MEASUREMENTS: Twelve specimens from nine Tennessee Valley sites (Soday and Cambron, n. d.) average 76 mm. in length, 28 mm. in width, and 8 mm. in thickness. The longest point (Quad Site, Limestone County, Alabama) measures 101 mm. and the shortest point (Sweiger 1, Meigs County, Tennessee) measures 54 mm. The illustrated example measures 67 mm. long, 30 mm. wide, 9 mm. thick.
FORM: The cross-section is biconvex. Some examples have a faint shoulder at the terminal end of the hafting area. The blade shape is excurvate; the distal end, acute. Several local examples are beveled on one edge of each face. Most examples have auriculated bases with contracted, pointed, or rounded basal edges. Although an incurvate base is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the type, some bases may be straight or even slightly excurvate. The base is usually thinned and may be ground.
FLAKING: The blade may be shaped by broad random flaking, crude collateral flaking or, in some examples from the west, fine oblique transverse flaking. Random flaking is by far the predominant type. Most blades are finished by secondary flaking, which appears in some examples to have been done by the percussion method. As a final finishing step, fine retouch, carried out in order to remove irregularities from the blade edges, is present.
COMMENTS: The type was first described by Hughes (1949) as Long points from the Long Site in Angostura Reservoir, South Dakota. Hughes accepted all of Suhm's illustrated examples (Suhm, Krieger and Jelks, 1954) except the beveled ones. Several beveled examples were illustrated by Suhm, Krieger and Jelks, 1954. The example shown here is from Cambron Site 116, Limestone County, Alabama. Suhm, Krieger and Jelks (1954) estimate the age between 6000 B. C. and 4000 B. C. or later. An Angostura point was recovered from the lower levels at Stanfield-Worley Bluff Shelter (DeJarnette, Kurjack and Cambron, 1962), and what appears to be an Angostura point was associated, along with a pointed-base Lerma and a biface knife, with the second mammoth found at Santa Isabel Iztapan, Mexico (Wormington, 1957). This example resembles some Tennessee Valley specimens which may be late Paleo or early Archaic (Cambron and Hulse, 1960b).
APPALACHIAN, Kneberg (Kneberg, 1957): A-5
GENERAL DESCRIPTION: The Appalachian point is a medium to large, stemmed point with concave base, made of quartzite.
MEASUREMENTS: The illustrated example measures 85 mm. in length, 38 mm. in shoulder width, 27 mm. in stem width, 16 mm. in stem length, and 16 mm. in thickness. The length for the type ranges from 60 mm. to 110 mm. (Harwood, 1959).