Midland Point

Object: Midland Point
Date: ca. 12,900–12,250 cal BP, Early Paleoindian period
Context: Llano Estacado, Texas, Midland site (41MD1), previously known as Scharbauer site

Idyllic is hardly the word that those familiar with the area around Midland, Texas, would call the Midland site today. The once seasonally flowing stream is now Monahans Draw, and soft grass has given way over time to the fine sand of a dune blowout. Gone are the Bison antiquus, antelope, and native horses from which early inhabitants drew their sustenance. It is in this windswept setting that in June of 1953, Keith Glasscock, an amateur archeologist and pipe welder from Pampa, Texas, walked the sand dunes. As he explored for artifacts in a wind deflated basin, he found ancient bones and two unusual projectile points, one of which was Folsom-looking but curiously unfluted. The “unfluted Folsom” found by Glasscock is today known as a Midland point and is among the oldest stone tool types described in North America.

The people who made Midland and Folsom points followed herds of bison over vast swaths of the Great Plains between about 12,000–13,000 years ago, when North America’s glaciers began their final retreat. These early indigenous peoples hunted with atlatl darts tipped with finely crafted stone points. Today, we trace their paths across central North America by the durable artifacts of their lives—the stone tools and the butchered bones of their successful hunts.

On that June day, 1953, when Keith Glasscock walked the dunes along Monahans Draw on Clarence Scharbauer’s ranch, he found not only a previously untyped projectile point, but a scattering of fossilized human bones. The bones would spur much interest in the site from archeologists, earning national press coverage from Life and Time, who touted the find as the “Midland Man,” older than Folsom and the oldest human remains found in North America. With further study, the “Midland Man” was determined to be female. Her age, while very old, is today less clear, as dating methods are stymied by the effects of fossilization on bone. This work occurred decades before the casual collection of Native American funerary remains became illegal under federal law.

Weeks after his find, Glasscock went to the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe to discuss a different archeological pursuit. He found himself in the office of a young Dr. Fred Wendorf, who got him talking about the bones and tools he found in Midland. Wendorf’s curiosity was piqued by Glasscock’s report, and a few months later, he followed the avocational archeologist to the site, along with Alex Krieger from the University of Texas (who would become Wendorf’s collaborator on the Midland site analysis), several other archeologists, and a photographer. They spent an afternoon doing fieldwork on what would become the first scientifically recorded site in Midland County, recording another “unfluted Folsom” as well as fossilized Pleistocene animal bones.

Early the next year, Wendorf returned to excavate long trenches with the aim of understanding the geological stratigraphy and chronology of the bones and cultural material. Ed Moorman, an archeologist on the River Basin Surveys in Texas, was invited to assist, and Dr. Claude C. Albritton, a geologist from Southern Methodist University, joined to profile the excavation trenches. They recorded complex white, grey, and red sands, containing not only stone tools and the bones of many species of Pleistocene animals, but also burnt caliche features which may relate to cooking.

Wendorf described his final return to the Midland site, in late 1955, as a salvage effort. The previous year paleontologist and then Director of the Texas Memorial Museum, E.H. Sellards, trenched and graded portions of the site with heavy machinery. In the archeologists’ estimation, he destroyed portions of the site by unsystematically moving a massive amount of sand during this work. Sellards’ professional transgression gave Wendorf reason to revisit the site and search for final clues that would put the geology, faunal, floral, and cultural material in sequential order. In the end, Wendorf and Krieger disagreed over the final interpretation of the sands and the traces of a Pleistocene world within them.

Between 1989-1992, the site was again probed by scientists seeking to understand the stratigraphy of the colored sands, and the relationships between the archeological materials. Archeologists David Meltzer and geoarcheologist Vance Holliday identified a previously unrecognized stratum and confirmed the complexity of interpreting the sands in relationship to the stone artifacts and bones.

Though the curious “unfluted Folsom” points were known from other sites before the Midland site was found by Glasscock, the Midland point was recognized as a formal typology as a result of work at the Midland site. Since, Midland points have been identified at sites across the Great Plains, especially its southern reaches. The Midland point’s relationship to its more-famous cousin, Folsom, has become better understood through meticulous study by lithic analysts. Today, they are regarded as a separate point type, made and used by the same people who made Folsom points.

