Lab News

Unusual Dart Point from Albert Porter Pueblo
Projectile Point Made of Fossilized Bone

by Jonathan Till, Lab Analysis Manager
July 24, 2006

Participants in last year’s Fall Lab assisted the lab staff in the analysis of projectile points from Albert Porter Pueblo, which was excavated by Crow Canyon from 2001 through 2004. During detailed analyses of stone tools, special attributes of items such as arrowheads and dart points come to our staff’s attention. Of the nearly 400 items examined, one object in particular caught our eye.

A late Archaic dart point was recovered from the modern ground surface at Albert Porter Pueblo. Based on its shape and size, the lab staff assigned the artifact to the “Gypsum” point type, a type that is often associated with the Great Basin landscapes of western Utah and Nevada. Gypsum points were generally made from 2500 B.C. to A.D. 500, many centuries before the occupation of Albert Porter Pueblo began. These large points would have been hafted onto the end of a dart that was propelled by an atlatl (spear-thrower), a technology that preceded the bow and arrow of later Pueblo peoples.

What further distinguishes this particular item is the material that it is made of: fossilized bone. Looking closely at the point’s smoky-gray surface, one can see the honeycomb-like structure of the bone’s pithy interior. This material is quite rare in the region, and only a few flakes of fossilized bone chert were recovered from Albert Porter Pueblo.

It is almost certain that the point traveled a considerable distance and hundreds of years before it reached southwestern Colorado. It may well have been “curated” or collected by an occupant of Albert Porter Pueblo during his or her travels across the high desert of southern Utah or southwestern Colorado. I will stick my neck out and say, too, that the point probably enjoyed a special status in its owner’s “tool kit.” Knowing full well their stone tool technological traditions, as well as the stone materials available to them, the point’s final owner(s) probably identified the dart point’s form and material as unique.

Because it was found on the surface of the site, it is difficult to make further inferences about the point’s association with the Albert Porter Pueblo. However, documenting the frequency with which such precious items occur at Albert Porter Pueblo, and comparing this with other frequencies from nearby, contemporaneous sites, allows us to evaluate the degree to which Albert Porter Pueblo occupied a “special” place on the Pueblo Indian landscape during the early centuries of the second millennium A.D.