Novaculite Tool Production and Exchange

The Jones Mill site is on the Ouachita River near the fall line between the Ouachita Mountains and Coastal Plain physiographic provinces in southwest Arkansas. People living here would be well-situated to use resources from the Ouachita Mountains — such as novaculite — and may have exchanged some to neighbors living in stone-poor areas further south. Artifacts of novaculite, magnetite and hematite, igneous rock, quartz crystal, and slate have been found on Archaic period sites in Mississippi and Louisiana. Did people come to Jones Mill to get their own raw materials, or did local residents make extra to trade? This is a key question investigated with this research project. Our research focuses on the use of novaculite by Indians living at Jones Mill. Novaculite was made into tools — dart points, knives, scrapers, drill bits — by Indians in this region. But it was also transported to sites in what are now Louisiana and Mississippi, as early as 6000 B.C., during what archeologists term the Middle Archaic period. We are interested in learning whether Indians living at the site were making stone tools out of novaculite for trade down the Ouachita River. A 2011 poster presentation at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference by Mary Beth Trubitt and Vanessa Hanvey explored the novaculite reduction sequence at Jones Mill. In this poster, we used analyses of three datasets (debitage, biface fragments, and projectile points) from the Jones Mill site to reconstruct the novaculite reduction sequence. We looked at what stages of biface reduction were done at the site, when in the sequence the novaculite was heat treated, and whether there were changes between the Tom’s Brook and Crystal Mountain components (ca. 6000 - 4300 B.C.). Using a combination of mass analysis and attribute analysis of individual flakes, we compared sites where different stages of reduction took place. Larger/heavier pieces of debitage as well as higher proportions of shatter and cortex characterize quarry sites and workshops located next to quarries, as compared to habitation sites on the Ouachita River such as Jones Mill (3HS28). Here, residents brought novaculite in as stage 2 cores and bifaces, but most of the pieces discarded at the site were broken stage 3 bifaces. An analysis of fracture patterns indicates that material flaws and heat-related breaks were common on stage 2 cores and bifaces. Apparently stage 2 bifaces were heat treated, and in the subsequent flaking some were broken either along cracks and flaws or because of overheating. There is a slight increase in differential luster on flakes and bifaces in upper levels of Stratum III, suggesting heat treatment was more common later in the Middle Archaic sequence, a pattern for further investigation.