Artifacts in Focus: LeCroy Projectile Point (March 25, 2020)

This is one of Hopewell Museum's oldest objects. It is called a LeCroy projectile point. This one is made of a roseate quartz and is probably about 8000 years old.

“The LeCroy blade was named by Madeline Kneberg in 1956 for examples found on the LeCroy Site near the Tennessee River in Hamilton County, TN. The location, itself, was named for the modern finder of this ancient site, Archie LeCroy. The LeCroy is the most famous of the bifurcated blade family but it certainly is not the only one – in fact it is somewhat late in the ancestral line of this artifact type. There have been some successful stratigraphic excavations of bifurcated blades thus giving us chronological evidence of the ages of the various types in this family and how to correctly align their successions. The classification of these blades as bifurcates is because their stems are split or divided on the basal edge – thus bifurcated. These blades are now believed to have been used mostly as knives because their basally notched stems would have been very effective knife hafting areas and because many, if not most, bifurcates have been sharpened and re-sharpened, as cutting tools, down to the short nubby and expended sizes that we generally find today. Many bifurcates have serrated blade edges and it is believed that serrations were used mainly on re-sharpened knives since it would have given the tools saw-tooth sides and greatly increased the cutting abilities. Some, though, most likely would have been used only as dart or small spear points.”

You can learn more about this type of point at http://www.jimmausartifacts.com/to-lecroy-or-not-to-lecroy/.

📸: Ian Burrow

Artifacts in Focus: Personal Artifact Collection (February 26, 2020)

This assemblage of artifacts is part of the personal collection of the Mydlowski family, mostly found during the 1960s in Mercer County. The prehistoric artifacts in this image range from the Early Archaic through the Late Woodland periods and are made from a range of materials including argillite, chert, Cuesta quartzite and jasper. Mostly projectile points, the collection also includes drills and a hammerstone. When this assemblage was analyzed in 2013 during the graduate work of Evan Mydlowski, some items were determined to be non-cultural. Two other items in the collection are historic, including the gun powder horn and the hatchet/hand axe blade.  

This collection, generously shared with us today, includes many more artifacts than are pictured here. It also includes a variety of flakes and other stone tools that are not usually deemed “display worthy”. It is the hope of Evan that these artifacts will also be analyzed and cataloged in the future. 

If you have any interpretations of the artifacts in this assemblage to offer, please let us know! History and archaeology are an ongoing process; one that is improved by the shared knowledge of those who engage with it. 

📸: Evan Mydlowski

Artifacts in Focus: Rancocas Projectile Point (February 12, 2020)

This week’s #artifactinfocus is short, sweet, and to the point! 

This is a pre-contact period broken quartz projectile point found along the North Branch of the Rancocas Creek during an archaeological survey. 11,000 years ago, humans started populating the Rancocas Valley. Native Americans relied on the Rancocas Creek for fishing and trapping, as well as transportation and irrigation.   

“The earliest Europeans named the creek for Remkokes, the native king who occupied the surrounding lands. Whether this was the traditional name given to the stream by the indigenous people is unknown.”  (https://rcnwt.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/theforksoftherancocas.pdf)  

📸: Allison Gall