The Age of Hardaway

Hardaway-Dalton Point

When Joffre Coe published The Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont in 1964 for the remainder of the 20th Century and years longer most archaeologists and historians supported the theory that the entry point for the First Americans, the first American Indians called Paleoindians, was across the dry land bridge at the Bering Straits near the end of the last Ice Age when sea waters were much lower and trapped in huge glaciers. First animals and then people walked from Siberia to Alaska around 13,000 years ago. Those same archaeologists and historians generally supported the Clovis First Theory that the fluted projectile points found among the skeletal remains of mammoths near Clovis, New Mexico represented these first people’s projectile point technology dated at around 13,000 years ago. Both of these once supported theories are now proving to be wrong. At White Sands National Park near Alamogordo, New Mexico human footprints over 20,000 years old have been found and other indications of humans in the Americas well before 13,000 years ago are being discovered. Also there appears to be multiple entry points across the Americas for these incoming First Peoples. The dates of human occupation in North and South America are becoming older.

According to the Research Laboratories of Archaeology at UNC Chapel Hill, the Hardaway Site was a Paleoindian site, and a prime example of an Archaic period site that continued and overlapped into other periods. Joffre Coe in The Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont, page 81,82,83 described the following cultural occupations at the Hardaway Site as being Hardaway, Palmer, Kirk, and Stanly. Then he states – “After the close of the Stanly occupation, this site was occupied by at least eight other cultural groups with the Caraway (Keyauwee) component occurring after AD 1700. Of these groups, the Morrow Mountain and Savannah River complexes were most strongly represented by the artifacts recovered from the surface. The Guilford and Pee Dee complexes were least well represented, but there were sufficient numbers of their artifacts recovered to indicate that these people did occupy the site, even if in small numbers or for short periods of time.” (Note – current archaeology supports that the American Indian occupations ended at Hardaway by or before the 17th Century.)

Top Two Points from Hardaway are Clovis the Third is a Redstone Point

Trawick Ward, Stephen Davis, and Randolph Daniel found that the Hardaway Site was in a category all by itself. The massive number of artifacts and stone debris recovered at the Hardaway Site were astonishing. Hardaway’s ongoing and regular use by American Indians from their Paleoindian occupations represented by Hardaway Blades and Hardaway-Dalton points through many additional occupations up to Keyauwee Indians was unique. Hardaway almost represents the American Indian statement that they have always been here, are actively here now with agency and power, and they will always be here. Here, Now and Always.

When explorer and artist John White arrived at Roanoke Island in 1585, he observed many Algonquian villages that were scattered around the region. Earlier in 1567 the Juan Pardo expedition traveled up the Catawba River Valley and visited American Indians settlements. Later in 1701 John Lawson stayed at settlements during his journey including a Keyauwee Village along the Uwharrie River – a village already significantly damaged by European diseases. What all these European explorers found were American Indian settlements all around what is now North Carolina.

No area was more concentrated with American Indians than the Narrows of the Yadkin just upriver from the confluence of the Yadkin and Uwharrie rivers forming the Pee Dee River. The Hardaway Site, the nearby Doerschuk and Lowder’s Ferry sites overlapped during different cultural and historical periods and provided vibrancy to the area. For thousands of years, the unique rhyolite from Morrow Mountain and the boundless anadromous fish coming up the Pee Dee River to spawn had attracted American Indians from hundreds of miles away. With this abundance of natural resources, the Hardaway Site developed a well populated, longer staying, and secure sedentary community. Few settlement sites in North America have supplied so many Stone Age necessities as Hardaway, at the Narrows of the Yadkin. Since Paleoindian times the Hardaway Site has been the gathering place, the meeting place, which offered limitless fish, abundant game, and a unique cryptocrystalline rhyolite from Morrow Mountain.

Hardaway Blades that may prove to be older than Clovis

Now, we turn to the primary question about how long-ago American Indians began gathering at the Hardaway Site. Coe and other archaeologists doing research at Hardaway (1948 to 1980) were unable to locate sufficient organic material for accurate radiocarbon dating. Three fluted points, two Clovis and one Redstone, were found on the surface at Hardaway yet Coe downplayed them and emphasized the importance and the age of projectile points he uncovered at the deepest level – the Hardaway Blade.

