New tools, new human niches: The significance of the Dalton adze and the origin of heavy-duty woodworking in the Middle Mississippi Valley of North America

Publication date: June 2018
Source:Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Volume 50
Author(s): Richard W. Yerkes, Brad H. Koldehoff
Innovations in tool technology during the early Holocene in the North American midcontinent are related to construction of a new human niche focusing on woodlands, water travel, and improved aquatic and terrestrial resources. Production and use of early Holocene Dalton adzes and other tools from sites and caches exemplify these adaptations. Subsistence remains are not abundant, but microwear and technological analyses of flaked stone tools can be used to infer production of dugout canoes and document trends that reflect new sustainable and resilient lifeways and complex social networks. The functions of tools from Dalton sites and tool caches in Illinois and Arkansas are contrasted with typical Clovis tools. Technological and microwear analyses reveals that the Dalton adze was made and used for heavy-duty woodworking—felling trees and likely for manufacturing dugout canoes. Dalton toolkits are highly formalized, consisting of adzes, scrapers, awls, and points used both as projectiles and knives.Large distinctive Sloan points were exchanged within emerging Dalton social networks. Dalton toolkits, often considered late PaleoIndian, are part of an Early Archaic horizon. New tools helped Dalton groups to create new niches as they settled into new woodland and riverine landscapes and laid the foundation for later Archaic and Woodland socio-economic systems.



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