Quad Site (archaeological site)

The Quad Site is a series of Paleoindian localities in Limestone County near Decatur, Alabama. The site was first reported by Frank Soday in 1954, and later findings were also documented by James Cambron, David Hulse and Joe Wright and Cambron and Hulse. The Quad Locale can seldom be viewed at current lake levels, even during normal winter pool, due to extensive erosion, but is considered one of the most important and well known Paleoindian sites in the Southeastern United States.

Together, the Quad, Stone Pipe and Pine Tree sites form what is now considered the Quad Locality, a congregation of sites interspersed along the floodplain of the Tennessee River for a distance of approximately 14 miles. These sites were located on ancient levees of the Tennessee River and were exposed due to wave action in the early 1950s. The sites were extensively surface collected by a small, dedicated group of avocational archaeologists through the 1970s, at which point the Archaeological Resources Protection Act became law.

Artifacts collected from these sites included a variety of fluted points from the Clovis Culture, Middle to Late Paleoindian forms including Quad and Beaver Lake and Transitional types such as Dalton and Big Sandy (side-notched). A toolkit composed of knives, end scrapers, side scrapers, gravers and choppers were also illustrated in articles. Archaic and Woodland components were mentioned, but few potsherds or triangular points. In all, David Hulse and Joe Wright inventoried 40,466 artifacts gathered from the Quad Locality from just six collections acquired over a 40-year period.

The Quad Locality is important for a number of reasons, most notably its artifact density, size and age. Sites producing more than 10 fluted points are very uncommon. For a cluster of such sites to occur in such a small area is indeed rare. Over 180 fluted points have been inventoried from the complex, putting it among the ten most dense fluted point sites in North America. Because of its significance, the approximately 50 acre expanse within the floodplain across from the City of Decatur which encompasses Stone Pipe, Pine Tree, and the Quad Site has been reported in a number of amateur and a few professional research papers. This research included excavations (performed exclusively by Cambron and Hulse), interpretive studies of artifacts and site placements by professional archaeologists, and comparative studies of artifacts from Quad and other local sites. The Quad Site has left an impact on Alabama archaeology worthy of its legacy as one of Alabama's most important archaeological resources.

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