1. Some investigators like to co-opt the term “cache” to refer solely to “groupings” of artifacts/

materials left with anticipation they would be retrieved for use at some future point. However, we do not often know archaeologically if in fact that is what these “groupings” are: they could be offerings as in the Clovis case. Since there are no easily employed terms to refer to these ambiguous cases, I prefer to use the term “cache” to refer to any such grouping of artifacts/materials in general and employ the designation “utilitarian” for the more mundane caches and “ritual” for obvious sacred offerings.

2. Actually, the large fluted biface from the Richey–Roberts site pictured in colour on the report’s cover (Gramly 1993) seems to have red ochre right up to near the tip on one face, suggesting it went beyond simply the haft.

3. I am less convinced of their argument that this process explains “fluting.”4. For the record, it was Knut Fladmark.

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