Hardaway Side Notched
Defining Attributes
The Hardaway Side Notched point has a small, broad, thin blade with narrow U-shaped side notches and a concave base, giving it a "horned" appearance.
Chronology
The Hardaway Side Notched, Hardaway Blade, and Hardaway-Dalton points appear to be related Paleoindian period types. All three were recovered from the same occupation zone at the Hardaway site in North Carolina. Coe (1964) assumed these three types occurred as variations over a fairly long period prior to the beginning of the Early Archaic, and that the Hardaway Side Notched was a specialized form, the last of the three to be developed. Other scholars see the varieties as more contemporary, and place the Hardaway/Hardaway-Dalton complex at 10,500 to 9900 BP (approximately 10,550-9350 BC in calendar years), based on radiocarbon dates from the Midwest (Goodyear 1982). Although no radiocarbon dates have been obtained for the Hardaway Side Notched in the mid-Atlantic, McAvoy and McAvoy (1997) suggest a temporal placement of 10,200 to 10,000 BP (10,000-9550 BC), based on its stratigraphic position at the Slade site in Virginia.
Description
Blade
The blade is broad and very thin, in general forming the shape of an equilateral triangle below the notch. The sides are usually straight, but occasionally rounded.
Haft Element
Concave and ground, the base is often so deep that it is notch-like. Side notches are narrow, deep, and U-shaped, averaging 4 mm deep and 5 mm wide. Broad, shallow flakes, frequently extending a third of the distance down the face, thin most bases.
Size
Length ranges from 28 to 50 mm, with an average of 35 mm. Width ranges from 23 to 35 mm, with an average of 25 mm. Thickness ranges 3 to 6 mm, with an average of 4 mm. Hardaway Side Notched points are generally smaller than Hardaway-Dalton examples (Daniel 1998).
Technique of Manufacture
Although similar to the soft percussion flaking used on the Hardaway-Dalton, all edges were carefully pressure flaked on the Hardaway Side Notched, producing a more delicate point. The primary flakes were typically broad and shallow, while the secondary flakes were long and narrow.
Material
Most Hardaway varieties found in Maryland are made of jasper or chert, but quartz, quartzite, and rhyolite have been reported (Brown 1979; Steponaitis 1980; Wanser 1982).
Discussion
The Hardaway Side Notched is most common in the Southeast and Midwest, but a few specimens have been found as far north as New Jersey and New York (Ritchie and Funk 1971; Staats 1998). They are relatively rare in Maryland (Brown 1979; Steponaitis 1980; Wanser 1982; Wesler 1983; Hranicky 2002; Lowery 2002). Dent (1995) reports that in a study of over 200 Paleoindian period bifaces in the Chesapeake region, only 5% were Hardaway varieties. And of the Hardaway points found in Maryland, a majority appear to be Hardaway-Daltons, not Side Notched.
According to Coe (1964), the Hardaway Blade, Hardaway-Dalton, and Hardaway Side Notched points appear to be related types that follow one another in time. However, others have argued that the variations reflect contemporary stages of tool use and re-sharpening, or geographical differences (Ward and Davis 1999).
Defined in Literature
Coe (1964) originally defined the type based on examples recovered from the Hardaway site in North Carolina.
References
1979 Fluted Projectile Points in Maryland. Paper on file, Maryland Historical Trust, Crownsville.
1964 The Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 54(5). Philadelphia.
1998 Hardaway Revisited: Early Archaic Settlement in the Southeast. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
1995 Chesapeake Prehistory: Old Traditions, New Directions. Plenum Press, New York.
1982 The Chronological Placement of the Dalton Horizon in the Southeast United States. American Antiquity 47:382-395.
2002 Lithic Technology in the Middle Potomac River Valley of Maryland and Virginia. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York.
2002 A Time of Dust: Archaeological and Geomorphological Investigations at the Paw Paw Cove Paleo-Indian Site Complex in Talbot County, Maryland. Chesapeake Bay Watershed Archaeological Research Foundation, Tilghman, MD.
1997 Archaeological Investigations of Site 44SX202, Cactus Hill, Sussex County. Virginia Department of Historic Resources Research Report Series n. 8, Richmond.
1971 Evidence for Early Archaic Occupations on Staten Island. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 41(3):45-60.
1998 A Hardaway Side-Notched Point from Warren County. Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey 53:114-115.
1980 A Survey of Artifact Collections from the Patuxent River Drainage, Maryland. Maryland Historical Trust Monograph Series 1. Maryland Historical Trust and Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Annapolis, MD.
1982 A Survey of Artifact Collections from Central Southern Maryland. Maryland Historical Trust Manuscript Series 23. Maryland Historical Trust and Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Annapolis.
1999 Time Before History: The Archaeology of North Carolina. The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
1983 Typology and Sequence in the Maryland Archaic. Southeastern Archaeology 2(1):21-29.