Interdisciplinary Approaches for Identifying the Sources of Stone
Tool Raw Materials Used by the First Occupants of Northeastern North
America

The earliest occupants of North America are referred to as Paleoindians.  They were hunter-gatherers that covered large territories in their quest for food and other resources.  For the past five years, the speaker has been studying the rocks that were used by these people to make their tools (arrowheads, knives, hide scrapers, drills).  The Bull Brook site in eastern Massachusetts is one of the earliest (ca. 11,000 BC) and largest (23,000 square metres) paleoindian sites in North America, and is emblematic of the large territories covered by Paleoindians.  Various analytical techniques have been applied to accurately identify the geological and geographic source of the rocks used by the Bull Brook inhabitants: X-ray fluorescence (XRF), neutron activation analysis (NAA), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and thin section petrography.  The stone tool raw materials come from various directions, all more than 250 km distant (Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire and Maine).  These interdisciplinary analyses allow the archaeologist to reconstruct the territories occupied in the past by paleoindian hunter-gatherers and therefore understand how these early North Americans were organized socially in a new landscape.