The Larry Strong Collection
Dr. Larry Strong, a mathematics professor at the USC Salkehatchie campus, collected artifacts from the surfaces of numerous sites in Allendale County, South Carolina, over the course of four decades. In the 1990’s, Strong donated an estimated 17,000 artifacts from his collection to SCIAA. The majority of these artifacts – about 14,000 – are stone projectile points dating to all periods of prehistory.
The combination of the large size, large temporal span, and reliable and restricted provenience of the Larry Strong collection makes it an assemblage of tremendous research potential. To tap into that potential, the collection must be organized in a way that allows individual points to be described, analyzed, and re-analyzed. A grant from the Archaeological Research Trust has enabled us to begin inventorying the collection in 2015, assigning and labeling points with unique numbers, and producing an electronic database that will facilitate use of the collection for research.
The combination of the large size, large temporal span, and reliable and restricted provenience of the Larry Strong collection makes it an assemblage of tremendous research potential. To tap into that potential, the collection must be organized in a way that allows individual points to be described, analyzed, and re-analyzed. A grant from the Archaeological Research Trust has enabled us to begin inventorying the collection in 2015, assigning and labeling points with unique numbers, and producing an electronic database that will facilitate use of the collection for research.
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Thus far, 5,284 points from the Larry Strong collection have been inventoried and labeled. Our initial focus was on the points dating to earlier in time (particularly the Paleoindian and Early Archaic periods).
Kirk Corner Notched projectile points from the Larry Strong collection comprised the majority of the sample for a 2016 paper in South Carolina Antiquities exploring variability in Kirk points. 
Collections like the one donated by Larry Strong can be used to address numerous research questions from all periods of prehistory. It is our hope that we can secure funds in the near future to continue inventorying the collection so that it can be fully utilized for research projects.
Database (Excel file) of inventoried portion of collection: |
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