The beauty of simple things

 

Tidal Flats - another intersection between arrowheads and rock piles

I was hunting for arrowheads on the tidal flats of Barnstable MA and saw a couple of stone structures while I was at it. One was a modern arrow pointing to a peace symbol and a heart symbol - all made from piled cobbles below the high tide line. But I thought this, in the foreground, was a familiar pattern from the ancient world:

You see an outline with a larger rock at one end. 

BTW, hunting for small bits of flaked rock against this visual background is exhausting.

Quartz artifacts from North Shore of Cape Cod

A walk around the neighborhood

Every time I look more carefully, I find more rock piles in the backyards of the mansions around the Woods Hole Golf Course. There used to be a site that stretched from Gansett over to the fire station. Today, it is mostly well tended grass.

See that one over on the left?

Happy solstice

 Enjoy the day.

Attleboro Rhyolite - a nice example from southern New England

 

Everyone likes nice stone tool work.

News about the Nashoba Praying Indians

Dear Friends of the Nashobah Praying Indians,

 

We have a big announcement today – Strong Bear Medicine is moving to town [Littleton] in July! 

 

He will be living on Nashobah Praying Indian ancestral land in a location that is significant to his people.

 

It’s been around 300 years since the last known Praying Indian (Sarah Doublet) lived in town on Praying Indian Plantation land.  This is a really big deal, not only to Bear and his people, but to the community as well.  After all these years, this is an amazing turn of events. 

 

When Strong Bear gets settled in, he will be planning and hosting cultural events in town and the local area, and we expect to see a lot of him, both with this and around town. 

I will keep you updated on Nashobah events – you will be the first to know – and on ways we can help the Nashobah as they become part of the community.  There are several such things that come to mind, more on this in upcoming updates.

 

Next week I’ll have an update on the next step of the Nashobah book project, and will be looking for people to help bring it forward.  (We need to get the book into the local libraries, historical societies, schools, etc.)

Best wishes!

Dan

Dreaming of the Pawnee Grasslands - highly polished tools

I did not realize at the time that these were the same sorts of implement. It makes me want to go back to the Pawnee Grasslands of Colorado and look for others.

The lower left edge is sharpened and damaged. The back side of the orange one has some hard-use abrasion:

I have to say, these rocks were more confusing than usual. First of all, what are these things? And second of all, why are they both so polished?

Well I am going to say they are some kind of swiss army knife - combining a cutting edge with an abrading surface. 

It took me a while to remember what makes rocks so shiny. It is when they have spent a long time in someone pocket. So I am only speculating that these people were very mobile. They kept their best swiss army knife with them. These tools spent a lot of time in someone's pocket.

Concord arrowheads

A colleague, Spencer, found these in my old hometown:

A nice find from Massapoag

One of the best arrowheads I found this winter. Something like a "Snappit" projectile point: