Tuesday, June 05, 2012

And another lucky day!

Yesterday at work I was dismayed by the nasty weather, lots of wind and cold rain. I had been hoping to head out and look for arrowheads right after work but I didn't have a warm jacket or rain gear and I wasn't looking forward to driving through a dreary rain storm to get to a muddy place to look. Rain exposes artifacts but it's generally not fun to look while it is still raining if you are not prepared. When 5:00 finally came I reluctantly decided to go out and look anyway. I'm glad I did! As it happened, the weather was not really that bad out there, just enough drizzle to keep the ground wet. All the rocks stood out plainly on the ground surface in the bare areas. I saw this:
That is the base of an argillite blade sticking out of the ground. With excitement I picked it up only to find out it was a true "heartbreaker," broken in half with the break just hidden by the dirt. But better than nothing, certainly. I looked for a while longer and was thrilled to spot this from several feet away, it was lying totally exposed:
Another view, the rain had left this nice tool sitting on a little pedestal just waiting to be picked up.
This is the first Brewerton I have ever found. Before I ever found my first broken artifact, I dreamed of finding a Brewerton, the classic arrowhead shape is really appealing. It is made of rhyolite. The adrenaline rush I get when finding something like this is really addictive and makes all the hours of fruitless searching worthwhile.
I also found another one of those little quartz triangles that are now so familiar. This one was intact and mostly exposed on the ground. It is still sharp after thousands of years in the ground. The Brewerton shows more weathering, the material is not as hard as quartz.

3 comments :

pwax said...

I never found anything like that little rhyolite point.

Chris Pittman said...

To me this has some similarities with some Brewertons you have shown. It is about 1.3" long. There are som many Brewerton subtypes, the ones you have found I would call Brewerton Side Notched and Brewerton Eared Notched. This one I found I would call Brewerton Corner Notched although the "barbs" are not as prominent as might be typical, I suppose this could be the result of this point being resharpened and reworked. But I am open to other opinions. Typology does not seem to ever be an exact science especially when looking at any single artifact.

Anonymous said...

Awesome! True treasures! I always enjoy your In situ photos. my comments very redundant but i just can't help posting what i feel. feel free to clip and paste this comment on your future finds too.
Keith