Description

The Pickwick point was named for examples recovered from sites along the Pickwick Basin of the Tennessee River Valley. Pickwick points are medium sized blades measuring between 2.75 to 4 inches in length. The blade is large and triangular with excurvate to recurved blade edges. The stem is straight to tapering with an excurvate basal edge. Shoulders are tapering in relation to the stem.
Stone tools play a privileged role in archaeology as they are extremely durable, and they survive through most circumstances. Palaeolithic tools have survived for hundreds of thousands of years, enduring repeated Ice Ages and being washed down rivers, but we can still pick them up, see how were made and say things about their makers. Even for more recent periods, the effects of weather and ploughing over thousands of years means more often than not stone tools are the only surviving evidence for where people were living and what they were doing.