Spring arrowheads

Each spring, I return to some favorite places to see if anything new has popped up. I have found some things, and will share them here in a few separate posts. Here is a typical find, from one place I enjoy visiting. The winter rains had washed a little gully in the earth, exposing some handfuls of gravel, and this. A broken quartz triangular arrowhead. Nicely made, with a point that is still sharp.

The results of an afternoon after work, in a different place. Crude and broken, almost not worth showing. But better than nothing at all.

My friend Dave and I spent some hours on a Sunday carefully searching a sandy slope near a riverbank. What's this?

It's likely that this will be my best arrowhead find for 2018. I don't have many like this. It's very thin.

Here it is cleaned up at home. It is felsite. The damage to the base has no patina and is recent- a pity. That little chip almost obscures the subtle bifurcation to the stem, but enough of it is still present for me to feel confident calling this a Neville point. I have another one of these from this same site. Neville projectile points appeared around 8,000 years ago. This artifact is very likely six or seven thousand years old. It was probably ancient when the Great Pyramid was built. The landowner enjoyed seeing this find. He's moving some dirt around in an adjacent area this month. My fingers are crossed.

All of these finds were from southeastern Massachusetts.