Hunt for Arrowheads

[Tom A Hawk]

Amazing how they hold up!
Have you ever actually dressed out a deer with either an old broken point or knife, or a freshly-struck flake?
Have done them with each. A real kick at some kind of deep level for me...
Years ago, I skinned one of my Dad's deer with a broken midsection of a large point I had just picked up while walking out from my stand , and a few yeaes later some of the guys in my hunt club had me demonstrate using sharp flakes to dress one out at the camp, and that was fun. It was different, though, when my son brought home his first bow-killed deer. He had been so busy with work, school, and football that he had not had time to stay in practice with his longbow, so he took this doe with a compound. As we were hanging her up to start the gutting and skinning, he stopped and said, "Dad, I know I didn't take this one traditionally. Could we dress her out using flint?" I durn near got teary-eyed... I struck three flakes of glassy Flint River chert from up in Georgia... He went down one side, and I the other... It seemed to go faster than what it does when we use steel skinners. Processed the entire deer with those flakes, except busting the pelvis to separate the hams... whacked that through with a 'hawk!
We each still have the flakes we used, as embodiments of a great shared memory.

My apologies if that was a bit long-winded... We all have ancestors who did this, regardless of our ethnicity.
It was a great grounding experience for both of us.

I have also skinned using a flint blade and it noticed that the hide was free of accidental cuts and gouges that sometimes happen in the tight places when using a sharp knife blade. This may be helpful if saving the hide for tanning.

 

[jtkerk]

I worked until I was 72, my wife couldn’t get out in the fields anymore so we didn’t look anymore. When I would have work to do out on our pipelines I would be looking for points etc. Just before I retired I was with a farmer who was digging across us cleaning out a drainage ditch when I looked down picked up this View attachment 226312

Awesome

 

[JEBMs]

There’s big money in fake artifacts. Ethical flint knappers, potters and sculptors sign their work so that they are recognized as art and not artifacts. Before the antiquities laws there was a man here that dug a burial site over by the Mississippi River. He had a pot shaped like a bear’s head that he was offered $45,000 for 30 years ago. There are authinticators (sp?) that for a fee with verify whether your particular artifact is a fake or not. The picture doesn’t show top of the line points but just a quick example of how expensive lithics can be. Pot and monolithic pipe prices are unbelievable. Wherever there is money there will be fraud.

 

[1950DAVE]

Here is a gallon of culls from my artifact hunting days. Never did find many really good points. Just rediscovered these today, I'll find some of the better ones some day.

 

[Eutycus]

I was really enjoying this discussion on arrowheads, Indian arrowheads that is. Then the subject came up about modern day knapping, pottery and such.Its well and good I suppose that the ancient art is still carried on. But it's really a crying shame about the fakes and phonies coming on the market.

 

[JEBMs]

Here is a gallon of culls from my artifact hunting days. Never did find many really good points. Just rediscovered these today, I'll find some of the better ones some day.
View attachment 226829

Definition of disappointment: seeing a perfect base sticking out of the dirt, grabbing it, expecting some resistance when you pull the rest of it out only to find out it is broken and there is no more.
We always hunted agricultural fields so we had “heartbreak aplenty”. Tractors and plows show no mercy.

 

[Cvkotvkse]

Definition of disappointment: seeing a perfect base sticking out of the dirt, grabbing it, expecting some resistance when you pull the rest of it out only to find out it is broken and there is no more.
We always hunted agricultural fields so we had “heartbreak aplenty”. Tractors and plows show no mercy.

When I was growing up, I would gey pretty frustrated w/ the number of broken poiints we'd find in plowed fields, and would wonder sometimes if some farmers just intentionally ran over the things with a disc harrow...
Later on, after several years of knapping, using, and studying replicas of the artifacts I was analyzing as a professional archeologist, I realized that a LOT of those points were broken by the original makers/owners. There are certain kinds of breaks that happen when making a point, and others that occur when it strikes bone, wood, or stone when it is shot or thrown. The broken bases often seemed to have been carried back home or to camp, pulled out of their hafts, and discarded when a replacement was made or obtained. Some were reworked into other tools while stiĺl being identifiable as to their original shape/purpose. Actual village sites generally contain more of these broken or used-up-and-replaced pieces than they do fresh whole points. (After a while, I came to suspect that many, or even most, of those big pretty "kèepers" likely were grave offerings in burials that have totally disintegrated, leaving only the stone pieces...)
These are part of the piece's story, as well as that of its maker/user(s.)
When you get to know the "signs in the stone," even those broken pieces can become a LOT more interesting.

