Thursday, October 06, 2022

Am I crazy or is that an arrowhead made from a bottle?

I was looking very carefully at the gravel on Ram Island today. This just looks man made to me:



I am particularly suspicious of the serrations on each edge of the point, but not present on the other edges.
It is a pretty little thing. I think I'll keep it with my growing collection of broken arrowheads from Ram and Devil's Foot islands. Someday, oh yes! someday, I will find a complete, un-broken and unimpeachable point. In the meantime, it is always fun looking at the gravel on the corner of Ram that is closest to the gut. I have been finding broken bases of Merrimack points there and larger, axe-like, items on the opposite side of the island.
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9 comments :

  1. Tim MacSweeney6:46 PM

    My friend Jeff has knapped bottle glass - and his results are remarkably similar to that one you show...

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  2. pwax8:51 AM

    I'd love to see a picture.

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  3. Tim MacSweeney3:15 PM

    Jeff says: "Looks like a piece of glass to me. Not flaked, nor does it seem to have been tumbled into softened lump of "beach glass" given four hundred years in tumbling around in beach gravel."

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  4. Tim MacSweeney3:15 PM

    I say: I remain embarrassed...

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  5. pwax8:15 AM

    Your friend Jeff does not understand the possibilities. The island used to be bigger and the water is eating away at the sandy bank - where rocks are eroding out. Any item will have been weathering for as long as it has been exposed. Not necessarily worse than non-seashore weathering.

    That said, Jeff is not the only one who thinks I am wrong.

    Funny how it really doesn't matter.

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  6. Tim MacSweeney2:41 PM

    I'm not sure you are wrong!


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  7. Curt Hoffman4:11 PM

    Ishi,the "last" of his California Yahi tribe, was famous for raiding campers' campsites for the bottle glass they left behind, from which he made exquisite hunting points!

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  8. pwax10:15 PM

    Ishi was actually part of a museum display. I thought his arrowhead making from glass was sort of part of the act. Now I have several folks telling me this "point" does not show the right signs of knapping and - frankly - the conchoidal fracture lines seem pretty clear to me. But IF it is an arrowhead (or a small blade actually), I like speculating about what it is doing on Ram Island in Woods Hole.

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  9. pwax1:59 PM

    [The following spring] I have now found three other glass artifacts, in other places like Raynham and Seekonk. I am not comfortable with the conclusion but it becomes obvious that these items are kind of common. Those Indians, presumably during colonial time frames, were awfully poor.

    The practice of ignoring glass, when hunting arrowheads, may be wrong.

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