Midland points are distinguished from Folsom points by collateral flaking (inward from the long edges) which extend past the point’s centerline, creating a flat profile, typically less than 4 or 5 millimeters thick. Folsom points, on the other hand, are shaped by flaking which terminates in the middle, creating a ridge along the centerline which helps direct the energy from the flintknapper’s blow during fluting. Fluting, the removal of a channel flake from the base of the point along most or all of its length, is one of the last steps in fluted point manufacture. Challenging to execute, many a point has been broken in the process, frustrating flintknappers today as it must have in millennia past. See TBH's Earliest Peoples exhibit for descriptions and illustrations of Folsom and Clovis fluted points.

Flintknapper and lithic analyst Dr. Robert Lassen studied over 800 Folsom period points and point blanks, including Midland points. In addition to finding the expected types, he found hybrids of them, such as points which are characteristic of a Folsom on one face and a Midland on the opposite. From this, Lassen surmised that Midland and Folsom points exhibit “innovation and adaptation” by their makers.

The reigning hypothesis regarding the relationship between Midland and Folsom points is that they were made by the same people, and that the Midland point was probably an adaptation born of stone supply stresses, where the risk of breaking a point during fluting could not be suffered. However, evidence for Midland points dating to slightly later than Folsom has been found at the Winkler-1 site on the Texas-New Mexico border. And so, the Folsom-Midland debate continues, as it has since Midland points were first typed by Wendorf and his crew.

Like the West Texas sands, questions still swirl around the relationship and age of cultural materials at the Midland site. The Midland point, at least, has been firmly planted in the minds of archeologists as a hunting technology developed during the Folsom period, or perhaps the late Folsom period, likely by cautious flintknappers when the break-prone Folsom point proved a risk not worth taking.

Credits

Written by avocational archeologist Barth Robbins and TBH Assistant Editor Emily McCuistion, with portions from an unpublished Midland Site exhibit written by former TBH intern Clayton Drescher and helpful review and comments by Dr. Robert Lassen. Barth Robbins’ interest in archeology came as a young boy, seeing a double grooved axe his uncle found while plowing a field in the 1920's on his grandad’s farm in southern Illinois. Barth is involved in both local and state archeological societies and is a steward with the Texas Archeological Stewardship Network. His retirement in 2019 has allowed for more time to focus on his interest in the Paleoindian period on the Llano Estacado. Dr. Robert Lassen is an archaeologist and Principal Investigator at AmaTerra, ERG Texas Services. He specializes in lithic technology, particularly from the Paleoindian period, with his MA work exploring Clovis caches and his Ph.D. work focusing on Folsom technology.

Print Sources

Blaine, Jay C. , S. Alan Skinner & Molly A. Hall
2017   The Saga of Winkler-1: A Midland Site in Southeast New Mexico. PaleoAmerica 3(1): 48–73.

Buchanan, Briggs, J. David Kilby, Jason M. LaBelle, Todd A. Surovell, Jacob Holland-Lulewicz, and Marcus J. Hamilton
2022   "Bayesian modeling of the Clovis and Folsom radiocarbon records indicates a 200-year multigenerational transition." American Antiquity 87(3): 567-580.

Buchanan, Briggs, J. David Kilby, Marcus J. Hamilton, Jason M. LaBelle, Kelton A. Meyer, Jacob Holland-Lulewicz, Brian Andrews et al.
2021   "Bayesian revision of the Folsom age range using IntCal20." PaleoAmerica 7(2): 133-144.

Holliday, Vance T., and David J. Meltzer
1996   "Geoarchaeology of the Midland (Paleoindian) site, Texas." American Antiquity 61(4): 755-771.

Jennings, Thomas A.
2016   "The impact of stone supply stress on the innovation of a cultural variant: the relationship of Folsom and Midland." PaleoAmerica 2(2): 116-123.

Lassen, Robert
2016   "The spectrum of variation in Folsom-era projectile point technology." PaleoAmerica 2(2): 150-158.

Wendorf, Fred
2008   Desert Days: My Life as a Field Archaeologist. Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas.

Wendorf, Fred, Alex D. Krieger, and Claude C. Albritton
1955   The Midland discovery: A report on the Pleistocene human remains from Midland, Texas. University of Texas Press.