Ouachita Mountain lithic resources discussed
The Ouachita Chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, 200 Whittington Ave. Parking is available in the lot adjacent to the western building; enter through the portico and meeting is located inside to the left. Visitors are welcome. For more information, email Sherri Bradbury at OuachitaChapter@gmail.com.
This month’s program will feature Meeks Etchieson, now retired as Heritage Program manager for the Ouachita National Forest, and currently president of the Ouachita Chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society.
He will present “Understanding Native American Chert and Other Lithic Resource Use in the Ouachita Mountains: More Questions than Answers.”
The Ouachita Mountains were occupied and used by Native American groups from Paleo-Indian times through the Protohistoric period. When people think about lithic (stone) resources available in the Ouachita Mountains, they think primarily of novaculite. However, in many cases, such as northern and western areas of the Ouachita Mountains, novaculite is a very small percentage of lithic resources utilized by prehistoric people. Other stone materials such as silicified sandstone, siltstone, quartzite and cherts were being used almost to the exclusion of novaculite.
Was it simply that these other materials were available locally, or was it that the inhabitants in this area of the mountains were a different group of people who rarely visited or traded with the people in the Novaculite Uplift of the Ouachita Mountains? Were these other lithic resources mined in ways similar to novaculite — out of bedrock, or were cobbles collected from stream gravel channels, or something else? This presentation identifies and begins to answer some of these questions to expand our ideas regarding acquisition of stone resources in the Ouachita Mountains for prehistoric tool production and trade.