Bone And Deer Antler Artifacts

[The Grim Reaper]

I've noticed that when I post some of my Bone and Antler artifacts finds that most people say they never find items like that where they hunt. I guess we are just lucky in the fact that 1. my area has a large contingent of Ft Ancient village sites, 2. they used Bone and Antler for quite a few of their artifacts such as Awls, Beads, Pendants, Combs, Flutes, Arrowpoints, Flakers, etc, and 3. that the soil here is excellent at preserving the Bone and Antler pieces. I have seen pieces found both on the surface and while digging that look as good now as the day they were made 500 to 1000 years ago.

I didn't start hunting Ft Ancient sites until around 1991 and until then I had never found any Bone or Antler items at all and I would estimate I have 400 to 500 Bone and Antler pieces now and maybe more. Now I would rather hunt a village site than anywhere else because of the diversity of artifacts one can find there. To me finding a killer Bone Bead or Awl is akin to some of you guys out west finding a killer Paleo. Don't get me wrong, I would love to find Paleo pieces but since it is very scarce in my area and the chances are slim I am content with these types of artifacts.

I figured I would post some of my Bone and Antler pieces for everyone to see. I know a lot of you have seen some of this stuff before and I hope I'm not boring you with it, but I'm hoping someone will see these and maybe post some of their Bone and Antler artifacts. This will probably take numerous posts to get all the pics on here and I will be putting on Beads, Awls, Deer Antler Arrowpoints and Flakers, Bone Flutes, and a few other various items. Hope you enjoy the pics and if you have any questions about a certain piece don't hesitate to ask and I'll try my best to answer it.

These first few are of some trays of Bone and Antler pieces and a picture of my best Bone Flute.

 

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[blindpig]

Here are a few of my bone awls . All three in the pic. Came from the shore of the Missouri River out in South Dakota . The awls , other then the little one aren’t too impressive , but the area where they were found , I’d like to describe .
The area would have been in the hundreds of yards along the shore of the Missouri [300-400 ?] and perhaps over 200 yards deep . The lake waters has taken about 100 yrd.’s of soil [from old river shore ,back] down to a bed-rock [sedimentary mud-stone ?] formation about 15 ft. deep . When I was there [Jun-July ,30 +yr.’s ago] , only about 20-40 ft. of shore [dirt wall to water ] was exposed . The waves on the lake had taken the bones and laid them up into perfect “wind-rows” , the largest was near 3 ft. tall , but there where several from 6 in. –12in. Tall and would run for near 200 yrd.’s unbroken .
I’ve always wondered how many meals where eaten off those bones , it was an incredible sight . Another observation I made was the lack of lithic-waste , sure tools may have been collected , but the chips and flakes ? I may have found a gallon or so , and a few broken tools ,but ?? Anyway this little awl was the proverbial needle in the “bone” stack .






Sincerely ; Blindpig

 

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