[6][7][8] 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.
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 Quad sites has been reported in a number of amateur and a few professional research papers.
Cambron and Hulse embarked on five excavations on the Quad site[5] as the water levels allowed, reporting only on the findings from the westernmost test at the Circle of Rocks,[6][5] completed in early 1960.
While the midden was quite mixed, one fluted midsection was recovered from Stratum IV, as well as Dalton points, numerous scrapers, and one side notched projectile – a Big Sandy.
[6] Advancing this idea were the inventories by Hulse and Wright,[5] which counted a total of 3,102 Big Sandys from the complex, 527 of which were discovered at the Circle of Rocks,[5] and an additional 172 from the Stone Pipe Site.
Hulse went on to suggest a greater antiquity of this type in the Tennessee Valley than believed, based on increases in the number of triangular and rectangular uniface end scrapers, thought to relate to Dalton or earlier types, in Big Sandy assemblages, and because all but 13 of the Big Sandys inventoried from the Quad Complex exhibited basal grinding, a trait suggesting some contemporaneity to "older" groups.
Wilmsen also proposed that the tool kit indicated Paleoindian subsistence at the site was geared toward foraging of plants and small animals, rather than the presumed hunting of Pleistocene megafauna such as bison and mastodon.
Notes from the individuals who collected the site indicate that the oxbow lakes were of more recent vintage; and that the series of backwater loci suggest the location of the Tennessee River channel during the Pleistocene.
The final report by Cambron and Hulse,[8] discussed finds from the 1961 season, a year that was marked by the rupture of Wheeler Dam and basin water levels falling to record lows.
[12] The partnership between the AAS and ARAA resulted in numerous excavations and surface surveys over the next two decades, the most salient being the Stanfield-Worley Bluff Shelter led by David L. DeJarnette, which produced the first Late Paleoindian (Dalton) radiocarbon date in Alabama.