Arrow Head Help

[PowerG]

"Clovis First" is pretty much dead. There are a very few adherents sticking to it, but there are some sites, notably Monte Verde in South America, which seem to conclusively prove someone was here before Clovis. Meadowcroft also offers strong evidence, along with a couple more in North America. These people aren't going to be strongly visible archaeologically, because there were likely very few of them.

Simple logic would infer that Clovis wasn't first, simply because fluted point technology appears nowhere but in the New World. To argue that Clovis people crossed the land bridge, and immediately began making fluted points, makes no sense. (Fluted points, BTW, are extremely rare in Alaska.) So something was here before...I think we are seeing these points and just haven't gotten them out of a contextual site yet. They are going to be unfluted lanceolates with manufacturing techniques similar to Clovis, but without the fluting, something similar to Agate Basin. The El Jobo point of South America almost certainly has pre-Clovis origins.

Theories that Clovis had roots in Solutrean technology of Europe seem weak, while there are many similarities between the two point styles, there are strong differences also. But maybe insurmountable to the theory is (a) the Solutreans disappear at least 5000 years before Clovis and (b) any connection would be based on the Solutreans crossing a mostly frozen Atlantic Ocean to make it to North America. I would think landing one starving, half-frozen individual on the beach after such a trip would be a minor miracle, much less a viable breeding population.

Anthropology (of which archaeology is a sub-field) is one of the most politically charged "sciences" of all. Many folks tailor their research to mirror their political beliefs, lots of junk science going on. Much of Soviet archaeology for many years was devoted to proving communism was the inevitable end result of human evolution.

This is a fairly recent synopsis of current research, from a program that is IMO justifiably conservative in their descriptions; i.e. when the proof is suspect for a claim they say so.

http://csfa.tamu.edu/who.php

 

[PowerG]

This is a biface cache I found this past summer, they had evidently slid down the creek bank into the water from where they were stored on the creek bank. There is no site here, but a fairly large one is a few hundred yards downstream, this is probably associated with that. They must have been in a bag or pouch of some sort that held them together long enough for them to become trapped in the clay of the creek bottom. None of these are absolutely diagnostic of any particular period; as there were no projectile points found in the vicinity, it's somewhat conjecture, but by the size of them they were intended to be large points, likely Middle or Late Archaic, so this grouping is probably roughly 5500-2000 years old. There are 98 in these photos, a subsequent trip pushed the total up to 115.

 

[Doug S]

Margaret Mead was probably the first of these progenitors arguing for change in our culture on the basis of her "findings" around the world. She found what she wanted to find and then sold it as a blueprint for western culture to follow.

You could argue the same for Darwin.

PowerG, that's one big biface cache you found there.

 

[Fred Fuller]

Wow. That's impressive, PowerG. Biggest biface cache I ever found was three, here in NC...

 

[Dave McCracken]

Nice cache, amazing in fact.

Note the similarity in style throughout. Probably more than one person made these, but that can't be proven or disproven.

As for Clovis First, think of this.....

Linguistically, the Americas were so diverse that more languages were spoken here than in Asia and Europe combined. I'm told that as a loose rule a language will lose about 1/3 of its words in a millenium. That's why we can read Chaucer ( 14th century of the Common Era) but it's heavy going. It'd not be much easier hearing it spoken.

Going on that rule,it'd take a lot longer that 13K years for all those different dialects and languages to diverge that greatly if from one root tongue. Heck, Comanche, Paiute and Aztecan share roots, but are as unintelligible to each other as English and Sanskrit.

If Immigration from Asia was taking place earlier, it was probably following the coastline of the day and by boat.So most traces of those early Americans are now 300 feet or so under water.

Cultural Anthropology is the least scientific of the sciences.

 

[PowerG]

I think a good case can be made that at least most of them were made by the same person (or someone he taught), he was using a fairly distinctive flaking sequence on the distal end of many of the pieces. Some of them show less skill in manufacture than others, but all of them still contain platforms for future reduction; these aren't yet to the point in the sequence to where the edges were straightened and symmetry established. The width/thickness ratio on some of the larger pieces is over 6.5, which is almost amazingly thin for this grade of Tallahatta Quartzite.

The language thing is interesting. But if immigration was accomplished in waves, perhaps there were more than one ancestral language that came in. They have gotten very early dates from the SE U.S. and South America, so these people had crossed very long distances maybe before even Clovis appears. I would see no reason they would have hurried across the continent, pickings were probably pretty easy for the first few generations here.

I agree with the submerged sites having a great deal of promise, we won't know what went on along the northwest coast until some work is done there. I saw photos of an Early Archaic point that a guy spearfishing found on the bottom in 80 feet of water along the coast of Florida just last week, there is going to be a lot of stuff found as that field of archaeology gets going.

