The pseudo-Oldowan

Awfully primitive:

I do not want to ignore it but do not want to collect it.

From the caprock east of upper Arrow Canyon, NV [see here]

Bladelets

Still processing the items I brought back from Nevada. They must have made these things all over the world. :

Have to look hard to find examples online. Just sayin' ...  (C:) 

I have been trying to figure out how to use the word "Mousterian" without getting in trouble.

Great Basin Crescent

According to this website (and others)

"He was able to identify the curious piece as a “Great Basin crescent.” Joe told me they were extremely rare and are found only where the water level of ancient Lake Lahontan was between 7,000 and 9,000 years ago."

"Recovery of the Primal Mind"

I find this nicely expressed [from here] :

Most researchers on hominid evolution, looking back into deep time, ask what function or use an object would have served archaic communities in their struggle to survive. However, as previously noted, this utilitarian assumption is questionable. An alternative assumption is that the deep past may not have been like the present, dominated by the overtly utilitarian values that have always existed but have become dominant in modern Western civilization. I suggest that early humans possessed a sense of the sacred; that they were soulful people with hearts and minds who loved—and also presumably feared—the Earth on which their lives depended, and within which their lives were deeply embedded. These are essential attributes and qualities that make us human yet remain beyond the grasp of science where the question of “soul” and “the sacred” was driven out ...

Nolumbeka Project - Events

The Nolumbeka Project is co-sponsoring and/or participating in the March offerings listed on the EVENTS page of our website. We will have more announcements as the months progress. Meanwhile, please mark your calendars for May 20 for the Day of Remembrance and August 5-6 for the Pocumtuck Homelands Festival.

Upper Arrow Canyon, north of Las Vegas NV

Attracted by the name, I have tried a couple times to get into Arrow Canyon. This time I was careful to find the correct dirt road, taking me down into the canyon. Google street view of NV168 was helpful, cuz those dirt roads all look similar at their beginnings. I drove till it got too muddy, parked, and then started edging along the sides of the canyon, as I got deeper into it. There was an old stone house - no roof - near the beginning of the canyon, then some wild gourds or melons ...

... , then gravel slopes tumbling off the caprock, then some Ogham scratched in the Canyon wall, then a stone chamber, then a solid dam across the canyon. My guess is this dam was to prevent flash flooding downstream. Anyway, the dam was a barrier. There was a helpful rope for people to climb but that is not my idea of fun. It was getting late, so I turned back at the dam.

Here is a view of the dam and the, still unseen, deeper valley:

Anyway, the first gravel slope (a "talus slope") had some chalcedony ("cal-sed-ny") flakes and that was about the only arrowhead-hunting encouragement I got. (Well, I should mention this:)

So, I am walking down the left (east) edge of the valley. At the first talus slope, spilling into the valley from the left, I see an opportunity to get up to the cap rock (about 100 feet up) and I scrambled up there, one slow step at a time. Getting up to the cap rock, I walked out to a little peninsula, then started getting dizzy and had to back off. But one notices this little line of rocks and rock piles:

If you are familiar with alignments, you may spot this. Most people would just see rocks. 

While on the subject of spotting out-of-place rocks, this stopped me as I exited the canyon by car:

You see: there are a few too many rocks of the same size, propped up a bit too non-randomly. I got out and looked at them, They formed lines - sometimes lines that crossed at a single rock. All the lines pointed off somewhere towards the southeast - including the ones from earlier, up on top of the mesa.

So that was the NEARA trifecta: stone chambers, manitou stones, and alignments. As a nod towards NEARA's epigraphic roots in ESRA, we got a bonus feature: some Ogham (Oggam) writing. It is so amusing because - yeah -  I see the mystery but I have no skin in the game. I'll leave you with this:

A small hill at the edge of a glacial lake, at the south end of the Las Vegas Range

Let me tell you my story about going to Nevada. It is not rock pile related although, in truth, there were rock piles on top of each of the only three prominences I got to. No, I went to find arrowheads. I didn't find any but I did see an awful lot of thought provoking archeology. I am sure the place I visited is not particularly special and there must be many, many places like this. But in some ways it was special and, at the end of this story, I will show why I believe this may be one of the more densely occupied sites in the valley. It is called "Hidden Valley" and is just north of Las Vegas on I15, on NV93.

