Western Wyoming Artifacts

[Deadwood]

Hello. This is my first post.
My wife and I inherited some Native American Items that were found cir. 1875 or earlier by her Great Great Grandma in the Wind River and Kemmerer area of western Wyoming.
There is a very unique soapstone bowl that is black on one side. Stained from fire and smoke over time I assume. Also a spearhead and a large ax head or tomahawk.
Several points too and flint pieces.
I would truly appreciate any help identifying the items and establishing some sort of value. Although, to me, they are priceless.
Thanks for all the information on a great site.

 

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[allen]

awesome artifacts, but i cant help in iding them...im for sure someone will be able to help you though...

 

[Atticus Finch]

Great collection.

 

[seger98]

Welcome to T-net, great collection, Thanks for sharing

 

[11KBP]

Nice group of colorful High Plains artifacts.

I would like to see close-ups of some of the individual pieces, especially numbers 1, 3, & 4.

 

[Flintfinder of Mo.]

Welcome, Thanks for showing, I really like the bowl. Wow ,, I'd like to see some more pics of it. John

 

[GL]

That bowl is insane!
#3 and #4 would be awesome if you could give us a close up.

 

[Deadwood]

Here are a couple of close ups:
Please let me know if you have any suggestions for either or want any other photos.
Thanks for any and all help.

 

[*Molly*]

Welcome to T-net, Nice collection you have there.

Molly.

 

[Pinellas Man]

That's some awsome finds Deadwood and welcome!

 

[Shemanese]

What is #1? and what kind of stone is it made of? Thanks

 

[pickaway]

Great collection...

 

[WhiteCountyPaleo]

#4 looks like it would have been a huge paleo spear or blade. Possibly even clovis culture!

 

[PALEOMAN]

your bowl is actually made of steatite of pre-cambrian age. there are known quarries in the teton, wind river, bighorn mountains and the laramie range. it was carved rather than fired like typical pottery. steatite has good heat tolerance but is very heavy and is not very strong. it is not known for sure which came first; the carved steatite vessels or fired pottery. your piece is a fine example! thanks for sharing.

 

[Shemanese]

Any idea what #1 is? Chopper, Adze? Wedge? Geofact?

 

[Deadwood]

#1 appears to me to be made of some sort of dense sandstone.
I realize that that is probably not the case, but that is my best description.
I assume that it is a spear head, but may be something different. It was exposed to the elements for quite sometime because the little brown dots that you see on it are actualy raised up (like a pimplep and of some other material or type of rock embeded in the stone. It is like the artifact has erroded and some of the mineral is left behind. The other side is a lighter color with a few more raised bumps as well.

As for the bowl, I know that it was carved by hand. You can see tool workings on the side and bottom.
Cant you just imagine some ancient person sitting next to a fire enjoying some fresh warm bison stew :-)

The large axe head is some sort of granite.
Does anyone have any suggestions for a profesional appraisal service.?

Thanks
Deadwood.

 

[PALEOMAN]

could we see more pics of #4 please?

 

[Cannonman17]

Okay, I'll throw a guess up on monetary value since nobody else has. Keep in mind it's only one persons opinion. Given the history I would say the herloom value is far greater than monetary.

#1 Pretty crude really, a nice piece, don't get me wrong but not overly attractive.. a knife of sorts I would say as it is far too big to be anything else. The bumps sticking out may be in fact just natural intrusions in the rock, hard spots I guess. I've seen soapstone locally that when you break it open or "flake" it is some fashion it maintains nearly identical little intrusions like this, in the case of the soapstone around here those little intrusions are actually garnets. I'm guessing something similar on this one. Price at a show someplace? I don't know... $10.00=15.00 mostly because of it's size and wholeness more than anything.

#2 I think this is a really great axe myself but unfortunately to a collector it would be considered fairly average I think. It's made of a fairly common type material.. okay form... not a particularly rare type but really a utilitarian piece. My GUESS $75.00-150.00

#3 Almost looks like knife river material to me.. so close to being perfect on this but not quite. Whole I think it would sell for very good money, as is I'm not too sure... a few dollars. Something like this could be pretty easily restored however and display very well.

#4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 look to me all to be severly damaged and or flaking debitage. Frequently broken points can be bought by the pound or in large lots making the overall value of any given piece pretty low..less than a dollar each. A couple of them could be restored and display nice, #5 in particular.

#6 Looks to be pretty nice from what I see but it's really hard to tell for sure in terms of thickness and all that.. guess would be $35.00

#9 Looks whole and delicate! Cool little point, not perfectly balanced but delicate points like that are hard to find whole, balanced or not. Guess.. $45.00

#10, Again hard to tell from the pic, may be an older style, material looks nice, guess... $25.00-35.00

#18, The bowl... I have seen thousands of artifacts and never had the privelage of looking at one of these in person. I don't/haven't seen these on the market very often. Several hundred dollars would be my guess.

 

[uniface]

Number 4 looks like a graver spur worked into a broken clovis point.

More gravers are nrs. 16 and 17 top right & bottom left.

Three of the four in nr. 17 are Radial Fractures : RFs are the last stage in lithic utilization, when an exhausted tool was deliberately shattered to produce fragments with more or less right-angled (to the plane of the item) edges usable as gravers.

 

[The Grim Reaper]

Nice pieces Deadwood, especially the Bowl and the Axe.

Here's a site that should help you ID the points.

http://www.projectilepoints.net/