34 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 95 



SUAIMARY AND DISCUSSION 



The 1935 investigations at the Lindenmeier site consisted of the 

 digging of two large trenches through the area where objects attribu- 

 table to Folsom man are found, of further excavations in the deep pit 

 in the ravine bank where most of the specimens obtained during the 

 preliminary investigations were dug, and of uncovering the remains 

 of a group of bison at the location where Judge C. C. Cofifin, A. L. 

 Coffin, and Maj. Roy G. Coffin made their original discoveries. The 

 collection obtained from the work contains some 750 specimens, large 

 quantities of chipper's debris, and numerous bones from animals 

 killed by the former occupants of the region. The artifacts comprise 

 a series of tools and implements of which 11.3 percent are points, 

 32.8 scrapers, 5.6 gravers, i.o chisel-gravers, 0.5 choppers, 3.0 knives, 

 6.3 large blades, 0.8 hammerstones, 1.6 pieces of hematite which 

 have been rubbed or shaped, 13.6 channel flakes from the longitudinal 

 grooves in the faces of the typically fluted points, 4.0 sandstone rub- 

 bers, 0.5 pieces of bone showing evidences of workmanship, and 19 

 percent flakes showing signs of work but too nondescript in character 

 to permit classification as types of implements. The artifacts as a 

 group show that the lithic component in the local cultural pattern was 

 primarily a flake industry, slightly less than 1.5 percent of the imple- 

 ments being of the core type. 



The size range in the points in the collection raises a pertinent ques- 

 tion, namely. On what type of weapon were they used? The general 

 conception, based on knowledge of the Southwest and the Mexican 

 area, has been that the bow and arrow was a late development in the 

 New World and that older cultures employed a spear and spear 

 thrower. Archeologists occupied with the Folsom problem have as- 

 sumed that the fluted points, because of their size, were used in a shaft 

 hurled from a spear thrower. Many of the smaller examples in the 

 present group could easily have functioned as arrowheads and sug- 

 gest that the early bison hunters may on occasion have used the bow. 

 Definite conclusions should not be attempted solely on the evidence 

 of stone points, but attention should be called to the fact that all of 

 them are not necessarily of a size requiring a spear shaft. 



Interesting evidence on one of the " burning issues " in the arche- 

 ology of the western plains area, the Folsom-Yuma problem, was 

 obtained from the investigations. Stratigraphic material demonstrated 

 that as far as the Lindenmeier site is concerned there was only a very 

 late contemporaneity between Folsom and Yuma points, the Yuma 

 appearing toward the end of the Folsom occupation and surviving 



