Maryland Archeology Month

-April 2009-

Sponsored by:

St. Mary's City:
375 years old, thousands of years young

Explore!

Archeology Gallery

Lehigh/Koens-Crispin point

This stone implement is a broad-bladed tool which may have served either as a projectile point or as a knife blade. Its discovery at St. John's indicates that the location was an excellent place for people to live thousands of years before the arrival of the Europeans.

This tool is made of rhyolite, a type of stone not native to Southern Maryland. The nearest source for rhyolite is in Frederick County, nearly 150 miles away.

The shape of the tool is what is known as part of the broad blade or broad spear tradition. It is most similar to the Lehigh/Koens-Crispin type defined by Fred Kinsey in the Delaware Valley. These points are generally dateable to the period of about 2500 BC - 1500 BC.