This Wyandotte chert Kirk Corner-notched point is from Bullitt County, Kentucky.  These points date to the Early Archaic period, ca. 8900-9500 BP.

Dennis Holland collection.

See the annotations for technological details about this stone tool.

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This point was made by expert bifacial thinning followed by non-invasive pressure flaking to shape the edges.  Flakes were removed from a hinge termination on one face of the point near the distal end.

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The profound cultural and subsistence changes from the Paleoindian to the Early Archaic in North America was matched by a dramatic shift in the stone technology.  The fluted lanceolate points of the Paleoindian period, such as Clovis, transitioned to exotically-fluted types such as Cumberland points in southeastern North America, and Folsom on the Great Plains.  Eventually fluting was abandoned for less dramatic basal thinning, like that seen on Dalton points, and, eventually, lanceolate points were supplemented or replaced by an explosion of notched point styles in the Early Archaic period, after about 10,000 BP.

The earliest notched points in the Early Archaic are side-notched (e.g., Graham Cave, Big Sandy, Hardaway, Bolen), followed by corner-notched points (e.g., Kirk, Palmer, Lost Lake), with ‘bifurcated’ points (corner-notched or stemmed points with a notched base, like LeCroy, Kanawha, MacCorkle, and St Albans) emerging towards the end of the Early Archaic period.  Side-notched (e.g., Thebes, St Charles), basal-notched (e.g., Calf Creek), and stemmed (e.g., Hardin, Kirk Stemmed) point variants co-occurred with corner-notched points in complex patterns through most of the Early Archaic period, reflecting considerable regional and chronological diversity in point styles, driven by population growth and intensified trends towards differing cultural expression in circumscribed regions.  These point styles—all of them manufactured by bifacial flaking—functioned variously as dart points and hafted knives.

Kirk Corner-notched points are one of the most common dart point types from the Early Archaic period of eastern North America.  The morphology of these points varied between regions, and archaeologists have subdivided the corner-notched family into a variety of different types, including Stilwell points, Pine Tree Corner-notched points, Charleston Corner-notched points, Decatur points, and Palmer Corner-notched points.  Some archaeologists note that there seem to be small and large-sized varieties of these points, which may indicate that some of them functioned as knives rather than dart points.  Some of them are exceptionally well-made by expert bifacial percussion thinning followed by well-controlled invasive or non-invasive pressure flaking.  Kirk points sometimes have deeply serrated edges.