Throwback Thursday: Bog Garden Discovery of Archaic Projectile Points
Indigenous Americans have been using the land at Yellow Springs for at least Four and a half Millennia
A Second Rediscovery
Throwback Thursday for this week came in the form of an unexpected discovery.
While doing some housekeeping in the archives as part of the digitization process- an ongoing mission of the Moore Archives at Yellow Springs- the archivist discovered a small bundle of items filed away in a cabinet of unassessed items.
That bundle contained what looked like projectile points, which had been dredged up from the Bog Gardens in the year 1999.
Restoring these spring houses were part of the restoration project in the 1990s.
At that time, the team at Historic Yellow Springs worked on renovating and restoring the area, aiming to revitalize the Bog Gardens in the East Meadows to their former glory from the PAFA period of the 1920s and 1930s.
However, during this period of construction, it seems that something much, much older was unearthed.
Inside the bundle, there were two projectile points. For now, we will refer to them as point A and point B.
The note on the original bundle indicates that workers discovered both points in the spoils from the construction of the Bog Gardens project.
So, How Old Are They?
The short answer is that we don’t know.
We can make highly educated guesses, but we won’t know for sure without further testing.
This is why finding artifacts in context is crucial for archaeologists; having the matrix around an artifact helps them estimate the age of an item by comparing it to the layers above or below it.
Without context for these specific artifacts, we cannot apply archaeological methods such as stratigraphy or carbon-14 dating to obtain a relative date for them. We lack information about the matrix they were in and any other items they might have been buried with that could help date them using other analysis methods.
Although we can visually identify the arrowheads or spear tips that Indigenous Americans and their ancestors used prior to colonization, we need more context to estimate the time period of these projectile points.
We will need to dig deeper.
Luckily, we are not the first people at HYS to do so– literally.
Several archaeological teams have conducted digs at HYS that are well-documented in our archival records.
We can gather clues and context for our mystery points by comparing them with previously dated and identified archaeological finds from the property.
Compare and Contrast
Records from European settlers, Lenape history, and finds from previous archaeological digs hre all reveal that before colonization, the Lenape people used the land now known as Historic Yellow Springs for a very long time.
Many sources report that the Lenape were the first to use the numerous springs on the property for their medicinal qualities, and were the first to give the area the name “Yellow Springs.”
Because of this, we can confirm Indigenous peoples being present at Yellow Springs, so these kinds of finds are not unprecedented here.
This information allows us to confidently suggest that our mystery points likely date back to the period when the Lenape people and their ancestors lived in Yellow Springs.
There have been a number of archaeological digs at Yellow Springs, many of which have produced artifacts from the previous inhabitants of the area.
The archaeological dig that occurred in 2006 near the Yellow Springs gazebo will be most helpful for comparing these points with what has been found on the property before, due to both proximity and subject matter.
This dig occurred in 2006 and was preformed by West Chester University Archaeology students and Dr. Heather Wholey.
Of the identified items from that 2006 dig, this quartz notched point (pictured above) looks the most similar to the projectile points that we found.
Visually, the material the points are made from also looks similar- though it is important to note that our mystery points are likely made of quartzite, not quartz.
This point has been identified to the Middle Woodland period (300 BCE-500 CE), so this gives us a good starting point when we try to identify what kind of points we have and when they were from.
However, we also need to keep several things in mind.
West Meadow, East Meadow
A floodplain like the West Meadows, due to the nature of the area often being flooded, is prone to receiving artifacts that washed in from other places.
The unique geography of Yellow Springs (and our eponymous springs) leads to another challenge.
We know that over time, the location and sources of our three major springs have moved a bit.
This is for a number of reasons, some natural– due to erosion and geologic processes– and some man-made.
Construction, flooding, and the movement of people in this area over these many long years means that even if we had found these projectile points on the 2006 archaeological dig, their original context still would have been a bit murky.
Finally, the dig that occurred in 2006 was in the West Meadows, by the Iron Spring gazebo.
According to the note our mystery points was wrapped in, these were likely found in the East Meadow, near the Jenny Lind Spring and the Crystal Diamond Spring.
Knowing about the projectile points that were found in the West Meadow is helpful for establishing the history of the site, but we will need to look further to find our potential match.
