Petrographic chert characterization of Suwannee projectile points from Florida and implications for hunter-gatherer mobility during the Younger Dryas

Abstract

Toolstone provenance studies in the southeastern United States have historically been used to reconstruct past human behavior using a variety of methodological approaches. For over 40 years, the Quarry Cluster Method of chert provenance has been the prevailing method for characterizing Florida cherts with the goal of informing our archaeological understanding of past human landscape use, mobility, and technological organization. While the Quarry Cluster Method is a robust comparative petrographic approach, it has seen only minimal use for late Pleistocene diagnostic artifacts. This study builds upon the initial contributions of the Quarry Cluster Method by presenting the results of new raw-material surveys from northern Florida and southern Georgia, as well as new petrographic descriptions for 265 chert samples from 74 localities in Alabama, Florida and Georgia. These new data are then compared to 163 Younger Dryas-age Suwannee projectile points from three disparate project areas in northern Florida. The results of this chert provenance study shed light on a broad trend of chert conveyance and overlapping landscape use at key localities in northern Florida, most especially in areas that may have provided access to surface water during the arid Younger Dryas. This case study is placed in the broader context of late Pleistocene and early Holocene mobility studies in Florida and the greater Southeast, and a pattern of water-focused landscape use is informed and supported through chert provenance.