Friday, August 01, 2014

Back on the "lawn"

On Monday evening my friend Dave and I went back the the grassy place where I found the arrowheads in my previous post. Here's another picture that gives a better idea of what the conditions are like there. You can see that the sandy earth is visible in little patches, the grass does not cover absolutely everything. But I'm sure you can imagine how challenging it is to search a place like this. 
The tractor that cut the grass left some ruts with its big tires. In one track, the tire exposed a little piece of a light-colored rhyolite. When I took the picture above, this was at my feet.
Here's a closer look at that rhyolite piece in the tire track. Looks like an arrowhead...
It is.
This is a special find for me. The base shape is called an Orient Fishtail. There is a chip out of one corner of the base, on the right, but most of it is there. I have only ever found one other tool that might be Orient Fishtail (the big broken blade in this post) but this definitely is one, from what I can tell. You can see that this was originally much longer and the tip has been reworked into this shape, probably it broke or wore out and was resharpened into this form. I suppose it still could perhaps have been used as a projectile point but perhaps it was instead used as a perforator or a drill? These points are associated with the period from around 3200 to 2500 years ago. I am happy to have found it. Nearby, Dave found this:
It's really a shame this is broken because it is nice and thin and would have been a monster of a triangle. We looked for another couple of hours but didn't find anything else. 
Last photo, a better view of the flaking on that rhyolite point. I am so pleased with this find.

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