A Matter of Style
It is at this point where we need to send out eternal thanks to those who organize and maintain the Projectile Point Identification Database, as it is an invaluable resource for making visual comparisons and identifying projectile points based on their style.
The style of a projectile point (ie, what it looks like visually) is a remarkably useful tool for placing an artifact in time.
In the Americas, and especially on the East Coast, we can see the ‘style’ of the kinds of projectile points that were being made change over time.
Like fashion fads or certain styles of drawing and painting, the way which people made projectile points changed and evolved over time. As archaeologists, we can use the peak ‘popularity’ of a certain style of projectile point to place the artifact on the timeline of when we know that point would have been made.
When we date artifacts, we must remember that people have always behaved like people.
The intricacies and contradictions of people being people mean that our ranges are very broad, but we want to account for all the possible time when that point count have been made.
Vintage fashion, recycling, hand-me-downs, and doing things “the old fashioned way” are all good examples of how trends sometimes get re-used or come back into style, or how an item that is older can be found in context that is younger.
That caveat addressed, this database is an excellent tool to use because gives us an outline of all the dates when these mystery points could feasibly have been made and used.
Identification
Both projectile points A and B were carefully measured, observed, and matched to the most-likely available match from the database.
Using the measurements, comparison with other archaeological findings on the property, and the database to help classify our mystery points, we were able to identify what they most closely resemble.
Point A: Bare Island Stemmed Point
Point A falls into the diagnostic range and is a visual match to a Bare Island Stemmed Projectile point. You can read more details about them on the database here, but for our purposes this dates Point A to between 2500 BCE – 400 CE.
This means that it is highly likely that point A was used on the Yellow Springs property sometime between 4,525 years ago and 1,625 years ago (as of 2025).
For context, in world history, 4,500 years ago is considered the start of the Bronze Age. The Pyramids of Giza are being constructed, the ancient city of Sumer in Mesopotamia is hitting its stride, and the Beaker culture (ancestors to what would become the Celtic peoples) arrive in the British isles.
An artifact that is (potentially) older than the Great Pyramid in Giza was right under the feet of those who strolled and painted in the East Meadow for thousands of years.
Point B: Brewerton Side Notch
Mystery Point B, it seems, can help us narrow that timeline down further.
Point B was more difficult to match diagnostically, due to its highly specific small size and the distinct style of the point.
However, after considerable research, it was found that Point B matches the diagnostic criteria to be considered a Brewerton Side Notch projectile point. For our purposes, this puts Point B at being made and used sometime between 3000 BCE – 2000 BCE.
As of 2025, this means that Point B is anywhere from 5,025 years old to 4,025 years old.
5,000 years ago, in the wider world, the Chinchorro civilization in Chile and Peru are making some of the oldest man-made mummies ever found in the archaeological record; in Africa, Europe, and Asia, the Stone Age is transitioning into the Bronze Age; and the Neolithic Revolution- the invention of farming and domesticated crops as we understand them today- is truly starting to take off.
Yellow Springs, 4500 Years Ago
(public domain image, photo by Tom Fisk)
Though as mentioned above, the dates on these projectile points remain fairly speculative, we must note the evident intersection in time between the two projectile point styles. Around 2500 BCE, these two projectile point techniques and technologies overlap, making them contemporary with each other for that period in history.
Intriguingly, both of our mystery points appear to be made from the same (or very similar) material, and the flaking technique used on them looks quite alike as well. This raises the reasonable possibility that they may have been created at around the same time– perhaps even by the same person.
If we speculate that these two points were used around the same time as each other, we must assume that their period of contemporaneity was roughly 4,500 years ago.
This date coincides with the long transitional era in Pennsylvania when the Archaic Period shifts into the Woodland Period.
Like the Stone Age transitioning into the Bronze Age in the Old World, this period in the New World features changing technologies and shifting trends that we see evidence of in the archaeological records.
If these points indeed found themselves deposited into the ground at the same time (perhaps even by the same person), then they would present an incredibly evocative snapshot of that changing tide.
From Point A to Point B
Point A was created using a technique that is both more modern and more distinctly localized to Pennsylvania when we compare it to Point B.
The Brewerton Side Notch style of projectile point had a larger range, having been found as far North as Maine and as far South as Alabama. By contrast, the Bare Island Stemmed style projectile points are much more localized to Pennsylvania and a handful of its surrounding states.
If these two points were made by the same maker, then this would be an incredible example of a larger cultural change in action.
Is Point A an experiment aimed at capturing the latest local trend in point-making? Is Point B all that remains of a proud and noble legacy of crafting points like the ancestors did? Does the change in the distribution of points of specific styles reflect a system of communication among communities along the Eastern Seaboard that eventually fragmented and became increasingly isolated? Is it evidence of a clash between competing worldviews, or is it simply proof of a natural evolution in technique?
We could speculate wildly about these implications.
If we could prove that these points come from the same time period, share the same parent material, or were made by the same person, we could conclude that the difference in style reflects something important about the larger context of the world in which the maker lived.
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If interested in further research, you can read more about this time period in history here, and you can read more about the Brewerton Culture complex here.
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Missing Parts
Without the context of the find, the matrix from which we recovered the artifacts, and scientific dating analysis, we cannot factually confirm that Point A and Point B were buried together.
In archaeology, it is vital to let the facts shape the narrative we create when interpreting the finds, rather than allowing the reverse to be considered proven.
Archaeology is an empirical field.
It is our responsibility as archaeologists to tell the stories of those who came before us with transparency and fidelity, without fabricating narratives without merit. We must support our findings with facts and allow those facts to guide us to conclusions– rather than working backward from preconceived notions.
For these reasons, we cannot draw conclusions just yet.
At the same time, we must remember that archaeology falls under the umbrella of anthropology. Anthropology, the study of humanity in all its forms, compels us to be sure to also imagine the human stories behind these artifacts.
Imagine the people who carved, shaped, used, and eventually lost these projectile points as they were in their time– real people with families, hopes, hates, desires, passions, dreams, stories, and creativity.
The Indigenous Peoples of Yellow Springs during the Archaic period would have lived in a world that is unrecognizable to us today, but the care and craftsmanship that went into making these points is undeniable.
These civilizations and cultures lived through oral tradition, through techniques passed down generation by generation.
Each point that we find is a testament to an ancient craftsperson who spent countless hours learning those techniques and even more countless hours flaking away at quartzite.
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It is unknown, due to the lack of context, if the person that found these points in 1999 found them in the same place.
We do not know if these points were made at the same time, or by the same person. Despite the date overlap and the similarity in material and technique, we cannot safely make that assumption without further evidence.
However, it is interesting to note that they do appear to have been made of very similar material, exhibit similar flaking techniques, and seem to both share a notable yellow staining on them.
That staining is a visual match to the iron-rich waters of the Iron Springs gazebo– the very water that gives Yellow Springs its name.
We don’t know how or why these points were lost in the bogs of Yellow Springs, and we don’t know exactly when.
But it is a remarkable testament to the people who came before us here, who lived and died here for generations– that something that they created can be held in the hand today of someone who was born around four hundred generations after it was held by the person who made it.
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Making History
Though these projectile points were likely made for mainly utilitarian reasons– the material choice and style they are in indicates they were used as spear points or arrowheads, likely for hunting– there is something strikingly beautiful about them as well.
Each flake of quartzite that was removed by an ancient maker was done so intentionally, there was as much method here as carving a statue, sculpting a pot, or painting a picture.
It had to be done just right, or the point would have failed and the project would have been discarded before it was finished.
We cannot know what was going through the mind of that ancient person, we don’t know why they chose the materials they chose, or what circumstances lead to the points disappearing into the bog.
Today, though, that maker (or makers) is remembered.
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Their work will continue on as a small little mystery in the Moore Archives, but it also serves as a tangible connection between time and cultures so vastly removed from each other that seems impossible.
Four and a half millennia is an unfathomable length of time for any single human to fully grasp within the span of their lifetime. However, despite how impossible it may seem, we are now connected to these ancient makers anyway.
Whoever this person was, it is undeniable that even though it is in a small way, they literally made history.
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Learn more about the history of Yellow Springs
You can read the more in-depth version of this post here