Early Indian Tool Making Camps

On this site overlooking the North Anna River, archaeological investigations conducted in 2006 in cooperation with Virginia tribes identified toolmaking camps dating to 8000 B.C. Indians used these camps repeatedly, especially from about 1000 B.C. to 1 A.D. Using hammerstones and deer antlers, they fashioned quartzite cobbles from the riverbank into tools for hunting, butchering, fishing, and other subsistence activities. Stone bowl fragments and clay pottery sherds found here reflect long-term changes in vessel technology along Virginia's fall line. An intensively occupied cluster of Early Woodland camps such as this is extremely rare in central Virginia.