For the last three or more years of the Covid pandemic, I have been sitting at home dreaming about visiting the southwest desert. And looking at maps and pictures. For a long time I was looking at cheap real estate pictures from near Saint Johns, AZ but no one in my family seemed very warm to the idea of buying land there. Then, more recently, I became crazed about finding arrowheads. So I was watching YouTube's about people finding long stemmed points around glacial lakes in the Great Basin - and I thought maybe I could give it a try.  

One video was about excavating Haskett points in Great Salt Lake and it said that the best place to look for archeology was where fresh water entered the lake, when the climate was beginning to dry out after the ice age. It also gave clues as to what the old water courses would have looked like in satellite images. So I am looking at satellite images and topo maps and locating the glacial lakes near Las Vegas. One problem that suggested itself, is that many of the lakeshores from the late ice age appear to be completely buried under a deep outwash from the adjacent hills (called the "bajada", according to my friend Dave). It occurred to me that small hills at the edge of the lakeshore, even if surrounded by the bajada, might retain original surface and not be covered with silt. So I spotted something on the topo map that looked just right: near Las Vegas, edge of glacial lake, small hill within the lake AND not in a National Park where it could be illegal to pick up even "just a rock" items. I thought I was being quite clever to spot this place and plan to visit:

You may have to click in to see it but the crosshair is along NV93 at a place where a dirt road heads west for a couple of kilometers, where it stops at the back side of a small hill that met all my criteria. 

So I planned a trip out there and finally arrived. This is the drive, the next day in passing the place:

I tried to drive in on the indicated dirt road but came to a washout. Don't get me started on the experience of 4WD and dirt roads. It is not my idea of fun but I had rented a Toyota Highlander - a fine vehicle - and took no chances. I walked in the final 1/4 mile.

You can hear a bit of wistfulness in my voice here. I went through a lot to get to this spot - now what? I have come a long way to take a chance on this place and am a bit scared of the desert. You have to force yourself to get out.

In the second half of the video, I am looking at the scatter of flakes and debitage on the ground. It was really only when I got back home when I realized this ground could not have been underwater when people broke rocks here. Which is one of many different factors contributing to my overall confusion about the date of the site(s) on this hill and its flat surroundings. I spent two days exploring this hill in the desert, wishing I could find a glacial lakeshore. And that is exactly where I was the whole time!

I saw lots of nice pieces of broken rock and collected a few stone tools. I'll do them more justice later. Here is the most exiting thing I found. 

The idea that I might find something like this - unbroken - has me wanting to go back and try again. Even half a day of exploring exhausts the neurons and you can see why - a very intense 'needle in a haystack' situation. Maybe next year. 

So I walked around for one day. The next day I went north, then east on NV168 to a dirt road into Arrow Canyon. This was a different kind of place and perhaps of more interest to NEARA members than to arrowhead hunters. Some of the archeology up on the cap rock there seemed stunningly old, compared to everything else I have seen. More later on that.

The third day, I had company from my friend Dave. We tried the little hill on the east side of NV93 and then spent most of the day back at the little hill. I did not find any more nice suggestive blades but we had a lovely chat. 

The trips out and the trip back were exhausting. I got home, unpacked my finds, took a shower and went right to bed. Two days later I am still hydrating, napping, and thinking about it all. The worst moment on the way back was when the lady in front of me went through security and had to have her bag searched. She was asked: "Is there anything sharp in your bag?". When I heard that, I started thinking about the stone axes I had in each coat pocket. I was not going to let them take those away at the airport! I put on a cheerful face and they overlooked the possibility of sharp objects in a coat pocket. 

I should mention that the bedrock here, north of Las Vegas, is volcanic [or marine?]; with layers of ash and nodules of chert. Sometimes the chert is in complete layers with colors ranging brown to reddish. Exposed to the air, it becomes increasingly black with desert varnish. There is a an earlier post about the material. What turned out to be quite lucky was that the little hill I picked from here in Massachusetts, happened to be made of one of the chert layers. Now that I am back in Massachusetts I am realizing that the hill itself was a good source of material for making stone tools. 

