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What kind of skull is that?

I've got quite a bit of stuff I've found over the years. A real old clovis-era point, a couple of celts, numerous points of differing sizes, metates, grinding stones, trade beads, etc. I'll try to find them and post a pic or two.

There used to be a private museum just down the road from me called the Idaho Heritage Museum. The owner had spent a lifetime collecting pots, etc. and big game hunting. Besides rooms full of artifacts, the place had dozens of life size mounts from all over the world and an amazing collection of mule deer heads. He even had a full body musk ox.

However, the feds kept nosing around. Before it was over, the place was closed and most of the artifacts seized. The guy finally plead guilty to illegal pot hunting on public land. He'd been raiding archeological sites along the Snake River for years. I don't think anything was ever proved, but there was a lot of talk about his deer heads, too. Many people thought that many of them were taken 'off the books'.

This fall while hunting near a cliff face there was a small very shallow cave above a bench I used to scale the hill. The inside of the cave was probably about 6' deep and the roof of it was blackened from the smoke of eons of cooking fires. My brother-in-law was hunting about a mile from me and after the 3rd day he told me he had found an arrowhead in the dirt near where he was sitting.
The next day I decided to take my lunch and explore the area around the cave. I found pottery shards, scrapers, spear tips, flint shards and arrowheads. Some of the pottery shards even had the fingerprints of their makers still visible.
I had recently read a book about the Anastazi and their disapearance that I enjoyed very much. I loaned it to my Dad when I was done since he had some interest as well. That night I called him and described the pottery shards I had seen (there were many different colors and textures indicating that whoever used the cave was there for many generations and had traded widely). According to the book, the earliest pieces were from about 450 AD and the latest around 1300 AD.
I figured that the cave was used as some kind of a temporary hunting camp, but who knows? It was pretty cool to know that I was hunting in a place that others had used long before me.

There are thousands of ruins following the river chains in Az, from one roomers to mounds that were habitated for centuries and hundreds of rooms and burials. In some areas there were many more people living in the river areas 1000 years ago than are now.

I really like finding the out of the way ones, usually small, couple rooms, one family probably. I sit and imagine their life, probably never venturing more than 10/20 miles from that spot. Thinking about what's around there of interest they based their life on.

I found this one in an area far from the normal spots. Possibly a hunting lodge, no growing area.



Shards



View out from the ruin.



Water source below



Kent

great thread


burial mounds in SW Mo were great for turning up arrowheads in my youth


few years ago hunted a river up north for an outfitter that needed me for 10 days, part of the allure of going is it's really near my taxidermist/pilot/sheep hunter extraordinaire pard Skip's annual hunting grounds for moose and bou

in fact Skip dropped his Cub into visit at our camp and a few days later flew us up to his camp to try and chase a bear to ground that had been gettin in their meat as I had a bear hunter.


while there he showed me a cave up on a pretty steep bluff, but accessible, lots of Indian paintings on the wall, lots of shards, etc. great overlook of the river valley, pretty sure they put a few good guys with good vision up there to direct hunting parties on the ground where to go to get game.

pretty fascinating to me, that we were doing similar all those years later.

Stone points were collected mostly from cultivated farm fields in Southwestern Wisconsin. A few collected on known campsites. They are aged from Archaic to Late Woodland.








On the left is a Hixton quartzite blank and the other is a Prairie du Chien chert blank.

To all members YEHA-NOHA (Wish of Happiness and Prosperity)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S-xjql_pE8

Nothing too exciting, but while working is SoCal we have archaeologists with us and they will point out milling sites and areas where Indians have chipped flakes away when making scrapers and the like.

But its legal for the government to freeze building projects indefinately on private land when artifacts are found during earth removal. Costing owners greatly by delaying or shuting down projects. A little government is a necessary thing but what we have now is a nighmare. Hard to dig in Missouri around water sources without running across stone artifacts.

I sure that anyone on the fire that collects artifacts and post pictures does so in a legal manner. Nice rocks guys! Enjoying the legal pictures. GW

when i was a kid some friends had property up by campwood tx. one summer some other kids found a human skull with 17 arrow heads stuck in it just north of their place.it was later determined that it was the skull of a black woman. they speculated that the Comanches had captured her and tied her to a tree so their young ones could use her for target practice

Only if there's government money involved. And not "indefinately." The site is mitigated, i.e., decided not worth excavating or excavated. Either way, you eventually get to dig your water line.

hey LRF I KNOW THAT AREA VERY WELL have hunted and horsebacked over much of it. lots of stuff arround.

Only if there's government money involved. And not "indefinately." The site is mitigated, i.e., decided not worth excavating or excavated. Either way, you eventually get to dig your water line.[/quote

Your correct indefinately is not two years to delay a bridge project only seemed that way, while driving several miles around it. They found part of a skull and a few flint tools. Best not to notice those things if you want to finish a project. GW

Found another flint knife this morning. The grass is getting deep enuff to make the looking hard........

You suck....you have grass growing...

Does anyone have any tips for looking? I havent a clue where to start and thought it would be fun to bring my 6 year old daughter out. Just another reason to be outside in the woods/fields. It would be nice if we could have a smidgen of success to keep her interested.

Just find the water....creeks, rivers, or even where they used to be. Look over the high spots near the water and there were Indians there at some point.

yup, just described where I picked these up yesterday.

we went out looking with no luck. Maybe our indians were neater and picked up all their unwanted items and properly disposed of them in the garbage can??? Just kidding, we will try some more.