I have to ask and I mean no disrespect but how do you know the pipes are real with all of the fakes made now days? They look nice by the way.
Hey rock, that's a legitimate question, no disrespect taken.
Every platform pipe shown in this thread was excavated by field archaeologists.
The book that the pictures above are taken from was written by several Illinois field archaeologists whose work was critiqued by many other Illinois field archaeologists before the book was published.
However since the authors of this book wanted to make it a point identification book like no other ever printed they did have to go to some private collectors to get examples of various types of projectile points and knives.This was necessary because they wanted to show a dozen and a half or three dozen examples of every Point type in order to demonstrate how much variation there is in each type depending on size and even differences when found in certain regions. For all of those artifacts the authors consulted Steve Repp, an artifact authenticator who used to work for Morphy's auction house and also at the Gilcrease Museum in Oklahoma as an authenticator. He's also one of the main go to guys for the deep deep pocket collectors out there who want to make sure they're purchasing The real McCoy.
The facility in Springfield Illinois where the first three pipes are housed is not a museum it is a Fort Knox of Illinois's archaeological finds throughout its history. It is like a large library only instead of books on the shelves it's thousands and thousands of large cardboard boxes each filled with archaeological material derived from various sites throughout the state. The building has the latest state of the art security video surveillance even in the hallways not only to watch anyone who visits but those who work there. It also has constant temperature and humidity control 66° I believe and 50% humidity for best preservation of the non stone artifacts.
Here's a few pictures of the inside of the storage facility and it hardly demonstrates how big it is but you can get a little idea, try to wrap your head around how much artifactual material must be in there!
Whoops I don't have pictures of the facility on my iPad I'll have to retrieve them from my phone and I'll post them shortly hereafter, but I think that answers your question and more.
maybe some new members will see this post and realize that you don't have to squint or turn the object just the right way and look through your bad eye to see what an effigy is. Those are amazing artifacts. As others have said thanks for posting those pics.