I was thinking some more about those patches of chert debitage, black from desert varnish. And it occurred to me that perhaps they might be visible in the satellite images. They are (and here I am going to tell you one key to unlocking desert archeology. If you've read this far, then you deserve to know this:) You can see every site in the entire valley by spotting the darker patches of lithic debris in the satellite images. What do you know?! My little hill has the darkest patch of all. But I can see some other places that have concentrations. 

Here, then, are some things we can learn.

The hill is shown from above as a darker brown oblong running from south-southeast to north-northwest. It is a chert outcrop. There is a stone 'U' and a rock piles on the southern and northern summits. Let's notice the game trails from left to right. These cross the hill at a slight saddle between its summits. I was thinking: why would an animal not go around this hill? [Stubbornly it insists on going straight towards whatever destination it has in mind but - poor animal - when it crosses the hill, going downwind, it is likely to encounter hunters on the downwind side.] Look how the hunters have left a black crescent of debitage around the southern foot of the hill. Look how they left concentrations just next to the game trail outlet. This is fascinating: the debitage is a heat map. It is a guide to the whole valley. 

Now I am at home, looking at my finds. It was a very stimulating trip. I wish I had some graduate students to help with some of the obvious experiments. There were many different tool types and even differences in how little micro-blades were retouched or not, before use. I would think equating desert varnish color could be calibrated to OSL dates and that rather than the different styles and ages and locations forming an entire cacophony [what I am calling it] that, instead, we could start teasing it apart. Meanwhile, I keep thinking about butchering a camel.

If you want to hear me get carried away with the subject of lithic analysis, see here.

Maybe the Nevada Desert is like the Sahara

Saharan 'carpet of tools' is earliest known man-made landscape (phys.org)

These lucky fellows got the chance to count stone tool debitage and found an average of 75 modified fragments per square meter. I think that quantity could be matched pretty easily in some places in Nevada.

This lucky guy (me) didn't count flakes but each little piece of black rock here is a bit of chert from the nearby small hill:

I did not look carefully until I sat down to talk on the phone. And while I am on the subject, can you imagine spotting a small arrowhead made of the same material - in this cacophony!

Beautiful flaking on an old stone tool from Nevada

This was from the same small hill I started with on Saturday. Of the several items I picked up, this one was as nicely flaked as that blade I posted a few days ago.

This is a chunky item, that does not appear to be broken. I need to look more for use wear.

I find this flaking just gorgeous.

Stone Chamber in Arrow Canyon (Irish monks in Nevada - just kidding)

The following is slightly tongue-in-cheek:

But wait! It get's worse:

Later, I'll show you a manitou stone and a couple of alignments - completing the NEARA trifecta. It is as if, someone made their way into Arrow Canyon and decided to fake the presence of early Europeans. It does make me wonder about the local Natives.

My little hill north of Las Vegas - the ground cover and geology

Unfortunately, I am posting in reverse order. So I have already been writing about this place. Here is a one little "instructional video".

It took a while to conclude that the black shiny material is volcanic [nah! it is marine], and a bit like obsidian. It is a bit more crystalline and, actually, reddish underneath the dark brown desert varnish. The darker, the older - a convenient chronological metric. I found it was in layers between the gray "garbage" material. These must, in turn, be volcanic ash. It took a while to realize both soft and hard materials are layered together in the bedrock. I wish I photo'd one of the sandwiches of material. Here is a cliff of it:

Perhaps a geologist could tell me if nodules of "chert" can accrete inside volcanic ash.

Update: Apparently yes, and in sedimentary layers too. So chert it is.

Update 2: I cannot be sure it is volcanic. It could be an old ocean bed. 

A little low hill north of Vegas. For fun, let's call it "Peter's Hill"

I was actually looking for stone tools (see previous post) but found rock piles anyway. I thought this hill would be a good place for early people to be looking out over a glacial lake to the south. Half the hill was some kind of  "obsidian" and more on that later. This may be a place with very deep history and no single timeframe in which to interpret everything. I believe the term is "multi-component" - which is a snarky way of saying the archeological categories are meaningful in a place that has seen continuous occupation because of desirable properties. As if the people who lived there either fit into the categories or were 'transitional' between them. It would be simpler just to talk about the place.

