The Kirk Project

Kirk 5947 (Allendale SC) by aawhite on Sketchfab

The Kirk Project is an effort to assemble a large (pan-Eastern) database of projectile points assignable to the Kirk Corner Notched cluster.

The existence of a “Kirk Horizon” (dating to about 8,800-6,600 BC) extending north-south from the lower Great Lakes to the Florida Keys and east-west from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi Valley has been noted for over four decades (i.e., at least since James Tuck’s 1974 paper “Early Archaic Horizons in Eastern North America”). Although many authors have remarked on the striking similarity of Kirk Corner Notched projectile points from across this large area, there has never been a concerted effort to assemble a dataset of sufficient detail and spatial scope to allow us to characterize and analyze the kinds, amounts, and spatial components of variability among these points.

Assembly of a pan-Eastern Kirk dataset will be useful for addressing numerous questions about the Early Holocene hunting-gathering societies of the Eastern Woodlands. Download data, view 3D models of Kirk points, and read more about the Kirk Project here.