Finds today

I had a few spare hours today so I went out looking for artifacts along with a friend who has often listened patiently as I have talked about my arrowhead hobby. He had never found an arrowhead and was willing to go for a walk and see if anything might be found. We went to a place where I have spent a lot of time and found a few things in the past. Sometimes I have had good luck there but I think a lot of people look for stuff in that spot and sometimes I will look for hours and not find anything at all. Fortunately I did find some things today, typical local finds. This quartz triangle is missing a corner and has a worn tip, it was easy to spot.

There was also this little point, this one is complete and undamaged. I have seen this shape called Wading River. I like these, I find these less often than the triangles. Only a tiny piece of the base was peeking out when I spotted it and I thought it was just another chip until I picked it up.

Meanwhile, my friend, who had never found an arrowhead and never looked for one, found this. Are you kidding me? I was speechless when he showed this to me.

That is what might be a Lamoka type point, it is made of argillite and it is huge and perfect. It is wafer thin and very fragile, that it is undamaged and even has a perfect tip is almost beyond belief. You can see from the photo that only the tip was exposed, most of it was buried and it would not have been easy to spot. It is a mega find, I don't have one like this. Here it is compared with my more modest finds for the day. It's a monster.

No amount of skill can eliminate the simple fact that spotting an arrowhead on the surface takes a lot of luck. You have to be in the right place at the right time, you have to be right on top of it and you have to be looking really hard. I chose to walk in one spot and my friend found this just a few feet away but I wouldn't have seen it because I wasn't looking exactly there. And even if I had been looking there, to happen to see something barely exposed among all the other rocks and grass and everything else on the ground, to some extent it will always come down to luck. I have picked up hundreds of argillite flakes in that place but never a point. I'm jealous.