I drove to one of my far away places yesterday, I was trying to get there between rain storms as the corn is just starting to come in.
Place #1 was inaccessible as the creek was flooding. I was hoping the flooding would have subsided but it didn't. So...I went to Place #2 on the same farm, you have to cross the railroad tracks, then go down a 3/4 mile lane/dirt path/ car and truck eating swamp thingie.
Well, I called the owner from the high side of the field, there is a small place there you can pull off a car. He said it would not be wise to try it. A couple had been down there in their jacked up 4x4 pickup and got stuck. So I used the detector as cane #1 and shovel as cane #2 and started down the path, looking on each side for artifacts. Found zip. Got to the bottom and went over the known "good" spots. all I found down there was a broken net sinker. Bummer. I wasn't even finding any flakes. I found some fire cracked rocks, but not enough to concentrate on, PLUS every time I took a step it was like sink down 6" in the dark mud.
You couldn't really grid this field, it was too wet. So I started meandering back to the truck. I finally started finding a few flakes. The ONLY material found there, with the exception of one Flint Ridge, Ohio flake from a couple years ago is the Onondaga Chert, out of NY which is like 5 miles away.
Moving toward the driveway (mud puddle road thingie), calling it a road insults all other roads in the nation, I spy something thin poking out of the dirt. I snagged it and found the smallest arrowhead I have ever found.
This is absolutely the smallest, complete point I have ever found. I washed it off a bit in a mud puddle and realized the material is different than the normal lithic material from this spot, but couldn't ID it at that time.It is just over 1/2" long, is PERFECT and I was holding it between my fingers last night it punctured my little finger! Sharp as a razor after all these centuries! Wow! And it is nearly transparent. I'm having a problem getting a picture but light shines right through it. Here's my best try. The dark veins are still attached dirt. I haven't scrubbed it, I rarely "scrub" artifacts.
So, I safely put it in the side pouch, at least I found SOMETHING. I then crossed over the one glacial pond, scoured out by the last glacier to hit the area and started grubbing on the other side of the imaginary road. One horrid step at a time with the mud trying to suck me down down down. I spied a few more flakes, no tools. There were, again some fire cracked rocks, but not many.
A few more steps and I saw another razor edge of rock of a lighter color sticking out of the ground. I went to retrieve it, slop slop slurp of the mud, and pull out a monster! I took it over to the mudpuddle and washed it a bit and freaked! First, it's an archaic dovetail and after I got more dirt off of it, it is also made of Flint Ridge, Ohio flint! No doubt on this one! It is almost 6" long and NO DAMAGE! Now how the points on this farm have survived, I have no idea but it may be because the floods there move them in and out of the plow range over time and they only appear in the plowable zone every once in awhile. Flint Ridge is 400 miles away! I know the material was highly traded. I found an Adena blade near where I live when I was maybe 18, but none of the material since then till yesterday, of course with the exception of the Flint Ridge materials I have found at Flint Ridge itself - duh.
Definitely once in a lifetime hunt!
And as an afterthought, the mud was so bad truck would not let me in it until I got some of so I used two Cokes to rinse off my shoes to some extent. It's pretty hard for an old "mudder" like me to do this, the wash this am included my shoes -yeah, to haul myself through a mud pit anymore.
Make sure to zoom in on the points to check them out better. I suppose if you drove a total of 400 miles, round trip, these two make it worth while.
Here are the rest of the flakes, a few cores and what may or not be part of a broken banner stone. I don't think so, but...
And a hammerstone. Perfect hand size and lots of pecking done on the one end. The upper side is hand polished due to use.
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