Submitted by Scott Jones

In 1979, Mr. Lee Thomas surface collected 86 probable Paleoindian bifaces and tools from a plowed field near the Oostanaula River in Gordon County, Georgia. Known as the Graham Creek (9GO32) site, it was initially assigned a Woodland period date.

In 2013 Mr. Thomas contacted David Anderson (PIDBA, Paleoindian Database of the Americas) for assistance with the collection, who referred him to Jerald Ledbetter. This resulted in a collaboration between Lee Thomas, Jerald Ledbetter, and Scott Jones in which the bifaces and tools were subjected to critical examination by the senior and junior authors of this report. Based on the analysis, the authors have concluded that they are Paleoindian in age, although they are not “classic Clovis” in form. Made mainly from two distinctive non-local raw materials, the bifaces and tools are heavily curated and reworked.

The large number of bifaces from 9GO32 suggests that this is a regionally significant Paleoindian site. As publication options were considered, the authors determined that the inventory report could best be utilized by making it available on the internet. This inventory report and high resolution images is available for download here. (Caution, this Acrobat PDF file is a large download—71.3 MB in size.)

Posted online on Wednesday, April 8th, 2015