farm fields

[unclemac]

I got to thinking about it...why are so many points found in farm fields? it doesn't make sense that just because it is open and ploughed that the area would be heavy with points....if that were the case then I could just dig anywhere and expect points to just pop into my pocket.

 

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[Hot zone]

Eastern Oregon has dry lake beds... The theory is that arrowheads are often found at a distance the arrow would travel when shooting birds from the bank... The lakes dried up making a new bank and another concentration of points the same distance from shore... If you get a chance, read Emory Strong's Books "Stone age on the Columbia" and "The Great Basin"

like most theories though, it may not hold water! I imagine shooting at a duck on the water, missing, and having the arrow wash up on shore or shooting at a duck in the cattails at the shoreline and the arrow lost in mud...the concentrations being found on shorelines then of a lake as it drys up... Not a big deal, I ain't no Archie, it just makes more sense to me!

 

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[GatorBoy]

Don't forget all the land animals had to drink water the shoreline was a perfect place to hunt.
Also that most of the larger points were not arrowheads many were blades or atlatl darts

 

[GatorBoy]

 

[yakker]

Interesting topic and good thread. Out here in the east, where we've experienced the greatest crush of change and modern development, it's hard to really 'see' in your mind's eye, what this area looked like hundreds and thousands of years ago. First, the coastal plain extended miles from our current shoreline. Add to that the huge clear-cutting of trees when explorers first landed- and of course the development ever since. Europe had pretty much exhausted their supply of timber, clearing enormous swaths of territory for uses revolving around structure and boat building as well as iron smelting for weaponry. That said, there are quarry camps, production camps, base camps, annual hunting camps, and eventually, as the seas receded after the last ice age (Archaic), settlements across the formerly flooded 'plain'. All those camps are artifact-producing- some camps ranging from era to era depending on water- both for travel and for consumption. One thing I learned early on was to try to look for where good hunting would have been. That's not a camp site. That's where one goes- a measurable distance- away from a camp or settlement. N.A.'s were no dummies. You don't camp smack in the middle of your best hunting grounds. You camp a good distance away- but still 'travelable'. You make your tools at home and carry them off on a hunt or fishing trip. And although there are a ton of artifacts to be found in camps- established places where there are burial mounds, trash middens, post-hole marks (later, when they were building huts and staying in place), the best usable pieces- items that were not for ceremony or ritual or decoration- are found a bit distant from these camps (with the exception of kill sites, dead-fall sites, where they actually camped at the site of a kill, for a period of time).

From what I've read and studied, and from my experience out here, while there are many, many artifacts found in fields where settlements were eventually established, the mix is interesting and multi-generational. Also, where settlements are documented to have been, there's a lot of debris, and a ton of not-too-great points and pieces- which leads me to think that it's evidence of manufacture- like any debris remaining from manufacture. As an example, an old marble factory in PA has a dump area where one can find anything from scrap glass to perfect marbles- and everything in-between, all of which is interesting to find, as a 'dump-diver'. An archaeologist WAY down the road might look at such a dump and wonder why there are perfect marbles amid the debris of manufacture. And one might speculate the reasons. I feel its' much the same w/ N.A. artifacts and their locations, with regards to number, quality, use, reasons for 'being left or lost' at a certain location.

And the fact that clear-cutting of trees makes it hard to know what was always a field and what is presently a field isn't always clear or obvious. My own speculation, being an amateur, is that, like most modern folks, the original inhabitants camped and settled not in cleared fields, but on the periphery, in the protection of trees, out of flood-prone areas, with good drainage, and w/ access to water for travel and consumption. Over time, the open fields were intentionally expanded and grew, encompassing the old, forest-canopy camp-sites, causing all the debris and scatter of 'life' to appear to be in a field. If it were possible to up-root the new growth trees, untangle the roots and get below the couple-hundred-year-old loam, we might find the evidence of such a theory. But it's only that. A theory. My personal hypothesis.

More than anything, I think water plays a major factor in whatever terrain artifacts are found. As water-hunters know, artifacts both surf to the highest level they can when hit by tides or floods, landing on either beach or bar. And they gather in depressions amid the 'flow'- whether it's a river that's breached the banks and flowing over a field, or a one-directional river flowing over rocks and logs. I think that theory might apply to all land masses, at one time or another.

Yet another long-winded thesis... Thanks for getting through it all! Yakker

 

[intensecrasher]

One-half mile is not very far that would make me think the body of water your hunting may have different flood stage heights... Or may have been higher before irrigation to all the farm fields

I agree gatoboy. I hunt sites that appear to have never had water around them. I would have never know that there was water close by at one time because the farmer dug and put in drains so he could have more farm land. Today it just looks like low land in a field.