[Update: After visiting the hill and doing a lot of examining of the stone tools, I admit that the above is wrong. There can be very distinct phases of people, clearly culturally different from each other. There can be a great depth of time over which "component" differences are quite meaningful. In other words: no, it was not necessarily a continuum of cultures. In that case, teasing apart some of the technology differences can be quite fun.]

As I climbed this hill, I noticed it had a lower 'bump' to the south and a higher 'bump' to the north. At the top of the lower bump I noticed this little 'U' structure [we are facing west]:

Is this an old fireplace (in the worst possible position for being out of the wind) or a prayer seat facing north or a who knows what? [It is faintly possible it is what is left of a small hunter's blind. A game trail passes, a few feet away.]

Continuing up the hill to the higher bump, I noticed this rock pile [we are facing northeast]:

Now don't tell me that is a fireplace! No, it's a rock pile. I am pretty sure I have seen similar ones on top of other bumps in the southwest. Anyway, the 'U' on the lower bump was not visible from this spot - you could not see the rock pile uphill from the lower 'U'.

Exploring the desert. Appetizer - a flaked stone tool

Who can resists nice stone flaking?

Pretty easy to miss:

"The Hidden Path to the Turtle" (VT)

 Indigenous Causeway to a Wetland Garden??

Mysterious Mountains  Nov 4, 2022

(I added some Turtles to the Capture from the Video - Tim)

“A buried stone pathway ends at a boggy mountain bowl with a possible turtle effigy.”

https://youtu.be/rcw3qdv5NCI

There's a whole lot more here that I will soon be watching: 

https://www.youtube.com/@mysteriousmountains

Requesting Content

This is a sort of "shot across the bows" for the future of this blog. Repeat readers will have noticed a general slowing down of postings, an increased number of non-rock pile related and non-original articles. I am no longer living in Middlesex and there are not that many opportunities, being on a glacial outwash landscape. There is no mistaking that one of us (me or this blog) is getting old. 

I am going to go on posting what I can but it would be nice if readers kicked in a bit of content from their end. I know you are out walking in the woods. Send some photos, so we can share your journeys, as my journeys get fewer and farther in between.

Norwegian Island Gathering Spot

I like this sort of article:

The perfect spot for gatherings for 10,000 years | The Independent Barents Observer (thebarentsobserver.com)

Rock pile enthusiasts may enjoy something in the second from last photo. I am thinking the researchers did not notice it.

Faye Rd Rock Pile

Seen next to Faye Rd, Woods Hole, an isolated rock pile:

Not much to see [Frankly, I took the above picture yesterday and cannot see the pile in the picture, today.]

Usually you should not trust a solitary rock pile as being ceremonial. In this place, with a road and a railroad track (not shown) cutting through the little valley that was once there, I expect there might have been a few other piles in this place. There might still be some left but I did not go scramping around - the car engine was still running, my wife was waiting, and it was a narrow road.

The lost berm of Lake Wachusett

I "lost" the reference. Just stumbled on it here.

Arrowhead madness continues

Found some nice little argillite points: 

Back home:

Comparing the placement of individual flakes, these could have been made by the same person. I found them a few yards apart.

I am quite taken with the nice proportions and careful flaking of this little point. 

You go out looking for quartz and try to block out everything that is not white. But I still spot nice flaking and, as they say on YouTube: "I'll take it".

Thick blades

Found in Rhode Island, these are quite similar:

They only look nicely flaked on one surface:

I was trying to figure out, how this 'tool' would have been used: Was it hand-held or hafted? Is it broken? It sort-of looks like the thinner portion, going up a step to the thicker portion, might be to accommodate a handle. I examined it closely and noticed a faint discoloration:

You may need to  click in to see the band of darker color. It runs all the way around the item, at the same place as where the back goes up a step to the thicker part. I have learned that this discoloration is significant and I regard it as proof hafting. That starts to explain it; and the similarity in shape between the quartz and red example makes them not seem like isolated designs. These are thick, working blades - nothing delicate about them. 

I would love to know what is the reddish material of the larger 'blade'? It is a bit like quartzite, very fine grained, colored somewhere between cranberry sauce and and coca cola.