The Midwest, with its changing traditions, has long been considered the crossroads of North America. The many types of projectile points suggest similar diversity in Paleoindian times.

Artifacts reflect patterns of activity in the landscape, but caution is the byword in deciphering what they mean. That certainly is the case with stone tools, the most frequently found evidence from the period. Archeologists examine the characteristics of tools as well as how they are scattered across a region.

The primary material for tools, chert, was abundant in the Midwest. However, few quarry workshops have been found. Near the mouth of the Illinois River lies the Ready-Lincoln Hills site, the region’s best known early workshop. 

Because Midwestern soils and climate act against preservation, there are few known sites where there is evidence that animals were killed, although the Kimmswick site near St. Louis yielded projectile points with mastodon bones. At such places, meticulous studies of cut marks on bone–and of animal remains that may have been deliberately buried–suggest hunting. Certainly the midwesterners hunted many species, but the only clear evidence is a caribou bone found at southeastern Michigan’s Holcombe Beach site.

Residential areas are rarely documented well. No doubt dozens, likelier hundreds, exist but few are known and even fewer may survive into the next century.