8-29, Fun day nothing spectacular.. couple of question??

[Tnmountains]

Sorry for no in-situ pictures. The rain hammered us all day. We went by boat and the storm cells where everywhere When it was not raining on us we were watching it rain across the mtns. So the cameras and phones stayed tucked away. Got two rough little triangular guntersville points and a lot of things to study. We had a blast in the rain.

Here is the days haul.


Some points and broke bases.


One of those questionable digger pieces again Getting a pile of them now.


The inside of a broke flint core/cobble and the outside cortex.



The following 2 items are questionable tools. No doubt they are artifacts but were they a tool? Everything on this site is knapped and worked. We could fill a 5 gallon bucket in 30 minutes with worked flint. Much is worked all the away around and is nothing ? Many of the knapped off pieces seem to be worked on one edge. It could be river tumble breaking the sharp edges or they could be little scrappers. If they are scrappers I am going to start picking them all up. What does everyone think?




Couple of broken pieces of pottery we thought were kinda neat



Thanks for looking and have a good next hunt.

TnMountains

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[bravowhiskey]

Hey Tn,

Looks like a fun and productive day. Are you on a camp site, or maybe somewhere they were doing the biface reduction thing? Looks like the pottery had some nicely abraded edges for the good no-slip grip. Pottery always makes me hungry for some reason. Go figure.

I have a spot that must've been a flint quarry. Like yours, there is broken flint everywhere as well as cobbles and pieces of core as far as eyes can see. Some may be natural, but others are for sure worked or started anyway.

Keep your powder, cell phones and cameras dry,
BW

[quito]

That piece you are calling a flint core, just may be a cone the way it looks to me.

Joel

[uniface]

Your last chert piece (2 pics) with the cortex and fire pops is inarguably a tool -- the re-sharpening demonstrates this. Without the edge work, but with use damage, it would be a "utilized flake" (aka, an "expedient tool"). With it, you have a "retouched flake." People seem to forget (or not realise) that, in practical terms (and these guys were nothing if not practical), the sharpest edge possible is on exactly such a removal as this.

Which is why folks in your neck of the woods find so many flake cores, which aren't generally recognised as what they were. They aren't crude anythings -- they're blanks that flakes were removed from -- the flakes themselves being the point of the exercise and the cores having been whatever way was most convenient to produce them.

[Th3rty7]

Good day of hunting Tn, you came back with a variety of things. Your tools in question look like utilized flakes or scrapers from the edgewear imo. Nice sherds and that cobble is fine looking material, I'd like to percussion hammer some flakes off it. lol

[uniface]

The inside of a broke flint core/cobble and the outside cortex.

It is a cobble, split via bi-polar percussion (put one end of it on a rock and hit the other end with another rock) -- the usual procedure with a cobble this size, and the starting point of further reduction.

But in this case, he saw how defective the interior was, knew from experience that he couldn't get anything un-flawed out of it, and pitched it.

Had the interior been homogenous, it would have been a core once further work started.

PS : the bottom center piece in your hand looks like a little square knife. Nice !

[Tnmountains]

Thanks everyone
Bravo.. I am not sure about this site. There are probably about and I am guessing say 30 sites that produce ancient debri in this ten mile stretch of valley. Some sites are over 10 feet deep with occupation. When I look at this site it is about 15 feet above my head and only 4 feet thick with about 3 feet of soil on top of that..All bone is smashed and some seems almost like petrified wood.Something is diffrent here though.They knapped everything.
Yet I have found triangulars to lost lakes.
Quito
I am going to post another one of those cores from there that they pecked on and threw down for you to look at.
Uni and thirty7
Those guys knapped everything in sight it seems. I understand when in say a plowed field seeing random flakes. There are flakes here but large amounts of material knapped all the way around and discarded. I thought the items in question had use wear but the question is do I pick up 5 gallon buckets of the stuff. I can travel 3 miles away and its just common flakes on a site. Here they worked everything.I think it had one short occupation and then a longer one with periodic or random stays after that.
Am only surface hunting and no digging except a few fields I have permission on.
Thanks everyone for guiding me and all the advice. Here is that core/cone they threw down ,,found a couple weeks ago.

