I first started hunting prairie potholes in the early 1980s. Old timers refer to them as "buffalo wallows" in the mistaken belief that they were created by buffalo. Actually, they are a result of glaciers. They are located along the edge of the Shelbyville Moraine, the 
terminal moraine of the Wisconsin Glacier. 10,000 years ago they were lakes in what was then a forrested area. During the time of the Clovis people the area was dominated by spruce trees. As the climate changed it gradually gave way to oaks and hickory and eventually, around 6000 years ago became a tallgrass prairie. By the time the first Europeans arrived the lakes had become mostly swampy areas that, in most instances,dried up in the summer. I have found over a hundred points around these potholes and the vast majority of them are Early Archaic. I have found fewer than five points that are possibly Woodland and I know of a couple of Clovis points found around them. The  sites are typically small, an acre of less in size, that appear to have served as a base camp. On these I tend to find the bottom halves of broken points, utilized flakes and debitage from flint-knapping, pitted cobble stones, and fire-cracked rock. Away from the base camp are numerous smaller sites and occassional random points and blades. Often times tips of points lacking bases are found. The most common point types found are bifurcate based points such as Lecroy, Fox Valley, and McCorkle and the corner notched points Nueberger and Kirk. The corner notched varieties are almost always broken and often have impact fractures indicating they were used as spearheads. Other early points present are Hardins, Dovetails, Thebes, and, rarely, Agate Basins. Side-notched points, too, are fairly common, and I have found four grooved axes and one unfinished bannerstone that are probably of the same age as the sidenotched points. I think the people who made them were probably the last to extensively utilize this area. Side notched points of the Mid-archaic are thought to be about 6000 years old and that corrospondse to a time when the climate changed. It is also 
 about this time that the oak-hickory forests were giving way to the prairie. The scarcity of later Woodland and Mississipian points indicates that the prairie was not an attractive area to live and therefore the people moved out. There is a small creek that contains many sites that is only a couple miles from these potholes and its sites have not only many of the same types of points and tools, but also has quite a lot of later material on them.
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