Antler Drifts

David DeJarnette, Edward Kurjack, and James Cambron named this tool at the Stanfield-Worley site in Colbert County, Alabama.[i] They described it as being used in the indirect percussion method of flint knapping.

Bennie Keel recovered examples of these punches or drifts from the Tuckasegee site located at the forks of the Tuckasegee River in southern Jackson County, North Carolina. Keel noted that these punches were made from the brow tine of the deer antler. The use as a punch is evidenced by its blunted and splintered distal end. The tine had been removed by scoring and snapping it off the rack.

The Tuckasegee site contained Connestee, Pigeon, and Swannanoa pottery, dating the use of this tool at that site from the Early Woodland period until sometime after 750 A.D. Examples from the collection of Mr. Danny Greenway and Mr. Leon Perry from the Ogeechee River basin (above) indicate their use as early as the Late Archaic period.

DeJarnette, David L., Edward B. Kurjack, and James W. Cambron

1962       Stanfield-Worley Bluff Shelter Excavations, Journal of Alabama Archaeological, Vol.VII, No.1&2