Arrowheads Found In Field Near My Farm! (Pics)

[QUOTE16 U.S.C. 470ee,

Prohibited acts and criminal penalties





Section 6





16 U.S.C. 470 ee(a),

Unauthorized excavation, removal, damage, alternation, or defacement of archaeological resources

(a) No person may excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface or attempt to excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface any archaeological resource located on public lands or Indian lands unless such activity is pursuant to a permit issued under section 4 of this Act, a permit referred to in section 4(h)(2) of this Act, or the exemption contained in section 4(g)(1) of this Act


][/QUOTE]

do be careful, in certain instances you could be violating a federal law.

I know a little bench in the foothills that is loaded with points. The BLM will actually set up a blind and a spotting scope to try and catch people hunting them.

I also know lots of people with incredible collections. And all of them will tell you that every single one was found on deeded land. Isn't that so lucky?

Ok so I did not get in on this right away. I pulled out a point i have had in a box for thirty years or more. It is black. 4 1/4 inches long, 7/8 inches wide at the base. I found it in the Brazos river on a sand bar just down from where the Aquilla runs in. I have two more points I have kept from trompping around Lake Waco before it got filled up. I just would like to know if something like this is worth anything or is it just a keepsake?

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Every thing has value to some one, just more to some that others. Send me a pic and I will tell you and you can also go to ebay and get an idea.

I been chipping arrowheads out of flint for over thirty years. They look as good as anything any Indian made. Good stone is easy to work with but good stone is hard to find sometimes. What's needed is large clean stone at least the size of a fist, with no cracks. Stone that is not dried out on the surface of the ground is best. Stone from the surface usually has lots of cracks. Maybe I'll ask a friend with a digital camera to put some pictures on here of arrowheads I've made.

If you do have something that you think is almost unique, check with your state universities to see if there is a study of pre-Colombian and Native American antiquities for your area. We had a good one here until the curator sold a lot of good items. That's been the main reason why my collection remains with me. Only my son knows the location where I found most of it. Most are chert from SW Wisconsin but a blue flint scraper had a lot of mileage before I found it. And the red drill also had its origin many miles away.

I do have one item which sort of defied normal points. At first, it looks like a very crude point like a "t" with a short bar in the middle. One half a little rough and the other half just a bit smoother. But, there's a "snag" on the smooth half which could produce a nasty gash if drawn just so. It's the old equivilent to a pocket knife!

Martin

Those are really cool! I too love history & would love to find things like that but I am not as lucky as you.

I love threads like this especially on days where I'm feeling just a bit too cocky.
Makes me realize how little I really know and motivates me to learn something new even if it isn't the subject at hand.

Re: Dr. Bradley....Really? And I don't mean that in an argumentative way. In American history there is no other documented account of someone living as some tribe did in order to better understand them? I would think humans are more curious than that.

On the question of the huge amount of arrowheads found, I wonder what the loss rate would have been. Say a hunter started out with a dozen finished arrows. Shoot at water birds, miss and there goes your arrow. Even if a hit, no guarantee the bird woud land close enough to recover. Game struck, but in the wrong area so they headed off, taking the arrow with them.

For someone who is a serious bow & arrow hunter today, what is their arrow loss rate?

I don't hunt, but I do target archery. Set up a course in my woods. Now, I am a pretty good shot, but it is VERY easy to loose arrows, all it takes is a gust of wind that comes out of nowhere. It can take forever to find one even if you thought you saw where it went. I would think shooting at moving game, across a good distance of 30 yards or way more, plus sometimes in heavy brush, it would be quite easy to loose them. Whenever possible, you would retrieve them, especially if you took the time to make your own points, but you would still loose quite a few...

Because arrowheads are somewhat common around here, I never thought too much their value. Well... went to a mini-antique roadshow-type-think in Harrison a couple years ago, and an older gent in line ahead of us had a cigar box over 1/2 full of arrowheads he'd found on his property. The appraiser said the collection could fetch $40-$50,000! I had no idea! Maybe he had some really rare ones that the appraiser spotted?

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The arrow loss rate for an Indian hunting was eventually 100%. He lost them or broke them, all of them. Every arrowhead, spear point, knife blade, scrapper, etc... made over thousands and thousands of years ended up in the ground, where for hundreds of years people have been finding them. That's a lot of arrowheads! They are just about everywhere but where most people live they are covered over by homes, lawns, paved roads, shopping malls and everything else.

In the valley here along a creek was at one time one of the best places for finding arrowheads as that is where the Indians ambushed game that came down to drink. A few years ago the last farm in the valley sold and is now a Walmart. Of course an archeology survey had to be done as always to be sure nothing important was being dug up or buried. Wouldn't you know it they found nothing where people had been finding things for generations. Also the old family cemetery was dug up and moved. Nothing but dirt found here, build quick!

Had it been a permanent Native American Indian settlement, then that's a different story. Just finding items relating to hunting doesn't count or a whole lot of land would have to be preserved.

KY and TN were predominately NAI hunting grounds without permanent settlements. However, some of the earliest Europeans going through the area found settlements which looked like they had been abandoned quickly. Disease brought in by Vikings?

Is a cemetery considered a permanent settlement? Or does that depend on the color of the dead mans skin? They dug up the cemetery and moved it. I guess they can't dig up Indian bones any more but white men bones can be moved by anyone who will pay a lot of taxes. Most of the Indian mounds in this area have been leveled by the plow. There is only one left that I know of up river on private land but not in this valley. Everything here has been built on or paved over. Well the last farm is gone forever now. The old bones, tools, pottery, camp sites, and mounds.... are all gone. It's interesting that in a river valley like this there was not one place of any historical importance. I think it's all about money. Walmart and other business pay a lot more taxes than Indian mounds and white settlers cemeteries.

I used the words 'permanent settlement' very loosely. From what I have read essentially they had an area where they had a general area where they set up for summer hunting and another general area for over-wintering. They may have rotated among several sites.

Can you imagine what a large village would smell like come spring?

But then white towns weren't much better. Horse manure accumulating in the street. Garbage basically thrown out the back door. Privies.

Not all mounds are related to burials.