by Wm Jack Hranicky RPA, Alexandria, Virginia
Volume 67, Number 2, April 2020 Central States Archaeological Journal
Figure 1 – Gwynn’s Island Museum Display
The Cinmar bipoint of Virginia is one of the most famous artifacts in the East. It was originally turned over to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. Thinking it now belonged to the Smithsonian, Dennis Stanford started its analysis and identified it as authentic and placed it in the Smithsonian collections. However, no transfer papers were ever signed, and the owner, learning of its monetary value, asked for it back. Thus ended its public ownership. Only a dozen or so archaeologists have ever handled the bipoint, which includes the author.
The modern history of the Cinmar bipoint starts in 1970 with Captain Thurston Shaw of Mathews County, Virginia. He was the skipper of the scallop dredger named Cinmar, out of Hampton which was dredging 40 miles off the Virginia Capes in 40 meters of water at the edge of the Continental Shelf. After one particular dredging haul across the Atlantic floor, he recovered an ivory mammoth tusk, a large molar and a stone knife blade. He later sawed the tusk into sections and divided it amongst the crew and kept part of the tusk, the molar and the stone blade. Several years later, Dean Parker of Mathews County acquired these three artifacts from Captain Shaw and in 2002 loaned them to the Gwynn’s Island Museum in Mathews County, Virginia for exhibition.
In 2009, Darrin Lowery, an archaeologist working with the Smithsonian Institution and specializing in Paleoindian prehistory was working in the area, and because it was raining, stopped by the museum. He discovered the artifacts and contacted Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian who became very excited about them. Stanford obtained permission from Dean Parker and took the bipoint, mammoth molar and tusk section back with him to the Smithsonian for further research. After two years of testing which included carbon dating, DNA tests, and X-rays, it was concluded that the mammoth was a 30-year old female who was killed over 20,000+ years ago, which also dated the bipoint (see below).
The Smithsonian established that the artifact, a pre-LGM occupation of North America’s Mid-Atlantic region, was made from rhyolite, a stone material found in a quarry located around South Mountain, Pennsylvania, which is near Emmitsburg. The author participated in the sourcing of the stone and went to Pennsylvania obtaining several pounds of the rhyolite for the Smithsonian. The author still has several pieces for his collection. As argued in Hranicky (2018a and 2018b), early Americans were basically living on the exposed continental shelf. They came inland for one principal reason, namely fresh stone for their tools. For the Pleistocene era, rhyolite was unusual. The sample of Pleistocene bipoints is small and this low frequency is probably a sampling bias. For the present reporting, jasper was the basic stone requirement.
The Cinmar artifact measures: Length = 188 mm, Width = 55 mm, Thickness = 6 mm. For its size, it is extremely thin and has a flat distal-to-base profile. It has well-controlled percussion thinning flaking on both faces (Stanford and Bradley 2012). The knife was probably hafted and resharpened several times. X-rays indicate it was made from banded rhyolite. Stanford and Bradley (2012) consider the artifact’s ancestry as being the Franco-Cantabrian Solutrean of Europe. This is based on the Cinmar’s overshot flaking. The tusk provided the radiocarbon date over 23,000 years ago.
Figure 2 – Cinmar Bipoint (Front and Back Views)
The Cinmar bipoint was dredged up in 1970 by Capt. Thurston Shaw from the waters offshore from Hampton, Virginia. It is named after the captain’s ship. It came up with a mastodon skull which provided the radiocarbon date of 22,760 +/- 90 RCYBP (UCIAMS-53545). The depth of the find was from 38-40 fathoms in the Atlantic. Note its bold, thin flake scars which are an attribute of Solutrean toolmaking. And, it has invasive retouching along its distal margins resulting from resharpening dulled edges.
The bipoint was published in Stanford and Bradley (2012) and Hranicky (2013). It started a major debate in archaeology on the antiquity of humans in North America, such as Eren, Boulanger, and O’Brien (2015). However, Bradley and Stanford (2004) and Hranicky (2007) have argued this Pleistocene hypothesis for years.
Now with numerous pre-Clovis radiocarbon dates on the East Coast (Hranicky 2018 and Stanford, et. al. 2014), many archaeologists now accept it as a major factor in the study of what is now called the PaleoAmerican era of North America.
A Cinmar cast was given to the museum in May 2018 by the author. Of course, it is on display; it replaces an old copy. The museum draws over 1,200 visitors annually. The museum presents a total prehistory and history of the island. And, the Smithsonian has located the Cinmar kill-site in the Atlantic at probably an anaerobic bog. Hopefully, future investigation will be conducted (Stanford 2016).
The bipoint found by Thurston Shaw is now privately owned, but an exact replica, along with the original mastodon molar and tusk section are in a special display at the Gwynn’s Island Museum. Ironically, he was a collector of pre-historic and historic artifacts. The museum is proud to have played a part in one of the most significant discoveries in North America.
References:
Bradley, B. and Stanford, Dennis
(2004) The North Atlantic ice-edge corridor: a possible Paleolithic route to the new world.
World Archaeology, Volume 36, pp. 459-478.
Eren, Metin, Matthew Boulanger, and Michael O’Brien
(2015) The Cinmar Discovery and the Proposed Pre-Late Glacial Maximum Occupation of North America. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Vol. 2, pp. 708-713.
Hranicky, Wm Jack
(2018a) North American Bipoints. AuthorHouse, Bloomington, IN.
(2018b) PaleoAmerican Archaeology in Virginia. Universal Publishers, Boca Raton, FL.
(2013) Bipoints Before Clovis. Universal Publishers, Boca Raton, FL.
(2007) A Solutrean Landfall on the U.S. Atlantic Coast? Middle Atlantic Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 23, pp. 1-15.
Stanford, Dennis
(2016) Personal communication.
Stanford, Dennis, J. and Bruce A. Bradley
(2012) Across Atlantic Ice. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Stanford, D., Lowery, M., Jodry, M., Bradley, M., Kay, T., Stafford, R., and R. Speakman
(2014) Evidence for a Possible Paleolithic Occupation of the Eastern North American Continental Shelf at the Last Glacial Maximum. In: A. Evans, J. Flatman, N. Flemming (Eds.), Prehistoric Archaeology on the Continental Shelf, Springer, pp. 73-93, New York, NY.