Stemmed Points and the Ice Free Corridor

Date/Time: 
Thursday, May 6, 2021 - 15:00
Presentation Type: 
Oral (pre-recorded)
Author(s): 
John W. (Jack) Ives - University of Alberta
Key Word(s): 
Stemmed Points
Ice-Free Corridor
Fluted Points

Given the paraglacial impacts affecting the ice-free corridor, it has made a great deal of sense to focus upon extracting toolstone, morphological and distributional information from the Western Canadian Fluted Point Database in contemplating the earliest Indigenous settlement of Canada east of the Pacific Coast. Even though Tse’K'wa (Charlie Lake Cave) remains the only site at which a Corridor fluted point has been dated (to a Younger Dryas time frame), fluting and basal thinning strategies are readily recognizable, reflecting a comparatively narrow range of time (~13,000 to 12,000 years ago). Stemmed points involve a more generalized hafting strategy, spanning a decidedly greater time range (>13,000-~ 9,000 years ago for the Western Stemmed Point tradition).  One corollary of the recognition that stemmed points occupy time ranges from pre-Clovis through to the later early pre-contact period would be that early bearers of stemmed point traditions had similar opportunities to enter southern portions of a Corridor already being inhabited 13,500 years ago, as at Wally’s Beach. It is prudent therefore to consider the variability in stemmed points from the Corridor, and to assess them against northern (Sluiceway, Mesa and Dry Creek Component 2 materials) and southern comparators (Parman, Haskett, and Cougar Mountain).