ARCHEOLOGICAL IJSTVESTrGATIONS EST MISSOURI 207 



widely spread and occur in slightly variant form over most of North 

 America (Birket-Smith, 1929, p. 357). This distribution would sug- 

 gest a considerable antiquity, but it is not clear how far into the pre- 

 historic period the use of the beamer extends. Collins (1932, p. 20 

 and pi. 8, Z>, c,) reports broken specimens from Deasonville, from a 

 period following the Marksville Hopewellian in time. McKern (1930, 

 p. 454) states that "two bone scrapers of the beamer type" were taken 

 from effigy mound 9 of the Kletzien group, Sheboygan County, Wis. 

 The affiliations here are with Woodland, but the temporal relation- 

 ships to Wisconsin Hopewell are not clear. In New York the beam- 

 ing tool is common at Iroquois sites ; that it is also pre-Iroquoian is 

 indicated by Kitchie's work at Castle Creek (Ritchie, 1934, p. 35) and 

 at Sea Breeze (Ritchie, 1940b, p. 33). The Sea Breeze site, it should 

 be noted, shows several highly characteristic Hopewellian traits. Un- 

 published data indicate that the metapoclial beamer is also a very 

 common type in prehistoric Woodland sites of the Atlantic seaboard. 

 From this it appears that while the beamer may be diagnostic in a 

 sense, i. e., locally, of Upper Mississippi, it also occurs repeatedly in 

 earlier horizons. 



Other artifact types whose distribution might profitably be re- 

 examined to determine their antiquity are antler tip projectile points 

 and antler cylinders. Projectile points are common in Fort Ancient 

 and Oneota sites, i. e., in Upper Mississippi horizons, and in the Mis- 

 souri Valley and Eastern Plains have heretofore been regarded as pro- 

 tohistoric. They occur, however, in widely scattered prehistoric sites 

 in the Missouri Valley, in Hopewellian sites in Fulton County, 111., at 

 numerous Woodland sites in the Potomac drainage, and in sites of 

 the Laurentian aspect in New York. Collins (1941, p. 146) reports 

 them from the Copell burial site in Vermilion Parish, La., attributed 

 to the Tchefuncte period. Ford and Willey (1941, p. 333) assign 

 the type to the "archaic" stage in the eastern United States. The 

 distribution and antiquity of the antler cylinders or rubbing tools 

 also remains to be worked out in detail. I am not certain whether 

 the "antler drifts" or "tapping tools" ascribed by Ford and Willey 

 to the archaic are identical or analogous forms under a different name. 



In previous papers (Wedel, 1938, 1940a) I have referred to the 

 Renner site as Hopewellian, with the further suggestion that in classi- 

 ficatory terms it and nearby unexcavated sites possibly represent "the 

 Kansas City focus of an as yet unnamed westerly aspect" of this 

 phase. Wliether such a classification is still tenable, in view of the 

 considerable number of non-Hopewellian elements, may be questioned. 

 Aside from the striking similarity in pottery, there is a bare handful 

 of materials that are distinctively Hopewellian — flake knives, imita- 

 tion bear teeth, clay and stone cones or "fumicls," perhaps clay figur- 

 ines. On the other hand, it may also be questioned whether the 