 

[Flintknapper]

PowerG wrote:

I think a good case can be made that at least most of them were made by the same person (or someone he taught), he was using a fairly distinctive flaking sequence on the distal end of many of the pieces. Some of them show less skill in manufacture than others, but all of them still contain platforms for future reduction; these aren't yet to the point in the sequence to where the edges were straightened and symmetry established

Nice cache of blanks. Love to see some of flake scars and platforms. Those are fairly large pieces on average. It took some accomplished percussion skills to drive flakes past the center, thin them as well as they are and not break the piece. I would agree probably one person did most of them.

 

[PowerG]

...

 

[Flintknapper]

Nicely worked piece. The artisan definitely knew what he was doing and left the piece in just the right condition for further (easy) reduction at a later date.

From the base up (left side), the first four flake scars (above what looks to be basal thinning) are evenly spaced and wide enough to have left “ridges” which are important in order to drive flakes on the next pass.

All four flakes appear to terminate at about the center resulting in only a slight “step” easily removed from the other side.

The knapper stopped on the left side and the next thinning pass would occur on the right side.

Note that on the right hand side…as the distal end is approached… the flake scars are on an angle, this could simply be from the orientation of the piece in the hand….but more likely purposely done to avoid driving a flake too far and blowing out the edge on the opposite side.

As the piece gets narrower (and takes on a lenticular shape) it is easy to “overshoot” with a flake especially if you are directly over a ridge.

This person clearly had a good understanding of the importance of platforms and how force/energy will naturally follow the ridges left (or created).

Thanks for sharing the pics and your find.

 

[Readyrod]

Does anyone know what the Aztec/Mexican style arrowheads are called? They are flat on one side and have three curved surfaces on the other. I found a lot of them in cornfields in Mexico but can't seem to find any info on them. (Interestingly I also found a fragment of flint the same style once walking down a dirt road in Kenya.)
BTW nice collections folks. Love your work Flintknapper. Maybe some day we can organize a trade?
If any of you ever get to Teotihuacan in Mexico take a stroll in the area to the right of the great pyramid. The area is littered with obsidian blade pieces. Totally cool.

 

[PowerG]

There are no known quarry sites within several miles of the site, so as just an educated guess you're right, these pieces were probably made at a quarry location and moved to the spot where found as a material store for an occupation site some distance downstream.

 

[Flintknapper]

PowerG wrote:

There are no known quarry sites within several miles of the site, so as just an educated guess you're right, these pieces were probably made at a quarry location and moved to the spot where found as a material store for an occupation site some distance downstream.

Exactly, in fact...if you were to examine/excavate the site at which you found those, chances are excellent you would not find ANY spalls or large debitage.

At most... you would find thin wide flakes from percussion thinning and smaller flakes from pressure flaking (edges and notches), that would be about it.

That alone should be proof of their methodology. Of course...we could just apply "common sense" as well...and come to the same conclusion.

Who (in their right mind) would lug entire rocks (very large in this case) many miles...just to core them...then make spalls/slabs? The early inhabitants of this land were nothing...if not efficient people.

Your "educated guess" is spot on!

 

[Doug S]

...but in the east especially most of the stone work was done near the quarries.

A lot of non-quarried materials like cobble cherts from local streams for example, were being utilized also.

 

[PowerG]

PowerG wrote:



Exactly, in fact...if you were to examine/excavate the site at which you found those, chances are excellent you would not find ANY spalls or large debitage.

At most... you would find thin wide flakes from percussion thinning and smaller flakes from pressure flaking (edges and notches), that would be about it.

That alone should be proof of their methodology. Of course...we could just apply "common sense" as well...and come to the same conclusion.

Who (in their right mind) would lug entire rocks (very large in this case) many miles...just to core them...then make spalls/slabs? The early inhabitants of this land were nothing...if not efficient people.

Your "educated guess" is spot on!

What was interesting to me is that the cache wasn't stored at the site, it was some distance upstream, 2-300 yards. Don't know if you've tried to knap this or similar material, but it's tough-soaking in water makes it much easier to work, and for that reason I believe the pieces were left in the water. There is a bend in the creek where the cache was found that is very distinctive, not only would someone have no problem finding it again but you could tell someone else what to look for and they could have found it easily. Pretty slick the way they did this; hide the material off-site, so nobody else finds it. I'd also like to know why it wasn't retrieved, but I guess that won't be possible.

