A provocative reanalysis of one of the most famous Early Archaic archaeological sites in the southeastern United States

Since the early 1970s, southeastern archaeologists have focused their attention on identifying the function of prehistoric sites and settlement practices during the Early Archaic period (ca. 9,000-10,500 B.P.). The Hardaway site in the North Carolina Piedmont, one of the most importantarchaeological sites in eastern North America, has not yet figured notably in this research. Daniel's reanalysis of the Hardaway artifacts provides a broad range of evidence—including stone tool morphology, intrasite distributions of artifacts, and regional distributions of stoneraw material types—that suggests that Hardaway played a unique role in Early Archaic settlement.

The Hardaway site functioned as a base camp where hunting and gathering groups lived for extended periods. From this camp they exploited nearby stone outcrops in the Uwharrie Mountains to replenish expended toolkits. Based on the  results of this study, Daniel's new model proposes that settlement was conditioned less by the availability of food resources than by the limited distribution of high-quality knappable stone in the region. These results challenge the prevalent view of Early Archaic settlement that group movement was largely confined by the availability of food resources within major southeastern river valleys.

I. Randolph Daniel Jr., is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at East Carolina University.

"Daniel provides a valuable description of the fieldwork and discoveries that have been made down through the years at the Hardaway site. His interpretation of the data, while controversial, will provoke much needed new debate, analysis, and fieldwork directed to resolving the nature of early southeastern settlement systems."

—David G. Anderson,Southeast Archeological Center, NPS

"A major contribution to the literature of Eastern Woodlands prehistory. Daniel's thorough and thoughtful analysis of the flaked stone assemblage will be a benchmark for early Holocene archaeology for generations. Students of southeastern prehistory should consider this required reading: others interested in lithic technology and hunter-gatherer settlement will be rewarded with a great deal of comparative materials."

—American Antiquity