Kirk Project Presentation at the ASSC Meeting

2/20/2016

Today I'll be giving a short presentation at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Society of South Carolina. Being a new transplant to South Carolina, this will be my first time attending the meeting. I'm looking forward to meeting my new colleagues from around the state and hearing about what they're working on.

I decided to talk about the Kirk Project at today's meeting. Although I've been working on it steadily over the last few weeks, my energies so far have been channeled into prepping the database and streamlining the process for producing 3D models. So, unfortunately, I don't yet have any coherent data or analysis to present. My presentation is an informal discussion of the question of the Kirk Horizon and what we can do to address it.

Here's a pdf of the slides I'll be talking from today. Unfortunately I ran out of time to provide complete citations for the parenthetical references. I'll fill those in and provide a complete version later.

Bob Jase

2/20/2016 10:31:48 am

Looking forwood to viewing this tonight - thanks!

Josh

2/21/2016 03:23:05 am

So, does the Kirk Horizon only apply to that corner of the midwest in the south-eastern US, or does that map on your Kirk project index page only represent the data sets you've collected? If the notched points are only limited to that area, does that suggest that a specific neolithic culture was responsible, and they were isolated in their particular tool-making habits?

I was surprised to learn that the Kirk Horizon doesn't have its own Wikipedia article (or at least it didn't the last time I checked). Is this just archaeological observation that never picked up much attention, for whatever reason? Or is it really a work-in-progress, and you're hoping that more data sets leads to a specific theory?

Andy White

2/21/2016 06:04:44 am

There are two maps. The one of the Kirk Horizon (following Justice 1987) is the distribution of Kirk Corner Notched cluster points. The map with the county-by-county distribution is my current sample. So my long-term goal is to assemble an archaeological sample that covers that whole area of the east where we know the points occur. The data are out there - it's a matter of putting in the time/energy to assemble them. That's a big job, which is why no-one has tried to do it before.

Josh

2/22/2016 03:25:15 am

So this is essentially a "new" indicator for a specific neolithic culture that hasn't previously received that much documentation, aside from the usual finding of artifacts throughout the past 150 years, in which case a Kirk Point wouldn't have been recognized as belonging to a particular time period or society? ("New" with respect to the original findings decades ago, but with a modern analysis, that is...)

I think I found that other map: http://www.projectilepoints.net/Points/Kirk_Corner.html

Assuming that's what you meant, I take it that implies that the culture responsible for the majority of these tools was isolated to the south-eastern US... That's interesting. I guess what I was trying to ask originally was, has the culture responsible for the points been identified previously, or is that what the aim of today's research?

I just think it's interesting, regarding pre-history (and especially "deep history," if you're a proponent of that notion), that there were all these cultures and societies that rose and fall throughout the past 10,000 years. Many of them we'll probably never know about; I mean, there are some early hominids that are thought to have participated in tool-making -- or at least tool-using -- as far back as 200,000 years ago, weren't there?

Sorry, I'm going off on a nerd-tangent that could be bordering on pseudo-science. ;) It's just fascinating to think about human and pre-human history -- in even primitive societies -- on time scales that involve hundreds of thousands of years. Despite how primitive they were, it's crazy to think about humans, even just 10,000 years ago, sharing stories about THEIR oral history, as far back as it would have allowed... Know what I mean?

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Kirk Project Presentation at the ASSC Meeting

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