We are locked out until after deer season. We have found diagnostics from Middle Archaic to Woodland in the creek actually alongside the site. They cut through one end of the site while building a small power line with a bulldozer, which is how the stuff there got into the creek, and drew our attention. The remaining land site is in no danger of disturbance, so during the spring I am going to attempt to convince the landowner to allow me to excavate one small area, just to see what we've got there, and then it will be left alone. That area may have been farmed at one time, the landowner says it hasn't, but there are no old growth trees there, so we'll see if it's still stratified. We do collect from the stream beds, and I don't feel that is damaging the archaeological record, but we don't indiscriminately dig on land sites. This cache has been reported, measured, photographed...I have written two short reports on the find and will write a much more extensive piece, with help from a couple of professional friends, in the coming months.

 

[Art Eatman]

Harking back to the opening post, Overstreet's book seems quite thorough in identifying projectile points.

I guess I've focussed more on vegetable matter than points, although I've found some and traded into some. Firstview, Folsom, Baker, Early Triangular, etc. But some of the caves along the Rio Grande have sandals, braided line, fish hooks, fire hearths and bow drills, needles, weaving sticks and suchlike. You don't see much of that...

I have a fair number of Painted Pebbles, as well.

I've read that the bow was introduced in the time-vicinity of about 600 BC, which means of course that many "arrowheads" aren't. Give or take a few hundred years, of course.

 

[PowerG]

Harking back to the opening post, Overstreet's book seems quite thorough in identifying projectile points.

I guess I've focussed more on vegetable matter than points, although I've found some and traded into some. Firstview, Folsom, Baker, Early Triangular, etc. But some of the caves along the Rio Grande have sandals, braided line, fish hooks, fire hearths and bow drills, needles, weaving sticks and suchlike. You don't see much of that...

I have a fair number of Painted Pebbles, as well.

I've read that the bow was introduced in the time-vicinity of about 600 BC, which means of course that many "arrowheads" aren't. Give or take a few hundred years, of course.

Overstreet's is indeed very useful as an overview, but as in any publication of that scope there are errors, and it has some in typology, and quite a few in temporal (time) placement of some of the types. There are many regional, state, and even area typology studies available, some are hard to find, some out of print, these are usually more in depth. Overstreet's is more than adequate for the average collector, and is a good textbook in making those aware of the theory of point typing. Noel Justice's various regional guides are recomended by many, they are able to go a little farther in depth than a book that covers the whole country. He also uses the type cluster concept, which I am a big fan of.

Texas has fabulous points, great types, great material, lots of Paleo. Organic remains are rarely found here except on very late occupations, acidic soil, all open air sites, etc.

 

[Flintknapper]

PowerG wrote:

What was interesting to me is that the cache wasn't stored at the site, it was some distance upstream, 2-300 yards.

Good way to keep it from being found. Logic would normally dictate a cache closer to the camp site. Less chance someone would discover it "off-site".

Don't know if you've tried to knap this or similar material,

Oh yes, I am sure you know in the knapping world...we just call it "TQ". Its not my favorite...but that is owing primarily to not having had good quality TQ to work with. High grade (will have an almost waxy look) is very predictable and not hard to work. You have to abrade TQ a LOT..but very fine (and large) items can be made from it.

but it's tough-soaking in water makes it much easier to work, and for that reason I believe the pieces were left in the water.

Possibly. Low grade TQ can use all the help it can get.

I'm not sure I subscribe to the water soak theory, but who knows what ancient techniques were used.

Today...we have better tools with which to work and honestly...probably a better understanding (on average) of how to control driving (and stopping) flakes.

Little tricks like supporting the material at certain times and even "pinching" the predicted flake path can make all the difference.

But one thing is certain...there are some masterful pieces out there, so someone knew what they were looking for and what they were doing. All in all though...having GOOD material is key. It was a widely used material mostly because it was one of only a few knappable materials in that area. It occurs in large formations, but also in cobble form. A worked over outcropping would readily apparent.

There is a bend in the creek where the cache was found that is very distinctive, not only would someone have no problem finding it again but you could tell someone else what to look for and they could have found it easily.

Makes sense.

Pretty slick the way they did this; hide the material off-site, so nobody else finds it.

Yes, a LARGE cache represents no small amount of work/effort...so it easy to understand how they would not want it to be pillaged.

I'd also like to know why it wasn't retrieved, but I guess that won't be possible.

Yes, we will never know.

Several possibilities: Inhabitants were suddenly forced to move, or if in another region not able to "return" for some reason.

Location of the cache was known only to one or two persons and some tragedy befell them (sudden illness/death) leaving the cache undiscovered.

Who knows. Its certainly something to ponder and quite a unique find.

 

[SURVIVAL1]

Nice cache are they Made of Rhyolite