Is it an Indian artifact?

[76monza]

Just got back from my brothers this evening and he had showed me a box of rocks and flint chips he picked up out of a field north of where he lives at a known indian site where artifacts have been found.
I spent a little time digging around through all the stuff and sorting out the concussion flakes and assorted manure, from the worked pieces. When I was finished I had a small pile of worked stuff with a bigger pile of junk. A lot of flint with worked edges, a busted knife, 2 turtle back scrapers and a piece I at first thought was a thumb scraper. After cleaning the caked dirt off it, it appears to be a flint from a flintlock. I don't have the piece in front of me right now but as I remember it, was about an inch long, maybe a shade longer and square-shaped. Kind of like the working end of a wood chisel with the long, flat face that tapers to the cutting or striking edge, sides parallel and have all been worked. The material is a grey colored,semi-translucent flint. And it's got big old chip right out of the middle of the striking edge, too big to rechip out. If it is from a flintlock, I suppose that might explain it being dumped. But my question is when was it dropped?

I haven't seen the kind of indian material that has been recovered from this field, so I don't know the ages of the artifacts found. Could it be indian, who knows? The area sets near the Santa Fe Trail (close to U.S. 56)so this area was crossed by many people over the centuries. I'm sure it was used as a dumping ground all up and down the trail. Could it have been from early trappers (maybe French) homesteaders, traders, pioneers?

What is interesting, at least to me, is the overlapping of the different ages and cultures of artifacts and how confusing and difficult ascertaining an actual date of a piece can be.

Smokeydays

 

[musketman]

I would say that it was from a musket lock, perhaps from a trade gun...

You can't really carbon date it, that will just show the age of the rock, not the age of the worked area...

Different cultures chipped flint differently, you might be able to pinpoint the user by the way it was flaked...

Anyway, I like hands-on history, artifacts are a cool way to touch our past...

 

[aragorn]

Is the possible gun flint the same type of stone as the Indian artifacts?

From your description of the tools and flakes it sounds as if you have a manufacturing site, and if they're scrapers then it's probably not just a hunting encampment - it may be a place with both men and women, where hides were worked as well. If you do have a gunflint and it's early, say 17th century, then it might be from a trade musket and contemporary with the other stuff - stone tools continued to be made in many areas until quite recently. But you'd need to find a datable tool shape, e.g. an arrowhead, to be sure.

 

[smokeblower]

Many uniface tools look like gun flints. The difference will be in the wear on the edges. A flint (gun) will be chipped and torn, were as a uniface tool for scraping hides, wood, softer stone will be polished, not a chipping- tearing action. The pressure flaking will still be visable, were a gun flint has wear that destroys the original flaking pattern.

having said that , a gun flint foung within context of a Native habitation site is not uncommon as the settlers picked abandoned or uninhabitated areas cleared by Natives to settle. Thus the land ownership struggle that ignited most Native-European violence. FT Louden, Tennessee is a good example of a native site occupied by settlers using and replacing gun flints. :m2c:

Collecting anything old in Tennessee, that's my game.
Smokeblower

 

[76monza]

Strider,

The flint piece I was talking about is of a different material than the worked Indian artifacts, they were a pink to dirty white coloration and opaque. The flint when cleaned up and dryed had a different feel to the stone almost what I would call a greasy feel t it and was translucent gray in color
Over the years of artifact hunting I've found many different objects while out looking. Usually 20th century items, Old homesteads were located on many sites. A lot of the sites were former dumps for farmers and homesteaders. and the debris just gets churned into the mix. Terracing fields furthers the process of mixing it up. It's interesting because you never know what you'll find and drag home.

Smokeydays

 

[jdixon]

Smokeydays - sounds like what you have found is very similar to what we find around the house here. My kids trod the tobacco fields this time of year, before the sets go out, looking for what they call "Indian Stones". They find two or three arrowheads or spear points each time they go out. In the same area they find hand fulls of chert and flint flakes, most small, some larger, some obviously attempts at an arrowhead that didn't work out. Since all we have in this area is heavy clay over limestone, it is obvious that all of this non-indigenous stone has been carried in from somewhere else. As far as age, I sent a scanned image of a large spear point we found to Allan Eckert, a well known author who lives up in Ohio. (wrote the Frontiersman, A Sorrow in Our Heart - The Life of Tecumseh and a host of others) Hew responded back quickly. He is very familar with the area where we live and the large Indian settlement that used to be here called Eskippakithiki. It was his opinion that the spear point we have was 5,000 to 7,000 years old! No telling how old what you have there is but, suffice it to say that there are a lot more stone artifacts laying around the fields of North America that pre-date the white man's arrival then were deposited after.