Description

WHEELER EXCURVATE
This point is surely from Georgia Dodge Co. Flint River Flint.
NAME: James Cambron named these points from examples found on the Stone Pipe site located in the Wheeler Basin of the Tennessee River in Limestone County, Alabama. Cambron initially named three variants; the Wheeler Excurvate, the Wheeler Recurvate, and the Wheeler Triangular. It is uncertain who named the much rarer Wheeler Expanded variant.

AGE: Examples of the Wheeler Excurvate variant were recovered with transitional Paleoindian materials at the Quad site and with the other Wheeler variants on pre-shell mound sites in northern Alabama. T.M.N. Lewis illustrated a fluted example of the Wheeler Excurvate point from the collection of Aaron Clement in the 1960 issue of the Tennessee Archaeologist, Vol.XVI, No.1. A reworked example of the type was also recovered from level 11 at the University of Alabama site MS201 in Marshall County. All of this led Cambron to assign the type to a transitional Paleo association.

DESCRIPTION: The Wheeler Excurvate is a small to medium sized auriculate point with an incurvate basal edge, steeply worked basal edge and excurvate blade edges. The 20 examples recovered from 14 sites along the Tennessee River Valley ranged between 67mm and 27mm in length with an average of 48mm. The cross-section is usually lenticular, but may be plano-convex. The distal end is acute. The blade is developed with random flaking. Larger, broad flakes were used to develop the basal concavity. Shorter, narrow flakes were used to form the steeply flaked basal edge. The hafting area is parallel pointed with a deeply incurvate and steeply flaked basal edge. Some examples are fluted and occasionally ground along the blade and hafting area edges.

DISTRIBUTION: Wheeler points seem to be fairly localized in the Tennessee River Valley area of Alabama and Tennessee.

WHEELER RECURVATE