The Thedford II site was excavated by Deller and Ellis in 1981 and 1982 and was brought to our attention by Mr. Frank Wight of Thedford. The excavations were funded by grants from the Ontario Heritage Foundation. The site is situated in the Ausable River drainage of southwestern Ontario near the modern town of Thedford. The site covers an estimated 700 square metres in a ploughed field of which 500 square metres was excavated.

The points recovered are of the Barnes style identical to those recovered from the Parkhill site in that they are small to medium sized, well-fluted (usually single flutes), often fish-tailed forms. These points are named Barnes style after a site in Michigan where they were first reported in the 1960's. A great diversity of artifact forms were recovered with no one tool form markedly predominating in the assemblage. This information suggests the site was a more general purpose camp site which witnessed a range of everyday domestic activities. However, a good sample of fluted bifaces was recovered, including a plough-disturbed cache of as many as 13 items.

Another common form of tool was the needle like gravers or piercers, often with several spurs at their margins.  In addition, a number of distinctive kinds of scrapers with working edges at the end of the flakes were recovered. Most of the artifacts are made on Fossil Hill formation chert from the Collingwood area some 175-200 km northeast of the site. A few items were made on Bayport chert from Michigan that originates 175 km northwest of the site, and from Onondaga chert from some 150 km southeast of the site.

Most of the items were recovered from the ploughed zone at the site although a few subsoil remnants of pit features were encountered. Despite the plough disturbance, considerable patterning was found in the distribution of artifacts. The site was found, for example, to have several discrete concentrations of stone materials each of which we have suggested represent the separate camp locations of as many as five, small, family-size, groups who had arranged their camp locations in a semi-circle around the northern edge of the site. Besides the Paleo-Indian occupations, evidence was found of some later occupations the most notable of which were several artifacts and pit features associated with the "Smallpoint" Late Archaic (ca. 3500 to 2800 radiocarbon years ago).

D. B. Deller and C. J. Ellis - 1992 - Thedford II: A Paleo-Indian Site in the Ausable River Watershed of Southwestern Ontario.  Memoir of the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, No. 24. (xii + 157 pages)

D. B. Deller and C. J. Ellis - 1992 - The Early Paleo-Indian Parkhill Phase in Southwestern Ontario. Man in the Northeast  44:15-54.

C. J. Ellis, D. B. Deller, C. Murphy and C. F. Dodd - 1990 - The Pits, Part I: A Radiocarbon-Dated "Small Point" Late Archaic Feature from the Thedford II Site.  Kewa 90(7):8-12.

C. J. Ellis and M. W. Spence - 1997 - Raw Material Variation and the Organization of "Smallpoint" Archaic Lithic Technologies in Southwestern Ontario. In Preceramic Southern Ontario, edited by Philip Woodley and Peter Ramsden, pp. 119-140. Occasional Papers in Northeastern Archaeology No. 9. Copetown Press, Hamilton, Ontario.

Other References

D. B. Deller - 1988 - The Paleo-Indian Occupation of Southwestern Ontario: Distribution, Technology and Social Organization. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec.

C. J. Ellis - 1984 - Paleo-Indian Lithic Technological Structure and Organization in the Lower Great Lakes Area: A First Approximation. PhD Dissertation, Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia.

B. B. Greco - 1985 - An Investigation of Paleo-Indian Lifeways at the Thedford II Site in Southwestern Ontario. M.A. Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

S. Lancashire - 2001 - Early Paleoindian Trianguloid End Scrapers: An Analysis. M.A. Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario.