More debitage

[Blackfoot58]

I walked a permission field today. I found a lot of small flakes/debitage. This field has yielded many hundreds of similar flakes since 2023. Not one actual tool found yet.
I haven’t seen any plowing, disc work, cultivating, etc. in over 16 years.

 

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[ToddsPoint]

I walked a permission field today. I found a lot of small flakes/debitage. This field has yielded many hundreds of similar flakes since 2023. Not one actual tool found yet.
I haven’t seen any plowing, disc work, cultivating, etc. in over 16 years.View attachment 2201372

If the field hasn’t been worked in 16 yrs, how are you finding anything? Isn’t it overgrown?

 

[Blackfoot58]

If the field hasn’t been worked in 16 yrs, how are you finding anything? Isn’t it overgrown?

They drill beans (no till) and harvest.
Most years they drill oats for an off-season cover crop. The oats get killed with chemicals before the next beans are drilled.

 

[ToddsPoint]

With farming practices like that, it’s a wonder we can find anything now. I can remember hunting fields that were plowed with a mold-board in the fall. By spring they were flat with no crop debris at all. Points, flakes and rocks were all sitting there in plain sight. It was “the good old days” for sure!!

 

[tamrock]

Looks like a good indicator of activities. Your in Iowa. Are you familiar with the town of Bentonsport? I stopped in that town when I was doing business with some of the Limestone quarries in the 1990s. There's a little museum of artifacts put up by a fella who is well versed in finding artifacts in your area. I'm not sure if that little museum was there when I visited the historic town of Bentonsport on the DM River. Here's a video and take note of what he says about the difference in finding artifacts from the west side of the Mississippi to the Illinois side on the east

 

[ToddsPoint]

Looks like a good indicator of activities. Your in Iowa. Are you familiar with the town of Bentonsport? I stopped in that town when I was doing business with some of the Limestone quarries in the 1990s. There's a little museum of artifacts put up by a fella who is well versed in finding artifacts in your area. I'm not sure if that little museum was there when I visited the historic town of Bentonsport on the DM River. Here's a video and take note of what he says about the difference in finding artifacts from the west side of the Mississippi to the Illinois side on the east

I think the Mississippi River was a major boundary line between different cultures. At least during certain time periods. With over 12,000 years of Indian activity, about any scenario you can think of probably happened at least once. In SW IL, just south of the town of Thebes on the Miss River, is the Olive Branch site. At that spot, a line of limestone bedrock crossed the river. Before the lock and dams, it was an extremely dangerous place for early steam paddle wheelers. It was one of the few natural crossings on the middle Mississippi. The Dalton people had a major camp on the IL side and controlled the crossing for a very long time. I can imagine those Dalton people extracting a toll for anyone wanting to cross. I also think the gaps in the limestone formation was spanned by an Indian made wooden bridge. This very hard type of limestone was a navigation danger that was finally dynamited by the Army Corps of Engineers during a drought years 20 yrs ago.

 

[tamrock]

My grandpa who was born in 1892 and lived his entire life in Burlington, Iowa outside of his tour of duty in the trenches of France would at times tell me what the Mississippi was like before the locks were put on the river. He said when he was a kid he'd gig for eels which are no more and hunted for mussels that might have a pearl inside.

 

[Blackfoot58]

My grandpa who was born in 1892 and lived his entire life in Burlington, Iowa outside of his tour of duty in the trenches of France would at times tell me what the Mississippi was like before the locks were put on the river. He said when he was a kid he'd gig for eels which are no more and hunted for mussels that might have a pearl inside.

Burlington has its share of artifacts for sure. Some great axe heads came from there. I believe there is a museum that shows them. I’ll verify. If so, I need to go. Only about 35 miles for me.