The 10,000-year-old Lubbock artifact assemblage

Five lanceolate flaked stone tools, two with fitted or matching debitage flakes, and three flake tools were recovered from feature FAS-17, a Bison antiquus kill/butchering activity area, in substratum 2s at the Lubbock Lake Landmark (41LU1), Texas. These artifacts are identified as the Lubbock assemblage, with contracting-stemmed Lubbock points named as a mnemonic rather than a type. A radiocarbon determination of 9950±120 BP is associated. The Lubbock artifacts reflect a bifacial reduction technology applied to a variety of lithic materials (e.g., Jemez Mountain obsidian, Pedernal chert, Alibates agatized dolomite, Edwards Formation chert, chalcedony), with final parallel-collateral facial flaking of the stylized tool. Most appear to have been resharpened but not recycled. The typical lanceolate form has a converging proximal end and a narrow, straight-edged base, as if made to be socketed into a foreshaft of prescribed width. Several if not all of the lanceolate points were used as knives, and two exhibit heavy battering as if used as adze bits. Various combinations of the Lubbock assemblage's attributes are found in the Agate Basin, Bonfire, Carter/Kerr McGee, Clovis, Hell Gap, Jones-Miller, Packard, Plainview, or Ryan site assemblages. The presently available chronological framework suggests that parallel-collateral flaking is not itself a temporally diagnostic attribute on the North American Great Plains during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Haft detail combined with facial flaking may be temporally and geographically more sensitive.