Can I offer those of you unable to distinguish rock from artifact some basic advice?
You might say you can go about looking for artifacts a couple of basic ways. One, you could really learn what artifacts from your neck of the woods actually look like. By the hundreds, or thousands even. In richly illustrated books, in museums, in collections. Especially helpful would be personal contact with collectors, where they can both show you and describe to you their artifacts. But, bottom line in this stage, is to just immerse yourself getting familiar with what actual artifacts from the region that you will be searching in actually look like.
Stage 2 of this approach is to go out and look, in areas where dirt is exposed, and near fresh water. With all those images of artifacts in your mind that you have viewed until blue in the face.
Two, another basic way to approach finding artifacts is to ignore completely the suggestions in the first approach. Learn nothing about artifacts common to your neck of the woods. Don't bother with any of that. Then, go out and pick up every single rock you see, and wherever you go, then post them to artifact forums and inquire until someone says you have found an artifact. In this method you can even invent your own theories, or conclude you understand all you need to understand. You can even talk to archaeologists and show them the rocks you pick up, and then you can misinterpret what they tell you, so as to be sure to carry those misunderstandings forward.
First approach: adopt this approach and you will find artifacts for sure. Just need to find productive locations.
Second approach: you may be picking up every rock you find for a long time before someone confirms you have succeeded. And along the way, instead of comparing your finds to what you learned beforehand, because you learned absolutely nothing beforehand, you can decide your rocks must be artifacts with your imagination, rather then your non existent knowledge. And you can draw your conclusions from the fountainhead of zero knowledge that is the source of your conclusions.
The second method can take a long, long, long time and a lot of rocks. But you might get lucky.
I do believe most of you guys are using the second method, the one that begins by learning nothing at all about artifacts from your region: the one that does not bother to see and learn what artifacts look like. Since 90% of what you find anyway will be small flaked tools, like points and scrapers, this method leads to a larger collection of large rocks, which is a waste of time given that 90%+ of artifacts will be no such thing. JMHO, but the second method has always struck me as pretty silly!
