Menu
Son Anderson, an experienced local collector, named this blade type for examples recovered from sites along the Cowhouse Slough on the Hillsborough River near Tampa, Florida.
The Cowhouse Slough is a medium to large blade measuring 3 to 5 inches in length. The blade is developed using random percussion flaking with pressure flaking along the blade edges meeting at a broad distal and. The convex sides of the blade extend through the hafting area to a rounded basal corner. The blade is bi-facially worked, however it appears more plano-convex or flattened on one side then bi-convex in cross-section. The basal edges are flat to convex and occasionally heavily thinned on one face with only slight beveling along the opposite face. Neither basal nor lateral smoothing is typical.
These blades were initially recovered in context with Simpson points in sites along the Cowhouse Slough in the area of Harney flats. The context was situated directly on top of a clay layer in a level of white sand located below the hard pan as they eroded out of the bank of freshly dug drainage ditches. Local collectors have since recovered these blades from similar sites in Citrus County. The Association of Cowhouse Slough blades with primarily Simpson points and in one site a Clovis like point would date them with other Harney flats Paleolithic sites at about 10,000 years old. LewisTesser has suggested that this “type” may rather be a final stage preformed for this Simpson point. It’s association with the Simpson type may lend itself to this interpretation. The presence of use ware and rejuvenation would confirm or deny this blade as a separate blade type. They have not been recovered in a cache context as might be expected of a preformed. Very similar blades were recovered with mammoths in central Mexico. Since leaf-shaped blades of similar form are found in many cultural context, care must be taken to identify the context as well as the diagnostic characteristics of a blade before being identified as this type. Blades are finished tools and would not be expected to be found in a cache in the same way preforms might be encountered. Initially located in named at sites along the Cowhouse Slough near Tampa, Florida, these blades have since been identified as far away as southeastern Georgia where the pressure flaking at the edge of the blade leaves them with an almost serrated look.
