Hunt for Arrowheads

[Poguetx]

I used to hunt on a lease near Fredericksburg Texas that the guys called Arrowhead University. The cabin was on a rise over looking a valley, with a river about 100 yds out. There were tons of flakes around the cabin, so we speculated that the Indians must have camped there, too, and made their arrowheads there. The guys that had been on the lease for awhile had quite a few points to show. The only one I ever found had the tip and one of the barbs broken off, but you could definitely tell it was an arrowhead. Still have it in my curio cabinet.

 

[Cvkotvkse]

Most likely not ,if you shot them you made them ! Shooting my flints they most often broke with a 40Lb stik bow so imagine what those very low poundage bows (15-30 Lbs) did . Also their bows /strings also got used up fast so if you ate critters you dedicated lots of time making/repairing your stuff ,keep in mind Cabalas was not invented yet but folks liked eating regular ! They traded for flint ,some of mine came from Ohio and I lived in Pine Island NY So never a secret as everyone made them/Ed

Yeah, busting rocks to get a sharp edge been a set of continually-evolving skills for at least 2 million years, if the data on our pre-human ancestors in East Africa is correct.
By the time our ancestirs got over here, it was obviously a vital-enough skill set that everybody likely learned it at some level (Coronado's records describe Native women reflaking the edges of their knives with their TEETH while skinning buffalo!)
Obviously, some folks had access to better stone than others did, and some people get better at it than others; there were even communities of experts, such as at the Dover quarries in Tennessee, that made large ceremonial items for trade. On the whole, though, everybody who was using stone-tipped weapons needed to know how to resharpen or even replace them when they were used up or broken.

 

[Tanglefoot]

At a rendezvous up near Enchanted Rock, the parking area was a way away from the camp itself. My buddy and I had pitched camp and were parking the truck. There was a perfect flint point laying in some sand on top of the bedrock just beside the truck. He picked it up and handed it to me. "I got lots of `em," he said. It was the size we call a "dart point" .. too big for an arrow but smaller than a lance or spear point. I carried it in my possibles for years, wrapped in a scrap of brain-tan buckskin. Then one day I was visiting friends in northern Wyoming and we got into a conversation with a friend of theirs, a Crow Indian who had lived in the Big Horn Valley his whole life. He talked about things the geologists claimed didn't exist in those mountains but he knew where they were, including petroglyphs and other artifacts and oddly colored stone deposits. As I was leaving, he said "I've got something for you, Texas." He gave me a slab of pink limestone he said came from "back in the hills." He said he'd been told by PhD's that there was no pink limestone in the Big Horns, but there it was. He said "Take that back to Texas with you and put it in your garden. See what happens when you tell people where it came from."
I thanked him, and said "I've got something for you too. Fair is fair." I gave him the buckskin wrapped point and told him it was probably Commanche or Kiowa. He was very pleased.
I've still got the pink rock.

 

[Eutycus]

I have read that some surgeons are rediscovering the sharp cutting edge of flint.That part I can believe about the qualities of flint. I just find it hard to picture Insurance Companies or the American Medical Association letting surgeons use a "rock". Too primative!

 

[snakebit]

Found a few on my grandparents farm when I was a kid. Even found a clay marble once. Usually in plowed fields. But as dumb kids do, I lost track of them as I got older. Wish I still had them. My grandparents have been gone for years and their farm sold off. Miss them and the good times had there.

 

[toot]

I have read that some surgeons are rediscovering the sharp cutting edge of flint.That part I can believe about the qualities of flint. I just find it hard to picture Insurance Companies or the American Medical Association letting surgeons use a "rock". Too primative!

I believe that the stone that is used in brain surgery isn't flint bur OBSEDIAN, Vulcanic glass. it will not let bacteria adhere to it in surgery. and it is razor sharp. jmho.

 

[Henry Miles]

I have a couple that I found over the years on my land in NC that are made from milky quartz

 

[Eutycus]

Some points were made of stone other than flint, like obsidian or quartz. Were those ceremonial or "just" arrowheads?

