This Kirk Stemmed point from North Carolina is made from metavolcanic stone.  The point is from the Hardaway Site (31St4), Stanly County, North Carolina, and dates to the Early Archaic period, ca. 8000-8900 BP.

 

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Kirk Stemmed points are found across the eastern United States, dating somewhat later than Kirk Corner-notched points.  Some archaeologists suggest that serrated versions of Kirk Stemmed points date somewhat later than unserrated versions, as seems to have been the case at the Hardaway Site.  Coe argued to use the term ‘Kirk’ for these points and Kirk Corner-notched points because the way they were made was similar, although the bases differ stylistically.  The morphology of the base anticipates the Stanley Stemmed points which emerge in the Middle Archaic period, ca. 7000-8000 BP.

The artefact is curated in the North Carolina Archaeological Collection, Research Laboratories of Archaeology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, catalog no. 2101a404 (specimen 2).

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The archaeologist Joffre Coe—the ‘Father of North Carolina Archaeology’— described the early prehistory of the southeastern United States in his book, The Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont.  The book is based on excavations carried out in the 1930s and 1940s, and was published in 1964.  The focus of the research was to develop chronologically-relevant pottery and stone tool typologies, and Coe’s work is still the defining work for the region and remains in use by archaeologists today.  Coe defined North Carolina Kirk points based on those recovered from the Hardaway site.