First arrowhead finds in 2013

     For the first several days of 2013 the ground here was covered in some inches of snow. With no chance of finding an arrowhead I was able to get some stuff done around the house for a change. Last week was faily warm and then Friday we got some steady rain that washed away what little snow was left. Saturday morning I went out to see what the melting snow might have revealed.

     As I have mentioned before, my goal is to try to find a point in every month. I will be out of town for the next couple of weekends and so this weekend was going to be my one and only chance to get something for January. It's not easy this time of year and I honestly did not think that my chances of success were very good. I took kind of a long drive to a place where I have had some luck before but looking for arrowheads is always hit or miss. I got out of the car and found an area where conditions were good, lots of dirt exposed among the grass. The first place I looked was not an area that I really expected to find anything in, I would have been happy even with a broken fragment, anything. But after just a few short minutes I spotted this, fully exposed.

     I love finding them like this, such a thrill. Here is a closer look.

     This is a really lovely material, gray-purple quartzite. This is my first (mostly) intact point in this material. The very tip is damaged. I like the shape of this one very much. This is a great find for me.

     I looked for a while more, picking up lots of chips and flakes. I bent down to pick up a piece of quartz that was barely sticking out of the dirt, only a sliver of one edge was visible. When it came out of the ground it was caked with dirt and as I started wiping the dirt away my excitement level was building rapidly, could it be? It was.

     At first I kind of dismissed this as a crude piece but as time has passed it has really grown on me and I am really happy with it. It is all there and it is really rather nicely made. The stem is ground, I think it is very old, Archaic period maybe, though these narrow stemmed types are tough to date. Finding two points in a day is a great day for me and I really like to find these stemmed forms.