In Time, Typology, and Point Traditions in North Carolina Archaeology: Formative Cultures Reconsidered by Dr. Randolph Daniel (2021) he said on page 38-42: “As described by Coe (164:64), several small thin bifaces were recovered from the lowest levels of the Hardaway site that were identified as the earliest manifestation of the Hardaway complex of point types. Coe viewed the Hardaway Blade as having technological affinities to Clovis, noting that in some cases “they may be mistaken for fluted points” Coe (1964:120). In fact, Coe (1964:120) mentions that the three “Clovis-like” points were recovered from the surface at Hardaway (see Daniel 2006), but for whatever reason, Clovis was not formally assigned to the projectile point sequence in North Carolina. Rather, the Hardaway Blade was given typological credence over Clovis.”

Additional Hardaway Blades

Coe thought that the Hardaway Blades may be as old as Clovis in the east and possibly older than Clovis points. However, Albert C. Goodyear (1974) and others stressed that Hardaway Blades were not older, distinct projectile points but were preforms – unfinished points, early in the manufacturing process on their way to becoming Hardaway-Dalton points. Hardaway Blades began to be downplayed, almost ignored.

Daniel’s quote continued from two paragraphs above:
“Still, a few small, thin specimens identified by Coe (1964: Figure 56a) are difficult to assign a Dalton preform designation. It may be the case that the variety in the Hardaway Blade type described by Coe could include Hardaway-Dalton preforms and another early point type in North Carolina that predates Hardaway-Dalton or even Clovis. The variability among this artifact class was noted by Coe (1964:64), who remarks the bifaces assigned to the Hardaway Blade type exhibit "considerable variations" such that they were assigned to a single type base more on their common provenience (embedded in the residual clay from Level IV) than on any morphological similarity. Indeed, some specimens from Hardaway arguably appear to be finished or nearly so (Figure 4.2).”

“Could these be examples of an earlier point type that predates Hardaway-Dalton or even Clovis? In fact, for years avocational archaeologists have used the label Alamance or Haw River to describe a biface morphologically similar to the Hardaway Blade and claimed that the "Hardaway Point evolved from” the Haw River type (Peck 2008:17). Unfortunately, the Alamance/Haw River type appears to be defined only from surface collections, making the early temporal claims for the proposed type problematic. Nevertheless, some indirect support for small Hardaway Blade-like points representing a Pre-Clovis type does exist at the Cactus Hill site in Virginia. (Feathers et al. 2006; McAvoy and McAvoy (1997). At Cactus Hill, small trianguloid to lanceolate bifaces, which McAvoy and McAvoy (1997:179) observe are quite similar to the Hardaway Blade type, were recovered about 10 cm below a Clovis component at the site. While the archaeological integrity of the lower levels at Cactus Hill has been questioned (e.g., Fidel 2013:343-44), we cannot dismiss the possibility that some examples of what Coe labeled Hardaway Blades do represent a Pre-Clovis type."

During the filming of Morrow Mountain’s Unique Rhyolite and the Hardaway Site in the late summer of 2024 Randy Daniel emphasized that this important question about the age of Hardaway needs additional research going forward. It could be that the smaller Hardaway Blades are as old as any projectile points found either at Cactus Hill in Virginia or Meadow Rockshelter in Pennsylvania. Steve Davis emphasized that currently we do not sufficiently know what to be looking for as we search for projectile points older than Clovis. Among the 15 tons of artifacts and stone debris stored at the RLA-UNC there may be undiscovered older points from Hardaway. And further research at and around the Hardaway Site may provide new answers. It is even possible with additional research that the oldest Pre-Clovis points found in the eastern US need to be uniformly named Hardaway Blades.

These are the current dates, of the deepest Hardaway Complex Points discovered at the Hardaway Site, provided by Dr. Randolph Daniel October 2025:

Hardaway Blade – 13,200 to 13,500 years old (Paleoindian and possibly Pre-Clovis)

Hardaway-Dalton – 12,500 years old (Paleoindian and Post-Clovis)

Hardaway Side-Notched – 11,000 to 11,500 years old (Early Archaic)

An American Indian perspective on the shape of projectile points from a conversation in Pembroke, NC with Harlen Chavis. Mr. Chavis describes the Hardaway Side-Notch point as being created with artistry and vision, not simply technology. The distinct curved side notches depict the extended talons of an eagle soaring down to grab one of the teeming Shad at the Narrows of the Yadkin.

Hardaway Side-Notched Point