Thursday, January 05, 2023

Glass "Arrowhead"

First, compare these pieces of broken glass found adjacent to each other, in a plowed cornfield. I took the photo because it is so clear that the piece on top is different:

I certainly want to believe this is a small knife.

As I've said: everyone loves nice flaking. You can see why it is worth keeping, if only to speculate about how many different blows and pressure flakes it took to make this bifacial object:

It sure is pretty. Real or not, it's going in the collection. 

The thick glass reminds me of a soda fountain milkshake glass. Actually, also thick Sandwich glass. I don't know how old that could be but, within reason, Indians with knowledge of knapping might have overlapped with the availability of glass for few hundred years. People on Arrowheads.com say Indians were knapping glass at least into the 1890's. The famous "ISHI" lived till 1916.

Other people find similar things occasionally. Here is a beauty:
https://forums.arrowheads.com/forum/general-discussion-gc5/native-american-arrowheads-other-lithic-artifacts-gc7/7636-historic-glass-arrowhead

3 comments :

pwax said...

I want to say it is easy to dismiss this as just broken glass. I can explain why I think it is too far from random to be "just". But there is a history of glass arrowhead finds that paint an interesting picture - of Native Americans living with European items but still using stone age methods.

Anonymous said...

I once found a piece of a glass insulator on a site I found many artifacts that I would swear was made into a scraper. Fun to speculate but will never know for sure.

Anonymous said...

Ishi walked out of the woods in early 1900’s so while not likely who knows could be an artifact