During the summer of  1997 a local resident reported a number of stone tool fragments in a small area on the surface of a field which had never before been cultivated. Deller and Ellis were of the opinion that this site was of Paleo-Indian age given the morphology of some of the fragments and the fact all the items were on Bayport chert, a distinctive chert which occurs in the Saginaw Bay area of Michigan 175 km northwest of the site. This material was used in the area mainly during Paleo-Indian times based on our previous research. Subsequent surface examination recovered a lanceolate but unfluted point which resembles those previously reported in the 1960's from sites such as the Holcombe and Hi-Lo sites in Michigan and which are estimated to date to between ca. 10,400 and 10,000 radiocarbon years ago. These finds confirmed our initial view that the site was of Paleo-Indian age. We were intrigued by the large amount of material recovered in a small area and its highly fragmentary nature. Since the site was just ploughed for the first time, it was imperative to carry out excavations while the site still had maximum integrity. Hence, with the support of summer archaeology work students provided though a programme run by Mr. Neal Ferris of the Heritage Planning Branch, Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Culture, as well as several volunteers, we carried out excavation of a 35 square metre area over a six day period in August of 1997.

The site is located just southeast of the modern town of Strathroy, Ontario and is very near the Crowfield fluted point site investigated by us in 1981 and 1982. The site is situated at the eastern end of a small knoll just north of an intermittent stream which today forms patches of swampy ground. We found only one clusterof artifactual material at Caradoc which concentrated in an area of roughly 12 metres square. All the material was in the ploughed zone except for some fragments intruded into the subsoil by root disturbances. No definitive waste from making or resharpening stone tools was recovered. The site collection consists solely of 301 lithic artifact fragments which refit together to form 75 artifacts. Most of these are on chert although a few items on coarse-grained rocks which might be hammerstones or abraders, as well as an iron pyrite nodule which could have served as part of a fire-making kit, were also included. With the possible exception of the point recovered, all of the 62 chert items are on a highly weathered (as witnessed by its chocolate brown surface discolouration) Bayport chert. Moreover, and again excepting the point and a couple of other items, all of the chert artifacts are fragmentary and were deliberately broken.

The items had been deliberately broken by one or more rarely, two or three blows to their surfaces. This sometimes simply split an artifact in half but it often resulted in fracturing the tools into several wedge-shaped pieces or what is called a radial break. The artifacts recovered included, besides the single point recovered: three biface knives; 31 unfinished bifaces or preforms including both large forms with ovate outlines and smaller more refined forms with more parallel sides; five large flakes with extensive edge flaking (side scrapers), and 22 briefly used flakes. Some of the last-named are made on large flakes detached in reducing the large ovate bifaces. The use of  flakes from large bifaces as blanks for simple tools is characteristic of Paleo-Indian assemblages. Breakage of artifacts to produce thick sharp edges which can be used in certain tasks is reported from certain Paleo-Indian artifact assemblages. However, in those cases only a few, and certainly not virtually all of the items, are broken for use as tools and inevitably, this involves the breakage and use of already finished tools -- it is a recycling strategy to make maximum use of the raw material and not the breakage of unfinished, never-used items as is the case here. Moreover, the recycling for tools use involves usually one blow to break the items whereas at Caradoc two or three blows were often used (40% of the time). Finally, and of course, careful microscopic examination of the thick edges resulting from the breaks revealed absolutely no evidence of use damage so it can not be breakage to make thick-edged tools.

Most pieces of individual artifacts were found close together suggesting they were broken at or very near where they were discarded. At the same time, the fact the material is over such a large area indicates the material was not originally in a single small pit or other container. Rather they were left over a large area to begin with. The purposeful breakage of the material and the fact there is absolutely no evidence of any other activities other than the breakage of these artifacts, is good evidence that the assemblage was produced by Paleo-Indian sacred ritual -- that is, behaviour associated with religious beliefs. It is possible that the assemblage represents an offering associated with shamanistic activities.

D. B. Deller and C. J. Ellis - 1999 - A Late Paleoindian Ceremonial Tool Cache from the Caradoc Site (AfHj-104) in Southwestern Ontario. Annual Archaeological Report for Ontario for 1998, New Series 9: 106-110.

D. B. Deller and C. J. Ellis - 2001 - Evidence for Late Paleoindian Ritual From the Caradoc Site (AfHj-104), Southwestern Ontario, Canada.  American Antiquity 66(2):267-284.

C. J. Ellis - 2004 - Hi-Lo: An Early Lithic Complex in Southern Ontario. In The Late Palaeoindian Great Lakes: Geoarchaeological and Archaeological Investigations of Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Environments, Lawrence J. Jackson and Andrew Hinshelwood (eds.), pp. 57-83. Canadian Museum of Civilization, Mercury Series, Paper No. 165.

C. J. Ellis - 2009 - The Crowfield and Caradoc Sites, Ontario: Glimpses of Paleoindian Sacred Ritual and World View. In Painting the Past with a Broad Brush. Papers in Honour of James Valliere Wright, edited by David L. Keenlyside and Jean-Luc Pilon, pp. 319-352. Canadian Museum of Civilization Mercury Series Paper. Gatineau, Quebec.

C. J. Ellis and D. B. Deller (with a contribution by R. H. King) - 2002 - Excavations at the Caradoc Site (AfHj-104): A Late Paleoindian Ritual Artifact Deposit. Occasional  Publications of the London Chapter, Ontario Archaeological Society No. 8. (xi + 187 pages)

Other References

D. B. Deller and C. J. Ellis - 1998 - Excavations at the Caradoc Site (AfHj-104): A Late Paleoindian Ritual Stone Artifact Deposit. Ontario Archaeological Licence report on file, Licence #97-091. Ontario Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation, Toronto, Ontario. 137 pages.