2019 arrowheads

In January I spent a weekend day searching a little rise in the landscape within sight of a large pond. In the past I had found some quartz flakes in a fairly well-defined area on one slope. I searched the slope very carefully and found some broken tools.

Walking back to the car, in a large flat area mostly devoid of chipping debris, I spotted this.

I think this is an interesting item. It is made of quartz (as usual), asymmetrical, with a single shoulder. It is large. I imagine this was probably used as a knife. The tip is missing, as usual.

I spotted this argillite stemmed point on the same day in a different place. It was a good day. I love the defined appearance of the flaking scars on argillite tools. This one has tip damage, too.

Hours of searching in a different place earlier this month yielded this tiny triangular point. Most of the "arrowheads" I find were probably dart points or knives. It's possible that this little quartz point might be a true arrowhead, that once tipped an arrow fired from a bow. Making a tiny point like this would have taken some skill.

It stormed pretty hard here in Massachusetts on Monday. But the end of the day was really pleasant, breezy, with a dramatic sky as the sun began to move toward the horizon.

I searched a favorite place where I used to find a lot of stuff but after hours of searching I hadn't found a single thing. I spotted this at dusk, just as it was getting too dark to see, in an area that is mostly void and that I usually don't spend a lot of time in.

It is (again) missing the tip but for me this Squibnocket Triangle is still a decent find, representative in many ways of what it is that I am searching for out there. I remind myself that I am very lucky to be able to find anything at all. This is probably from the late Archaic, 3,000-4,500 years old.