Interpreting the past for the present

Greetings and welcome to the Media Prehistoria website, the former business page for my educational enterprise. For well over 30 years my work was dedicated to exploring, rediscovering and educating the public about early technology and lifeways. As I summed this up in the original statement:

"The significance of past events in our collective history is often obscured by the technical success of the present generation. As we peer into the remoteness of prehistory, the achievements of our Stone Age ancestors recede into the seemingly irretrievable depths of dreamtime, tempting our imagination with mute artifacts of stone, bone, clay, and, rarely, wood and fiber. As our technology isolates us from the environment we risk losing site of man’s role in the natural world. By learning about and practicing ancient technologies we can begin to reclaim our place in the natural world."

I have scaled back the site content and my offerings in anticipation of retirement. In addition to contact information, this site now consists primarily of a link for purchasing my books; color photo galleries for several chapters of "Postcards to the Past" (2015); and a link to download "The Graham Creek (9GO32) Paleoindian Inventory Report".

I am still available for demonstrations, instruction, and consultation, by arrangement only. Thank you for visiting.

Characteristics of Debitage Associated with Bone Tool Production: A Preliminary Assessment of the Late Archaic Pockoy Shell Ring 1 (38CH2533) presented at SEAC 2019; find references and extras from the poster here.

Contact and Booking Information

For more information on any of these programs contact:

Scott Jones

Media Prehistoria
31 Meadow Lane
Winterville, GA 30683

Phone: 706-742-2639

Email:

The Graham Creek (9GO32) Paleoindian Inventory Report

In 1979, Mr. Lee Thomas surface collected 86 probable Paleoindian bifaces and tools from a plowed field near the Oostanaula River in Gordon County, Georgia. Known as the Graham Creek (9GO32) site, it was initially assigned a Woodland period date.

In 2013 Mr. Thomas contacted David Anderson (PIDBA, Paleoindian Database of the Americas) for assistance with the collection, who referred him to Jerald Ledbetter. This resulted in a collaboration between Lee Thomas, Jerald Ledbetter, and Scott Jones in which the bifaces and tools were subjected to critical examination by the senior and junior authors of this report. Based on the analysis, the authors have concluded that they are Paleoindian in age, although they are not "classic Clovis" in form. Made mainly from two distinctive non-local raw materials, the bifaces and tools are heavily curated and reworked.

The large number of bifaces from 9GO32 suggests that this is a regionally significant Paleoindian site. As publication options were considered, the authors determined that the inventory report could best be utilized by making it available on the internet. This inventory report and high resolution images of the artifacts is available for download here. (Caution, this Acrobat PDF file is a large download—71.3 MB in size.)

Click here to access large color images from Scott's book Postcards to the Past (ordering information is on the left side of this page.)