 

[Mogadishu Meanderer]

Very interesting topic. I spent17 years or so working the Chiricahua, Peloncillo, Animas and Pyramid mountains in AZ and NM as well as the Burro Mountains in West Texas, found hundreds of them. They just glitter different on the morning or evening sun. Pick them up, look at them and place them back. Yup, those were the rules. As a friendly reminder, it is illegal to remove or collect them from federal land according to the Archeological Resources Protection Act of 1979. The thing is that most jurisdictions have adopted similar statutes for state and other public lands. I know TX, NM and AZ have done so. Some go as far as private lands as well, if the sites are believe to be near Native American burial or ceremonial grounds. It will be wise to check your jurisdiction rules before posting.

 

[JEBMs]

My wife and I collected for years. We have some artifacts on display and many boxed up that we found in agricultural fields and kept them from being destroyed by plowing, etc I grew up within bicycle distance from 2 very large Mississippian ceremonial centers and another large single mound so I picked up arrowheads since I was a kid. The one in the frame was my wife’s first and got us started doing it together
These are examples of knives, dart points, and true arrowheads.

 

[JEBMs]

For pipe guys, this is a sandstone monolithic frog effigy pipe my grandfather picked up while waiting for our cleaning lady to get ready. Her house sat on top of a small domicile mound in the middle of a 3 large mound ceremonial center.

 

[JEBMs]

Forgot photos

 

[JEBMs]

For the axe guys. We’ve found all sizes of these (called celts). The 2 pieces of the broken one were found a couple of years apart. The darker end laid on a shelf when I was smoking 4 packs of cigarettes a day and it discolored. (Food for thought smokers)

 

[JEBMs]

These are rim adornos that were broken off of Mississippian bowls and pots. Some are hollow and have small stones in them to rattle. The large “corn god” has a fired clay ball inside to rattle

 

[rmefbowhunter]

There is a fascinating video of Steven Rinella (aka The Meateater) and his cohorts butchering a bison with clovis points under the studious eyes of a team of anthropologists who wanted to see if the resulting markings on the bones were similar to bones that have been excavated from ancient sites. Here is a link to that video.

 

[toot]

My wife and I collected for years. We have some artifacts on display and many boxed up that we found in agricultural fields and kept them from being destroyed by plowing, etc I grew up within bicycle distance from 2 very large Mississippian ceremonial centers and another large single mound so I picked up arrowheads since I was a kid. The one in the frame was my wife’s first and got us started doing it together
These are examples of knives, dart points, and true arrowheads.
View attachment 225865

outstanding just outstanding!

 

[Newaygo77]

I hesitate to do this, but here’s a poem I wrote on the subject, published last fall in an issue of Gray’s Sporting Journal.

 

[Cvkotvkse]

I have read that some surgeons are rediscovering the sharp cutting edge of flint.That part I can believe about the qualities of flint. I just find it hard to picture Insurance Companies or the American Medical Association letting surgeons use a "rock". Too primative!

Ɓack in the '70's Don Crabtree, the "dean" of modern flintworking and replication studies, had to have cardiac bypass surgery. After his surgeon was shown electron microscope photos of the edge of a freshly-struck obsidian blade that showed it to be smoother and sharper than a modern steel scalpel, he agreed to let Don make a set of scalpels to be used for the soft tissue incisions. (Obviously, they had to use steel for cutting through the ribcage...)
Ñot only was the surgery a success; the outer incision was so cleanly done that he was left with virtually NO visible scar, which was unheard of for that time. Anytime he would have an initial appointment with a new doctor, they would not believe he had had bypass surgery done until they examined the incision very closely, and saw the faint thin white line... VERY different from the big "zipper" scars that they were used to seeing on bypass patients.
Comparative photos of the edges of the obdidian and steel edges were in National Geographic's July 1979 issue.

 

[rmefbowhunter]

I hesitate to do this, but here’s a poem I wrote on the subject, published last fall in an issue of Gray’s Sporting Journal.

I remember reading that poem in Gray’s! Well done and thank you for sharing.

 

[Cvkotvkse]

I hesitate to do this, but here’s a poem I wrote on the subject, published last fall in an issue of Gray’s Sporting Journal.

Awesome...
They are little mental time machines, in and of themselves...