 

[Crockford]

I'm always looking. My friend once told me that I could find artifacts in the Walmart parking lot. I have never found one there "yet". I did find a trade pipe in a parking lot, where they planted an oak tree 50 plus years ago. Any time I see dirt turned over I look at it. The guy that took me 40 years ago arrow head hunting. Explained to me that they can be found everywhere. He said, "white man has only been here 200 or so years, and look at all the stuff we have throw in the dirt. Native Americans have been here over 12,000 years, they threw down and lost stuff too." We spent many a day walking plowed fields after a big rain. 40 years later I still get as excited when I find something, when I pick it up I still think about who was the last person to touch it and how many years ago it could be. I have a small collection and add to it all the time. I will say I have found arrow heads in some odd places.

 

[Cvkotvkse]

The two small Late Paleo points and the one that looks to be a possible reworked Clovis that are all in the middle case are really nice finds.

 

[Crockford]

I use to have some really good stuff. For
extra credit in an Alabama History class in Jr.High I took some of my best stuff for show and tell. I left it in the classroom, so I could show the artifacts to all the classes the next day. Well, the next day all my artifacts were gone. I lost about 200 of my most prized pieces.

 

[Crockford]

I have always liked the little bird points, like the ones I have in the top right. Seems they would have been delicate it make without breaking.

 

[Crockford]

Well, other right. Top left.

 

[Cvkotvkse]

Well, other right. Top left.

Some of your pieces on the bottom right, if tneir flaked basal edges are ground smooth (easiest way to tell is to LIGHTLY rub your tongue along the back edge) are around 9,000 years old, maybe a bit more...

 

[Cvkotvkse]

I use to have some really good stuff. For
extra credit in an Alabama History class in Jr.High I took some of my best stuff for show and tell. I left it in the classroom, so I could show the artifacts to all the classes the next day. Well, the next day all my artifacts were gone. I lost about 200 of my most prized pieces.

Peiple have no idea how much collectors pay for good pieces, nor how unscrupulous people csn be in obtaining them to sell...

 

[Crockford]

Peiple have no idea how much collectors pay for good pieces, nor how unscrupulous people csn be in obtaining them to sell...

Cvkotvkse, what do you make of this one. I found it in a field where wild hogs dug several spots out. One side looks worked pretty close to finished. The other is only half way finished. I have wondered what happened to this person to make him stop working on it.

 

[Cvkotvkse]

Looks like someone was just learnkng, only had a hammerstone to work it, and gave up because they couldn't thin it out... looks like it was a flat cobble to start with.
Can't tell from photo on my phone, but it may have started as a much larger piece, like an Edgefield scraper. (Thick triangular scrapers, notched for hafting, and worked on only one face) that had been used and re-chipped to the point of it just being a thick "slug."
Sometimes see pieces like this in places way away from good flint sources where a piece of sharp rock was carried or kept around and used for cutting, scraping, or whatever was needed... the otiginal "'Leatherman."
The same piece might end up in all three categories at different times over the course of its use'-life.

 

[Cvkotvkse]

Sorry, friends... didn't mean to hijack the thread...

 

[JEBMs]

we found a lot that were not flaking as planned either due to skill, tools or material. The Harahee blade (pointed on both ends) in post #50 has a bit of unruly material on the opposite side. The craftsman that made it worked it down fairly well but it has a hump on the side not showing that if they had curse words in 1000 A. D. He used them.
Incidentally, that point and the corn God rattle effigy in the top of post #54 were found together when a high wind blew the sand off a ridge exposing 7 burned rectangular house floors. It was a strange feeling standing on that ridge thinking about the people that lived in those houses. The back of both of those pieces are blackened from the fire.

 

[Woodwright]

When I was in Boy Scouts over fifty years ago, I could be the last scout in line walking a trail through the woods and I was always the one to find the arrowheads.

 

[Sam squanch]

Was in dads stuff, I assume he found it around the home place.