Adena

Adena Point examples from northwestern Georgia

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Adena Narrow Stemmed examples from northwestern Georgia

Adena Dickson points, also called Adena Wells points

Name: The Adena name is derived from the point’s association with the Adena culture of Ohio (Cambron and Hulse 1990:. The Adena Narrow Stemmed name was added to describe the more dominant shoulders and narrower stem of this variant.

Gregory Perino (1968) first reported the Dixon point (now Adena-Dixon) as a medium to large sized Mississippi River Valley point with a cultural focus within the Midwestern states. Perono illustrated both Rounded base and turncated-based varieties. The blade edges are most often incurvate with tapered shoulders and a contracting stem. Flaking is often high-quality and the by convex cross-section is thin on most examples. Perino suggested that Dixon points are probably Adina point related with the date sometime during the periods from 1500 to 25 RCYBP. The Adena-Wells is a common name given to the same point to denote the length of the narrow stem and its similarity to the Wells point of Texas (Newell and Krieger 1949:167) have been added to a variety of sub-types for clarity.

Age: Early research from Adena sites in Ohio and Kentucky suggest that these blades were used during both Late Archaic and Woodland periods. Five examples of the Adena point were recovered from Florida’s Watson’s Field site (8JA93) with Santa Rosa Swift Creek ceramics and Bakers Creek points (Schroder 2006:139-140).

Description: The Adena is a medium to large-sized point measuring between 2.5 and 4.25 inches (65 mm. – 115 mm.) in length. The blade is triangular to ovate with an acute distal end and lenticular cross-section. The shoulders are weak and rounded. The stem is only slightly narrower than the blade. The minimum width of the stem in both the Narrow Stem and Wells variants has greater variance with shoulder width. The stem is straight with a rounded basal edge. Examples with a more flat basal edge on the stem are often called Adena Robins points.

Distribution: Adena points may appear in Swift Creek and other Hopewell related Early and Middle Woodland sites in Northwest Georgia.

Information for this article was derived from James W. Cambron and David C. Hulse, Handbook of Alabama Archaeology, Alabama Archaeological Society

Maps were developed by Lloyd Schroder