Golondrina Point Info

Researchers have noted the morphological similarities between lanceolate, concave-based Golondrina and Dalton points, shared point use and resharpening strategies including beveling as well as other shared technologies including bifacial adzes, and similar, broad-spectrum diets (Bousman et al. 2004; Bousman and Oksanen 2012; Jennings et al. 2015).

In the Southeast, as shown in Figure 7, Dalton has been firmly dated to 12,474–11,275 cal yr BP (Anderson et al. 2015; Goodyear 1982; Sherwood et al. 2004) but may have endured until about 10,000 cal yr BP (Anderson et al. 2015, table 3).

Dalton sites and points have been documented in the western Southeast, but their geographic distribution appears to have been primarily restricted to the woodland environments of northeastern Texas and eastern Oklahoma (Ballenger 2001; Bousman et al. 2004).

San Patrice points, also linked to the Dalton tradition (Anderson and Smith 2003; Ellis and Deller 1982; Ellis et al. 1998; Jennings 2008, 2010; Morse and Morse 1983; Pevny 2014; Redfield 1970; Rees 2010), appear to have replaced Dalton as the dominant point style in the southwestern Southeast, a region including Louisiana, southern Arkansas, eastern Texas, and eastern Oklahoma.

San Patrice is distinctive in the region because these populations began transitioning from lanceolate point forms to fully notched points by as early as 12,200 cal yr BP (Lopinot et al. 1998, 167), the oldest dated evidence of notching in the Southeast Further, these populations did not restrict themselves to the woodlands. San Patrice points have been found in the southern Plains and periphery (Bousman et al. 2004; Jennings 2008, 2010), and dates from Howard Gully and Horn Shelter place San Patrice groups in the region from 12,200 to 10,600 cal yr BP (Hurst et al. 2010; Jodry and Owsley 2015; Redder 1985).

If Golondrina and Dalton are historically and culturally linked (Bousman and Oksanen 2012; Bousman et al. 2004; Jennings et al. 2015), Golondrina may represent a terminal late Paleoindian/early Archaic expansion (Hester 2015) or dispersal of Dalton related populations or technologies into the southern Plains periphery and canyonlands of Texas and Mexico. Not only were Plains populations interloping into the Southeast (Johnson 1989), but eastern populations and/or point design and hafting ideas also moved west fostering multiregional and perhaps multicultural interactions (Wyckoff and Bartlet 1995).

Given the lack of notched Golondrina forms, this spread may be unrelated to the San Patrice western dispersal
that began some 2000 years prior (Jennings 2008), although no direct comparative studies between Golondrina and San Patrice have been conducted.

The Golondrina occupation at Baker Cave may represent the last line in one of the southeastern U.S.’s lanceolate point traditions (see O’Brien et al. 2014) and the 10,238–9959 cal-yr-BP western remnants of a Dalton tradition that first originated some 2500 years earlier in the Southeast.

4. Conclusions
New dates from Baker Cave, Texas refine the age of the Golondrina occupation at the site, reducing age
uncertainty by approximately 1000 years. Golondrina populations occupied Baker Cave 10,238–9959 cal yr BP. The results of point shape comparisons suggest a Dalton connection, and we propose that Golondrina represents a late, western expansion of Dalton technologies and/or populations. This paper also highlights the value of archaeological curation facilities. As analytical methods continue to be refined and new hypotheses are developed, the carefully
preserved collections at these facilities hold great research potential today and into the future.