Beautiful rock shelter

Charmin · Mar 18, 2011

My brother took me and my sister to see an old rock shelter that he and my grandpa had found. It has been worked by somebody in the past and they left a date as well as a picture of a deer drawn on the shelter wall. They also left their 'A' frame from which they must have hung their screen to sift. There was flint in the dirt piled up out in front of the shelter.
I bet they probably found some good stuff---There is also a neat rock in the floor of the shelter that has hash(SP?) marks on it. The little creek that runs in front of the shelter doesn't have a name but my brother says it always has water in it. And I think there is a spring nearby because there is a place where water was running out of the bluffs.
Some pics......

Felinepeachy · Mar 18, 2011

WOW!!!!!!!!!!! That is a beautiful place. It's kind of cool that the previous folks left a date. Do you think there is more stuff to be found?

Charmin · Mar 18, 2011

Felinepeachy said:
WOW!!!!!!!!!!! That is a beautiful place. It's kind of cool that the previous folks left a date. Do you think there is more stuff to be found?

You should see it in person, FP! It is so beautiful and peaceful there, and it is a really a big shelter.
I don't know whether anything else is there or not--to me it looks like whoever screened it did a pretty good job. No telling what they found!
I love the rock with the hash marks on it---it was too big to carry out

or I might have had a new yard ornament

.
It was a fun place to see.

naturegirl · Mar 18, 2011

Very nice Carmon, I just love those kinda places, wish you could have found some flint though. but good weather to be out.

Charmin · Mar 18, 2011

naturegirl said:
Very nice Carmon, I just love those kinda places, wish you could have found some flint though. but good weather to be out.

Very nice weather to be out, indeed, Lisa! We have been in the woods almost all week. We didn't find anything at the spot where the rock shelter was, but went to a couple of other places and did pretty good. Found a mano, lots of flint, couple of broken points and Josie found a nice birdie.
You know everytime I find a mano, its under a hickernut(hickory) tree?
Pics of some of our finds from this last week......

naturegirl · Mar 19, 2011

Looks like alot of fun, I like the mano, it looks very much like mine. Interesting to note you find them under hickory trees. After we finally got some rain, and my creek went up and down, I continue to find flakes, brokes and a nice "okie" castroville, I think. buckshot and I did hit a new creek last weekend and think we found a charcoal midden in a creek bank. we were finding flakes right there too, there were chunks of charcoal and you could see a line of burnt stuff in amongst the layers of pebbles and sediment. But we were wondering how do you know if you aren't just looking at the debris from a huge wildfire that might have happened after a period of extensive growth, then all the charred stuff got covered up with time? I found two nice chunks of pertified wood in this creek too. :dontknow:

lisa

buckshot · Mar 19, 2011

Hey sc,
That rockshelter might still have some possibilities. Maybe you could try digging deeper or to one side? But, the other last week finds definitely looks good! Nice on the mano and other pieces. That complete point looks like a Wa$hita?
buckshot

Charmin · Mar 19, 2011

naturegirl said:
Looks like alot of fun, I like the mano, it looks very much like mine. Interesting to note you find them under hickory trees. After we finally got some rain, and my creek went up and down, I continue to find flakes, brokes and a nice "okie" castroville, I think. buckshot and I did hit a new creek last weekend and think we found a charcoal midden in a creek bank. we were finding flakes right there too, there were chunks of charcoal and you could see a line of burnt stuff in amongst the layers of pebbles and sediment. But we were wondering how do you know if you aren't just looking at the debris from a huge wildfire that might have happened after a period of extensive growth, then all the charred stuff got covered up with time? I found two nice chunks of pertified wood in this creek too. lisa

I don't know how I knew that it was a fire-pit :dontknow:

, I just did . Are you finding burnt 'red' rocks?--Think of a fire-ring of rocks that holds all the wood and other stuff that they burnt in the fire---the fire turns the rocks a deep red or blackens them sometimes. The red color of the rocks was what got my attention in the creek bank when we found the fire-pit or midden. There was just this huge creek bank and then right smack dab in the middle of it was a layer of rocks. It looked out of the ordinary and when we pulled a couple of the rocks out, we could see the layers of charcoal, some of that was almost an inch thick. There was also pieces of flint mixed in. But we didn't find any pebbles or sediment like you said you found, it was just mostly bigger rocks(say 6" to 10" across) and charcoal.
Keep looking, Lisa, if you are finding charcoal, you might have a midden.

buckshot said:
Hey sc,
That rockshelter might still have some possibilities. Maybe you could try digging deeper or to one side? But, the other last week finds definitely looks good! Nice on the mano and other pieces. That complete point looks like a Wa$hita?
buckshot

Hi Buckshot---I don't know if there would be anything left in that shelter or not. There was a pretty big pile of dirt that they had sifted out in front of the shelter. Its almost too late in the season to do any digging anyway---I'm afraid the snakes are going to start crawling out from under those rocks. This place has huge cedar trees, too and looks like copperhead/rattlesnake heaven. Maybe some time next winter we can go back and look it over again.
I think you're right on the complete point being a Wash-i-ta. Josie was thrilled when she found it!

tmodel · Mar 19, 2011

when you go back to rockshelter take a come along and some chains to move big flat rocks, might be points under them or start digging in front of shelter just below the dirt the other diggers piled at lip of shelter dig trench [2] foot wide by [4],[5] or even [6] feet long and [2]or[3] foot deep before you say no points. Treefrog can tell you more about this type of digging, look at some of his older posts that is the way he digs most of the time.... T.

Charmin · Mar 20, 2011

tmodel said:
when you go back to rockshelter take a come along and some chains to move big flat rocks, might be points under them or start digging in front of shelter just below the dirt the other diggers piled at lip of shelter dig trench [2] foot wide by [4],[5] or even [6] feet long and [2]or[3] foot deep before you say no points. Treefrog can tell you more about this type of digging, look at some of his older posts that is the way he digs most of the time.... T.

You know that I thought about moving those rocks after looking at the pictures, tmodel. And everything I've ever read about people digging out shelters is that they find more out in front of the shelter than inside---Which would make sense. If we ever get the chance to go back we'll take us a big 'come-along' and see if we can move some of those rocks! Thanks, T......