New tools, new human niches: The significance of the Dalton adze and the origin of heavy-duty woodworking in the Middle Mississippi Valley of North America

Large distinctive Sloan points were exchanged within emerging Dalton social networks. Dalton toolkits, often considered late PaleoIndian, are part of an Early Archaic horizon. New tools helped Dalton groups to create new niches as they settled into new woodland and riverine landscapes and laid the foundation for later Archaic and Woodland socio-economic systems.