Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Indian Artifacts

This site is beyond phugged up imo. I just bought a new computer and I still loss the connection 7 out of 10 time I hit the damn key pad. I'm about over it... The only site that has ever given me issues.

One would think that, but out here in the west, it's certainly not the case. Two instances: 1. A couple years back a friend and I were traversing an essentially featureless sagebrush plain to approach some pronghorn. Midway, we passed through about a 3 acre spot, with absolutely no distinguishing features, that was littered with points, drills, scrapers, and what I call expediency knives (simply sharp edged flakes knapped off for short term work like skinning a bunny). No signs of water, windbreaks, or vegetation that would draw me there today as a suitable camping spot.

2: An ongoing nearby dig in a depression that would provide some shelter. It's dating to around 14,000 yrs before present. Excavated plant materials and bones suggests the area supported a wealth of willows and pine, waterfowl, and wetland mammals. Today, it too is a featureless plain of sagebrush with the nearest water about 10 miles distant. Structural disparities in the artifacts also, suggest the area was occupied and then abandoned over several intervals.

Here in the west, perennial water sources are a pretty good bet as are some of the shallow but seasonal lake basins. Fourteen thousand year back, however, some of those basins were under 300+ ft of water.

Interesting stuff for those that study such.

Our area is karst, so it's littered with basins, sinkholes and such. It is my hypothesis that some of these areas were water holes for eastern buffalo and thusly places of ambush opportunity.
We have one such geographical 'bowl' which could have been a 10 acre pond a few thousand years ago. We find early archaic blades around it, strictly just around it. The river is about a mile away and we find no debitage between it and this basin. And it's plowed all they way to the river.

So yes, landscapes and climate were possibly entirely different 8,000 years ago.

ok


Well this is what it looks like.

Just have to find the hot spots. Like a giant body of water, just have to scout it an find out where the fish are.

Buffalo wallows in the western US have indeed proven to be a good spot for artifacts. Time and again as erosion and winds sweep the plains.

Yesterday's finds all cleaned up:

Very nice...

Supposed to rain again tomorrow.

Only gets better.

I gotta figure out this smart phone photobucket chit......

Can you get Photobucket on a Tracfone?

Good stuff Slummy...

Man those are tiny...

Sure wish I knew more about the way they lived.

We have Plumbers, Electricians, Welders today, I wonder if there was 1 guy in the group that excelled in arrowhead making and everybody else came to him for their points?

I don't see how they ever got in enough practice to be good. 1 practice shot and you could be back to whittlin and knappin.

Ole one eye from the saber tooth attack and all da camp ho,s made points..
Pretty reasonable to imagine everyone had a basic skill level at stuff and some had higher levels of skill. Fug up a point give it
To the old lady or oneeye and have em retool into something else and give ya a new point or do it yourself . I know if i was in hunting parties putting food on the plate I would make sure my family had skills to make me points. Common sense....
Called division of labor...... no welfare as a way of life back then.... makes me wonder how negros made it as far as they did......

I believe that the old folks and women made most of the points.

Indians also had strong beliefs about blood. That's why you find so many "perfect" points in Indian camps... Certainly within a certain direction and proximity of a campfire in the Indian camp.

Once the point had drawn blood, it was removed, and another point attached to the shaft of the dart, spear, or arrow. They usually did that while sitting around a campfire, and would toss the bloodied point on the ground.

the guys in my camp musta been chitty hunters that didn't draw much blood. very few perfect ones found....

Read the account of Cabeza de Vaca concerning the Coalhuatecans in south Texas. Them po bastids was pickin' thru their own caca for stuff to eat. They ate lots of other stuff too. When they could find it. Mainstay of their diets were prickly pear tunas and pecans! mesquite beans and female babies were popular dietary items too!

One of the coolest things I have ever seen was related to the Sewee tribe in our region. It was a Megaladon tooth that had been knapped into a point and was legit.

My dad pulled this out just a few plowed rows over from me. Happy for the old man, but sure wish I'd been walking that row! Have a fair number of ax heads to my own name but none with the wow factor of this one...It's like the maker chose his stone canvas, not just for the sake of the tool alone.