Very Early Lithic Technology at the Mount Merino Site: A High-Grade Chert Quarry in The Hudson River Valley of Northeastern North America

Abstract

Abstract The motivation for this research was to locate Ice Age stone tool manufacturing sites in the Hudson River Valley. The Mount Merino site is a high-grade source of chert that early cultures would need for tool production and displayed potential for early lithic assemblages to be located. One goal of this research was to investigate the site and determine the lithic techniques that were used there. Little research has been conducted in northeastern North America regarding this subject. Initially, the antiquity of the Mount Merino site was thought to be from the Clovis culture, based on the manufacturing techniques of the bifaces found at the site. The people at the Mount Merino site produced their bifaces in the same manner as the Clovis culture. A strong blade and blade core technology was present at the Mount Merino site, which is also a trait of the Clovis culture. The artifacts that were found during the archaeological excavation of the site have proven to be unlike any other cultural material discovered from the glaciated portion of northeastern North America to date. The assemblage differs from the Clovis culture in one main aspect: not one of the bifaces found at the Mount Merino site exhibited fluting or early-stage proximal end thinning, which had been used by the Clovis people. This is an important discovery which differs from any archaeological assemblage previously recorded from the region of northeastern North America.