 

[unclemac]

Many of us Eastern hunters are hunting artifacts much older than those of sedentary farmers.
In fact one group even into the time of tribes in my area never farmed at all.

true indeed...and are those farm field finds too or creek and beach finds?

 

[GatorBoy]

No not field finds

 

[intensecrasher]

I would really like to hear from California collectors on where to look! I have found two places in 20 years and they have both been in the last two months. Its frustrating because of the amount of urban sprawl. Back home I know exactly where Indians would have lived. It's always on the East or South side of water and on the higher ground. That doesn't work in California. I really want to move!

 

[GatorBoy]

 

[GatorBoy]

I would really like to hear from California collectors on where to look! I have found two places in 20 years and they have both been in the last two months. Its frustrating because of the amount of urban sprawl. Back home I know exactly where Indians would have lived. It's always on the East or South side of water and on the higher ground. That doesn't work in California. I really want to move!

I did some researching on California at one point ...I think it was the many charm stones found out that way that got me started .It seemed to me that the original location of the LA River basin was visible from satellite and would interest me for hunting

 

[Hot zone]

I like to Elk hunt remote places... Two years ago, standing on a likely spot near a saddle of a ridge in the cascades where I saw Elk earlier in the week, a white rock caught my eye... A small stone knife, a quarter of it broken away was lying there... Not a camp site, perhaps just the site of an ancient kill... Don't ask to see it, I carry it for luck when I hunt and don't want it to loose any of its power!

 

[unclemac]

...so that's why they call you "Yakker"! love it. I don't know about the east but in the PNW a lot of the paleo sites are long under water.

 

[unclemac]

I wonder if that map shows that the pacific sites are under water or if the "ice free corridor" lead east.

 

[yakker]

...so that's why they call you "Yakker"! love it. I don't know about the east but in the PNW a lot of the paleo sites are long under water.

Yeah, I'm one to utilize the 'duel meaning' tag. Yak...yak yak yak yak

 

[newnan man]

Good subject. A collector in Ohio I met had a fantastic collection and said one of his favorite areas to search was along any small creek that flowed into a river. He said back upstream around the 1st. or 2nd. bend always produced points. His theory was accessible water and being close but not being readily visible from a large well traveled river. Right or wrong I've never seen a personal collection to rival his. This was usually along the Scioto River which had hundred of creeks flowing into it almost all on farmland. That was in the 50's-70's when searching for points was not a crime!

 

[Hot zone]

That theory appears to hold true for a Big site on a tributary of the Columbia... We always thought it was the first major rapid and a good place to catch fish! The story was that an oregon college made a swath through the site with a backhoe in the 50s and claimed it was not a significant site... It took busy amateurs 30 years to dig it out! Many large fine collections... 4 hours of screening black midden always resulted in at least one fine artifact...sometimes 4 in one screen!

 

[Hot zone]

Some Lessons learned! There is a spot on the Columbia River where a 20 foot Sand bank has eroded away exposing three distinct camps right over the top of each other thick bands of black midden separated by sand... Pot hole diggers not realizing this occurs a lot with floods, often stopped short leaving lots of good midden untouched... The act of digging a pot hole causes dirt to cover easily accessible midden under tailings... Trenching is the way to go... A Trench is usually started with a pothole and leave good midden under a tailing pile! Never leave obviously good dirt and plan to return the next day early... Night diggers will have taken over and cleaned it out! Cave it in so an interloper must do some work to get your arrowheads... And finally don't dig day and night for a year and still expect to have a wife!

 

[monsterrack]

The creeks that I hunt have lowered themselves over the 1,000s of years to were the camp level was, they are 50ft below from what it was at the time of occupation. In my area a 20ft drain can form in just 10yrs or less, the rivers , streams, creeks and runoffs have changed so much you can dig in some areas miles away from the water and find sign that there was water flow there at one time. A good example is a small town just north of me that was on the Ms. river during the Civil war ,it was shelled by the northern gunboats, now that town is 10 miles from the river. Not all flatlands was farm land or grazing land, at one time Ms. had giant Buffalo, their horns were 6 ft tip to tip but now Most of Ms. has a old tree growth. We have to think of it this way what we see has landscape today was no where near what it was 10,000 yrs ago and it has changed over and over due to fire , drought, flood and other natural things this old earth does. I'm hunting a place that there is no water way now, but before they built the levee system for the Ms. river to control flooding this area stayed flooded except small raised areas and they are covered with sign of occupation. The standard rule around here is if it's a high spot or rise there will be sign. Just in my life time water ways that I use to fish in and catch large fish are now dry drains that I walk to hunt points.