Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Arrowhead finds- Fall 2015

One rainy day in the fall, I spent hours carefully scouring the ground in a spot that has been hit or miss for me in the past. On this day, I was having some luck- but after hours of looking I had found only broken and crude points. I looked at the area I had left to go, it was just a small strip. I thought to myself, well, this little last bit is as likely as anywhere else to yield something nice- and it did. I really like these quartz triangles with an incurvate base and slightly curved sides like this when they are well made and not broken.
Here it is with the rest of the day's finds. A good day.
That triangle, cleaned up. Squibnocket Triangle, I would say.
The stemmed points aren't terrible. Wading River or Squibnocket Stemmed type. I should get out to this spot again...
Dave and I hit another spot that had never yielded a whole point for me. In this place there is a little wash-out where, after heavy rains, flowing water gathers rocks together. I always always check places like this but had not found a point in such a feature- until this time. Look at this thing, you could have seen this from space. It was a sight for sore eyes, for sure. Found after 5 minutes of searching.
Here is a sort of side shot where you can see how this perfect and finely made triangle was perched on a little pedestal of soil, waiting to be picked up.
It is unusual to find points of this quality. It is very thin and still very sharp. I believe it could still be used.
Dave had some luck, too, with this little hornfels triangle.
I only have a couple of projectile points made of this pretty hornfels material. I like the stripe.
This spot is incredibly dense with artifacts. After a couple of hours I had a whole handful of broken tools and arrowhead fragments.
This one showed damage but was tantalizing when I spotted it.
Too bad about the corner ding, because the tip on this is sharp as a needle, and it is nicely flaked.
Dave and I returned to the same spot several days later after another good rain. I spotted this only a few feet away from the wash-out where I found that nice thin triangle.
It's a nice triangle with more basal thinning than I usually see on these. A good find for me. I believe the points from this site are Madison and Levanna triangles, from Woodland times.
Dave found a few interesting objects out there, as well.
This is probably the most productive spot I have ever found, but nearly everything is broken. Frustrating- but so much better than not finding anything!

1 comment :

pwax said...

Outstanding! Wish I could spend a few hours in a place like that.