Regards
TnMtns

[uniface]

From the way it looks here, that's a hammerstone. Used to peck hardstone grooved axe, celt (&c) blanks to shape before grinding them smooth.

Nice piece !

[Bluesy]

Great finds, Tn! What you are calling a "nothing spectacular" day would have been my best day ever! Congrats!

[Tnmountains]

Great finds, Tn! What you are calling a "nothing spectacular" day would have been my best day ever! Congrats!

Thank you Bluesy
It was raining so hard but we stayed the course. This site has made me get out and hunt and I have learned so much here. Your day is coming and have been enjoying your post and watching your finds.
happy huntin
TnMountains

[docmann]

TnMount.,
Nice pieces, all of them. The edges on two of the pieces appear to be almost serrated. The body of the last two pieces have a peculiar appearance as if they were embellished or worked for some unknown reason. Very interesting! I agree with the last photo. Appears to be a hammer stone or percussing piece. Very strong work! I'm afraid I'd be filling up the buckets. Keep up the good work, and keep the photos coming.
Docmann

[naturegirl]

Tn- your day Sat. sounds like our Sun, without the rain. We had sun and a dry north breeze. The water was down in this particular creek and there were several gravel bars. There was quite a lot of Florance -A chert with the cortex still on it, and almost every other piece had knapping, not all the way around though. That made us wonder how to tell what was knapping, and what was natural from being in the water. I brought home a lot of stuff that I had second thoughts about when I got it home. I guess a piece could have both flaked edges, and chips knocked out from bumping along in flood water. Only one broken point, but that's ok, it's my first serrated one.Figured out some answers, came up with more questions. Thanks for the pictures, it helps with some of what we're wondering about.

ng

[Tnmountains]

Docman buckets its going to be, i am taking shovels to get the flakes,,lol will post when I do.

NatureGirl sounds like a beautiful day you had feel free to post some of your questionable things here if you like. I would like to see them. I am enjoying the learn,

TnMtns

[uniface]

I can travel 3 miles away and its just common flakes on a site. Here they worked everything

Different cultures had different habits and procedures. But in general, the further people were from a re-supply of material to make things of, the more they re-cycled what they had with them, and got the most use out of it they could.

If, for the sake of argument, your sites with a lot of debitage (chips & chunks) were close to a outcroppings of chert or alluvial deposits of cobbles, and your site where everything's intensely utilised was "three miles away" from one, especially if it was down over the other side of a mountain, you'd tend to see what you're seeing there.

Something about that site suited them. Or else they got elbowed out of a better area by another group. Or else . . .

There's always at least one "or else . . ."

[creek astronaut]

very nice day Tn mts.atleast your girl didnt slay you this time out.lol.thx for sharing the pics.

[Tnmountains]

very nice day Tn mts.atleast your girl didnt slay you this time out.lol.thx for sharing the pics.

HA. I never said she did not slay me ? She does not miss anything as she picks up everything.
I hunt real fast for the obvious monster battle axe just laying there and when I do not find it I go back real slow. Thats water hunting. You would think by now I would learn to go slowwwwww.
TnMtns

[creek astronaut]

very nice day Tn mts.atleast your girl didnt slay you this time out.lol.thx for sharing the pics.

HA. I never said she did not slay me ? She does not miss anything as she picks up everything.
I hunt real fast for the obvious monster battle axe just laying there and when I do not find it I go back real slow. Thats water hunting. You would think by now I would learn to go slowwwwww.
TnMtns

lol.i always go slow,while she walks in circles like she doesnt have a clue to what she is looking for, then boom! "honey i think i just found an axe thingy".

[Tnmountains]

very nice day Tn mts.atleast your girl didnt slay you this time out.lol.thx for sharing the pics.

HA. I never said she did not slay me ? She does not miss anything as she picks up everything.
I hunt real fast for the obvious monster battle axe just laying there and when I do not find it I go back real slow. Thats water hunting. You would think by now I would learn to go slowwwwww.
TnMtns

lol.i always go slow,while she walks in circles like she doesnt have a clue to what she is looking for, then boom! "honey i think i just found an axe thingy".

LMAO Yeah or "Hey this looks like one of those things in your book?" as you run back over with racing heart.