Halifax

The Halifax is a small to medium-size, side notched point usually made of vein quartz or, occasionally, quartzite. Coe (1959) lists a range of length from 56 mm to 29 mm with an average length of 44 mm. The cross-section is usually bi-convex. Shoulders are tapered. The blade is usually straight but may be excurvate. The distal end is acute. The stem is expanded with straight or incurvate side edges and a straight or excurvate basal edge. The stem base edge and side notches of the hafting area are usually ground.

The blade and stem are shaped by broad, often deep, random flaking. Some examples show good secondary flaking along the blade edges. The notches were formed by the removal of several flakes. Some points are asymmetrical due to a variation in depth and location of notches. According to Coe “the typical specimen was relatively thick and worked from a core. These cores, however, frequently originated as thick spalls struck from quartz or quartzite boulders common to this area of the Roanoke River.”

The type was named after Halifax County, North Carolina, where examples were recovered from the Gaston site on the Roanoke River. A radiocarbon date of 5440 ± 300 BP was secured for the type at the Gaston site, where it appeared above Guilford and below Savannah River points. Coe suggested “a relationship to the Lamoka point of the New York area.” This, in turn, indicates that the type is ancestral to Lamoka points, similar to the Swan Lake point of Alabama and Tennessee Valley area. In Alabama, the Swan Lake is associated with the Woodland culture. Halifax points are found on several sites in Buncombe County, North Carolina. Miller (1962) illustrated examples from site 44 MC 73, which is described as a pre-pottery site. Swan Lake points from the site are described by Miller as “typical woodland types.” Thus both Halifax and Swan Lake points appear in the John H. Kerr basin of the Roanoke River, Virginia and North Carolina. A type resembling the Halifax has been isolated in Randolph County in an Archaic context.