Certain Crescentic Stone Objects As a Time Marker in the Western United States

A class of pressure-flaked stone objects of crescentic shape made to an easily recognizable pattern is usually associated with surface sites adjacent to continuous or discontinuous bodies of water or playas. The crescent has a distribution from the Southern California Channel Islands to western Utah and the Columbia Basin in Washington. Even though its function is not yet known, it nevertheless is-because of a unique and consistent association of attributes -a useful material culture trait that may serve as a marker for a particular cultural complex. The trait is not known to be associated with the small-game hunting and food-gathering based cultures of the Archaic stage. Archaeological evidence indicates that the crescent is contemporaneous with big-game hunting cultures of the techno-economic level associated with the upper Lithic stage. DISTRIBUTION, attribute analysis, and assemblage association of certain crescentic stone artifacts of the type discussed in this paper may provide material culture data for a temporal and spatial link between the, as yet, unidentified and undescribed early hunting-based cultures of the Western United States. The assemblages, which include the crescents, are usually associated with a big-game hunting culture or a transitional culture stage consisting of a combination of big-game hunting and foodgrinding culture traits. Big-game hunting, in this paper, does not necessarily refer to the hunting of extinct Pleistocene mammals of the Great Plains, but would include other Pleistocene and modern species farther west. In order to evaluate the material culture traits of crescents in association with biggame hunting cultures it is necessary to frame a discussion within the current terminology. Early Man is placed in the upper Lithic stage by Willey and Phillips (1958) and in the Paleoeastern and Paleo-western Traditions by Wormington (1957). Krieger (1964) divides the upper Lithic stage into two separate stages: the PaleoIndian stage based on big-game hunting from 1 1,000 B.C. or 10,000 B.C. to 8000 B.C. or 7000 B.C., and the Protoarchaic stage based on a combination of big-game hunting and the use of foodgrinding implements from 8000 B.C. or 7000 B.C. to 5000 B.C. or 4000 B.C. Krieger's Protoarchaic stage would correspond to Griffin's (1953) Early Archaic stage. A stage is a technical or economic level of development. Contemporaneous cultures of different regions may represent different stages. Identified and described cultures of the biggame hunting-based stage are: the "Llano" Culture (Sellards 1952; Krieger 1964) characterized in the Plains and the Southwest by the lanceolate Clovis Fluted projectile point, the "Lindenmeier" Culture (Krieger 1964) of the Great Plains diagnosed by the lanceolate Folsom Fluted projectile point, and the Old Cordilleran Culture (Butler 1961) of the Northwest identified by the lanceolate Cascade point. Identified and described cultures of combined big-game hunting and food-grinding stages are the Plano Culture (Sellards 1952; Jennings 1955; Mason 1962) of the Plains, characterized by several types of lanceolate stemmed points, and the Balconese Culture (Kelley 1959) of Texas and New Mexico. Jennings' (1964) Desert Culture or Desert Archaic, within the Desert West, with intervening upper Lithic stage cultures, is characterized by food-grinding implements and an artifact complex which developed from an earlier preLithic prototype. The controversial core and flake tool technological level is represented by the pre-Lithic (Jennings 1964), Pre-Projectile Point (Krieger 1964), and the lower Lithic (Willey and Phillips 1958) stages. By eliminating the pre-Lithic prototype and the intervening upper Lithic implication, Jennings' Desert Culture corresponds to the techno-economic level of Meighan's (1959) Archaic stage. Large Tradition (Fenenga 1953) projectile points of the Protoarchaic stage represent remnants of the techno-economic level of the PaleoIndian stage which has not been completely replaced by the small-game hunting and foodgathering cultures of the Archaic stage. DESCRIPTION OF CRESCENTS The crescentic artifacts discussed in this paper are usually made of cryptocrystalline quartz, which includes chalcedony, agate, chert, flint, and jasper. A small percentage of the specimens are made of obsidian, basalt, and schist. The crescents are bilaterally symmetrical and are bifacially pressure flaked with the wing edges