The Tedball site is situated on a small knoll just south and inland from Grand Bend on the shore of Lake Huron. It is a Late Paleo-Indian site estimated to date to about 10,400 to 10,200 radiocarbon years ago. It was discovered by a local resident who reported the site to Brian Deller. The site is situated in an area of mucky soils which are today used for market gardening and is only known through surface collection of artifacts off of the ploughed ground surface. The site is out on the old lake bed of a high water level in the Huron basin called the Nipissing Phase which dates to about 5500 to 4500 radiocarbon years ago. The abandoned beach backed by an old shorecliff of that lake phase occurs about one km south of the Tedball site. This shoreline is also believed to have been used by a much earlier lake called Algonquin or Ardtrea which existed until 10,400 years ago. Then the water levels in the Huron basin fell much below modern levels until the rise once again to form the Nipissing Phase lake. The site is estimated to have been occupied just after the fall from the Algonquin/Ardtrea level. Since it was subsequently submerged by the shallow oxygen rich waters of the Nipissing Phase, the artifacts from the site all are waterworn and have a brown rind or limonite patina caused by a reaction of natural iron-rich minerals in the chert to the oxygen in the waters.

The artifacts from the site include a very thin, concave based but unfluted example of a Holcombe style point, so-named after a site near Detroit, Michigan where that form was first reported. In addition, the small assemblage includes typical Paleo-Indian tools such as needle-like gravers or piercers, a drawshave or side scraper with a concave edge and a small triangular shaped scraper with a working surface at one end and tapered side edges so it could be set in a handle. Some of these tools are made on flakes devrived from the reduction of large bifaces and the use of such flakes as tools is typical on Paleo-Indian sites.

D. B. Deller, C. J. Ellis and I. T. Kenyon - 1986 - Archaeology of the Southeastern Huron Basin Area.  In Studies in Southwestern Ontario Archaeology, edited by William Fox, pp. 2-12.  London Chapter, Ontario Archaeological Society, Occasional Publication No. 1.

C. J. Ellis and D. B. Deller - 1986 - Post-Glacial Lake Nipissing Waterworn Assemblages from the Southeastern Huron Basin Area. Ontario Archaeology 45:39-60.

Other References

D. B. Deller - 1988 - The Paleo-Indian Occupation of Southwestern Ontario: Distribution, Technology and Social Organization. PhD Dissertation, Dept. of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal, P. Q.