Bradbury Brook

Bradbury Brook in central Minnesota, south of Mille Lacs Lake, is an archaeological procurement area where Late Paleoindian people collected siltstone cobbles from a streambed and nearby glacial drift for toolmaking. Its significance centers on a partially intact stone workshop dated to 7212 ± 75 BCE, where local siltstone was fashioned into stemmed points, bifaces, keeled scrapers, blades, and chipped stone adzes with abundant anvilstones and hammerstones. More than 125,000 artifacts have been recovered there. That large assemblage and the workshop’s early date make Bradbury Brook the earliest dated excavated site in Minnesota and a crucial source for understanding some of the state’s earliest known tool production.

Minnesota · United States