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The Maryland Fluted Point Survey documents stone projectile points made by the Paleoindians who lived in Maryland between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago. A fluted point has distinctive channels, or "flutes," struck from the base to help secure the stone tool onto a shaft. The survey systematically records information about these points, recovered during excavations or identified in collections, including their history of discovery and contemporary ownership, locational information, fluted point type, and stone raw material. By collecting data in a statewide survey, researchers can begin to identify patterns that might shed new light on the lives of Paleoindians.

Through the survey, researchers became interested in a distinctive stone called “weathering amber chalcedony,” which fluted point makers used in Maryland and the surrounding Mid-Atlantic region. The stone – an amber-colored chalcedony that occasionally develops a white patina – was primarily used to make stone tools toward the end of the Pleistocene (or “Ice Age”). Later people did not regularly use this stone, perhaps because the limited supply was mostly used up, or because later people had different strategies for procuring stone.

 

Piney Grove Site

Located in Reisterstown, the Piney Grove site (18BA483) was discovered in 2001, when archaeologists from the Maryland State Highways Administrations and Goodwin and Associates conducted archaeological investigations in advance of a proposed intersection improvement project. Piney Grove yielded chipping debris of weathering amber chalcedony, suggesting a quarry-related workshop where Paleoindians found large chalcedony cobbles and then knapped them into stone tools. The chipping debris including overshot flakes, end thinning flakes, and channel flakes suggests 13,000-year-old Clovis fluted point production — or in other words, stone tools made by one of the earliest widespread cultures in North America.

Because this chalcedony is so clearly associated with Ice Age inhabitants in the region, finding a source area of the stone can help answer important research questions. Archaeologists can study the production process for shaping cobbles into stone tools, for example, or the location of the stone and potential factors that influenced the procurement of this stone, like its visibility, ease of collection, and associated with preferred landscapes and habitats.

MHT archaeologists returned to Piney Grove in October 2024 to attempt to locate additional intact archaeological deposits. Over the five-day project, volunteer archaeologists excavated 56 shovel test pits in a four-meter grid in an effort to locate stone tools and chipping debris associated with the chalcedony.

 

While the vast majority of the test pits did not yield artifacts, five did recover weathering amber chalcedony, including seven pieces of chipping debris and one fragment of a scraping tool called a sidescraper. The scraping tool fragment is the first formal tool made of the stone to be found at the Piney Grove site, since the 2001 excavations primarily documented stone tool production areas, where tools were made and carried away to be used elsewhere.

Three shovel test pits that produced chalcedony artifacts are located nearby each other, which indicate that the 2024 investigation identified an intact activity area where people made and used tools in the past.

Chalcedony Geological Study

MHT is collaborating with the Maryland Geological Survey to study the formation and geological distribution of the weathering amber chalcedony to better understand how past people may have found and collected the stone to make tools. So far, research has focused on chalcedony float (or cobbles) found in association with serpentinite rocks in Baltimore County. The chalcedony is being examined macroscopically, microscopically, and geochemically to identify the composition of the stone and where the stone originally formed. This information, in turn, will help reveal potential sources of chalcedony and additional insights into ancient toolstone procurement techniques and the movements of early peoples in Baltimore County.

Left to right: chalcedony float found in Baltimore County; chalcedony thick section slice; microscopy photograph of chalcedony patina. Click image to enlarge.