Amazing finds from Washington State

digordie · Sep 16, 2012

Hey guys I am brand new to the sight but i wanted to post these finds from a friend of mine who just found this large cache of large blades on a river in a northeast wash state. Any help with id would be great. Thanks
NOTE: these are all displayed in the bottom of banana boxes for size comparison. The one large blade was broke in half but measures 6" wide by 18" long.

GatorBoy · Sep 22, 2012

I'm interested what people with more knowledge of that area have to say for sure. That's alot of mahogany obsidian. Is it close to its sorce? I'm not familiar enough with obsidian to comment on its appearence. The other material however looks like it has no patina...except for photo three which may be from the dirt in the photo.

rock · Sep 22, 2012

I wonder why Rep (steve) hasnt chimed in on this thread. And also Neathdral (Matt) or Tom Clark.

Tnmountains · Sep 23, 2012

@ N.C Huntr I was just seeing the brown in your flint. Have you ever found obsidian in N.C?
It can run from shiny black to brown. (dover)
Here is a link. .Dover Flint 55 TYD in Flintknapping Trade Blanket/Sales Area Forum

Obsidian is usually in volcanic areas...

NC field hunter · Sep 23, 2012

Tnmountains said:
@ N.C Huntr I was just seeing the brown in your flint. Have you ever found obsidian in N.C?
It can run from shiny black to brown. (dover)
Here is a link. .Dover Flint 55 TYD in Flintknapping Trade Blanket/Sales Area Forum

Obsidian is usually in volcanic areas...

This piece was found in VA. I only live about 20 miles from VA. It is noted, and I just rechecked on wiki. Link above , that obsidian is found in VA. I'm sure if it is there , then some has bound to be in my county also. I have a nice guitar pick shaped scraper made of obsidian also. I see what you are looking at on the base. This piece is in my safe (not in my home) . Tomorrow I'll look at the base of the piece, I think it is a light/camera deal. I think. I'll snap a shot of the scraper as well. I always find the volcanic clear "stuff" don't know what it is called but it is different from quartz.

This was found in NC mountains.

NC field hunter · Sep 23, 2012

NC field hunter said:
This piece was found in VA. I only live about 20 miles from VA. It is noted, and I just rechecked on wiki. Link above , that obsidian is found in VA. I'm sure if it is there , then some has bound to be in my county also. I have a nice guitar pick shaped scraper made of obsidian also. I see what you are looking at on the base. This piece is in my safe (not in my home) . Tomorrow I'll look at the base of the piece, I think it is a light/camera deal. I think. I'll snap a shot of the scraper as well. I always find the volcanic clear "stuff" don't know what it is called but it is different from quartz.

<img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=679198"/>

This was found in NC mountains.

You have me second guessing again. I guess that would be 3rd guessing!! Here is a scraper that may be the same material.

rock · Sep 23, 2012

Is it ever found in Ga? I find black items but always thought it was just Chert.

GatorBoy · Sep 23, 2012

You would know it wasn't chert.

gilmerman · Sep 23, 2012

I also think there is some fabrication to this post. The range is from a clovis appearing in the box that puts the range of finds fron Paleo (Clovis) to archaic periods. Also If you are familiar with BLM and Forresty Personnel. They don't ask questions or snoop, they appear with warrents and take down your door if you don't open fast enough.

GatorBoy · Sep 23, 2012

Agreed

digordie · Sep 24, 2012

Well heres the update.. turns out some of you all were right. Turns out that when he was out there in the pile that a guy saw him and told him that the pile was nothing more than an old knappers chip and flake dumpsight. Boy do i feel stupid!!! anyways apparently there were two knappers that were pretty close. One died so the other gathered up all the scrap and points and dumped them in the river to get rid of the memory. So my appologies for posting this to begin with. Ill try to limit my posts to my own finds from now on. Thanks and sorry once again.

GatorBoy · Sep 24, 2012

No problem. It was a good test.

NC field hunter · Sep 25, 2012

No offense, but that sounds like a cock and bull story . How does he know that his informant was not shooting him a line? You know, so he could gather the goodies. What about the cops at the beginning? Last, if they were recently put in the river bed, how did they not wash up and go down stream? You may reconsider calling him "friend".

GatorBoy · Sep 25, 2012

This whole thread smells bad. Someone should burry it.

joshuaream · Sep 25, 2012

Gatorboy is right, it does smell fishy...

For what it's worth, archaeologists are currently looking at Marvin McCormicks workshops. He was a flint knapper who turned out hundreds of thousands of Alibates points over the course of many decades. I saw a picture on another site of the area where Rinehart made his grey ghosts, his waste piles cover acres with, waste flakes, slabs, broken bifaces, rejects, etc.

A prolific knapper can go through tonnes of material (literally thousands and thousands of pounds of material) a year if they are churning out pieces. A lot of this could have been a knappers pile (with some extra pieces from the knapper tossed in.)

On the ancient end most quarry sites used to look like that before collectors started picking things up. And they aren't really caches in the sense of the word that most collectors use. Alibates National Monument has more broken pieces laying around than you can imagine, it's almost painful for collectors to go and see it. I have seen pictures of some of the high elevation obsidian quarries in California, and the number of rejected obsidian bifaces is amazing. They hammered them out, and carried down the best ones. At other obsidian quarries the bifaces were cores for flakes to make birdpoints, and the left over cores are laying around by the thousands.