In February 1997, a large ovate biface, believed to be a Paleoindian tool, was brought to the attention of the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources, by Alan Lowe of Randolph, New Hampshire. The artifact was recovered by Alan's grandfather, Vyron D. Lowe, as an isolated find more then 50 years ago, from a gravel pit, between Israel's and Moose Rivers, in the town of Randolph. These two rivers flow through an east-west pass of the White Mountains that connects the Connecticut and the Androscoggin Rivers. It is easy to speculate the importance of this route, which is already known to contain prehistoric cultural resources, most notably, from the Paleoindian period.

The Lowe Biface is made on a large flake of mottled, dark gray volcanic stone (rhyolite ?), from an unknown source. Measuring 14.8 cm long, 9.8 cm wide, with a maximum thickness of 1.6 cm and weighing 246 grams, the artifact is almost completely intact with only a small break on the proximal end. It was thinned and initially shaped by removing large flat, lateral flakes, 3.5 cm to 5 cm in length, that extend to the midsection (or crest) of the biface. After thinning, the entire edge of the biface was uniformly trimmed on both dorsal and ventral surfaces, with the removal of small flakes between 3 mm to 7 mm long. There is retouch evident, along 25% of the existing edge, starting from the distal end, extending along the edge, 90 degrees, to the midpoint between the distal and proximal ends.

Intervale Fluted Point and Lowe Biface

There is no certainty of the use of such a tool. It may have been used as a large skinning or defleshing knife. The amount of high quality stone that this tool is made of, would have also been valuable as a raw material reserve (or utilized core) from which other, smaller tools may have been fashioned. This latter use, would explain why so few of these large bifaces appear in the archaeological record.