Questions about some possible Indian items

[bonedoctor]

Hello! I’ve posted here before about some things I’ve been finding on my property. These include trade points, and trade hatchet, and some different Indian jewelry. I’ve recently find some unusual items and I have questions about them.

First, I have read that Indians scored metal and then bent/broke it off as a form of shaping things. I found this scrap of bass / bronze recently. You can see it has been scored at least a couple times, and partially broken off.

 

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[uniface]

Case in point : second post in this thread.

 

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[Treasure_Hunter]

Uniface. 2nd post there is little doubt, 3rd picture shows no signs and that is what I was referencing in my posts. If there are no signs on stone then there is no proof it was ever touched.

 

[uniface]

Sorry for not being accurate enough. I was referencing this :

Found in an area where there are no natural rocks at all.

The fact that it was found where it was is proof it was touched by the hand that carried it in.

 

[arrow86]

Sorry for not being accurate enough. I was referencing this :

Found in an area where there are no natural rocks at all.

The fact that it was found where it was is proof it was touched by the hand that carried it in.

Not sure I would agree with that ... just cause there’s isn’t other similar rocks laying on surface doesn’t mean there isn’t hundreds of them 2” down. That rock is question screams natural to me.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Not sure I would agree with that ... just cause there’s isn’t other similar rocks laying on surface doesn’t mean there isn’t hundreds of them 2” down. That rock is question screams natural to me.

And who is to say a white kid didnt have the rock and threw it in the creek in 20th century.

 

[Buckleberry]

Sorry for not being accurate enough. I was referencing this :

Found in an area where there are no natural rocks at all.

The fact that it was found where it was is proof it was touched by the hand that carried it in.

Proof, would be marks upon it indicating that it was altered by man, something that has been argued against in this thread, leaving the door open for literally any rock to be an "artifact". Now granted, I've found fossils and crystallized structures in the midst of campsites dense with actual artifacts and I'm convinced that they were brought there and admired by NAs, but that's all the "proof" I need, I wouldn't come on here and argue context solely for the sake of context and expect anyone to just agree.

PS) Although it certainly does fit nicely in hand

 

[uniface]

And who is to say a white kid didnt have the rock and threw it in the creek in 20th century

Fine. And who is to say that my grandmother didn't assassinate president Kennedy ?

There is no natural limit to far-fetched suppositions,

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Fine. And who is to say that my grandmother didn't assassinate president Kennedy ?

There is no natural limit to far-fetched suppositions,

Just as likely as any, bottom line no proof is no proof.

 

[MAMucker]

I almost bit on this one

 

[RGINN]

When I look for artifacts, I looked for rocks that 'don't belong'. They don't occur naturally in that area or there are no rocks at all in that area. Maybe they were carried in by man, fell from outer space, or dropped by eagles trying to smash turtles. I don't think of them as artifacts but indicators. And of course the ones that fit perfectly in the hand nail them down as artifacts, haha!

 

[uniface]

"Proof" and Reality are two different matters.

Same stupidity (in my view) as archaeologists refusing to believe that early man & man-like creatures whose remains turn up on remote islands had/used boats. Either they used boats to get there, or UFO's planted them. No third option exists. Yet they still want to smart alec with "Show me the boats." Reality means nothing to them -- "proof" (boat remains) is everything to them -- proof that is impossible to produce. No wonder people have not much respect for egghead ivory tower types.

There are thousands of cases where people carried good rocks long distances. So many that these have a name ('manuports") and are important parts of the archaeological record. Especially when, like at Blackwater Draw, there were no stones otherwise. (Actually there were, but they were buried and unknown to the Paleo folk who hunted there).

The area where that was found is credibly described by a guy familiar with it as having no background lithic component. None on the ground and none in the creeks. That being the case, that some kid MIGHT HAVE put it there for no reason (and where did he get it in the first place ?) is the conjectural explanation that requires proof because it violates both common sense and past experience. This is obvious to everybody not locked into the belief that logic chopping and learning are essentially the same thing.

 

[uniface]

Or try this : you find a meteorite in your back yard. But there's no PROOF it fell from the sky -- somebody could have dug a hole and planted it there to mess with you.

 

[Buckleberry]

Or try this : you find a meteorite in your back yard. But there's no PROOF it fell from the sky -- somebody could have dug a hole and planted it there to mess with you.

But just remember the meteorite looks exactly like a tumbled riverstone with no marks denoting extraterrestrial origin or anything else to identify it as such, I guess we can call it a space-u-port, LOL. Also does it fit nicely in the hand?

 

[Charl]

I see nothing wrong with uncertainty where manuports are concerned. It's the nature of many types of manuports to occupy an uncertain status. By definition, manuports are objects transported to a site, but not altered for use as tools. Some manuports can be recognized as connected to human activity. I find graphite at one site. It shows extraction of the graphite, by gouging or scratching. It's not a tool, just raw material. But, it would not be found at the site naturally, I know where the graphite was quarried, it's a manuport. I can be certain it's a manuport.


Same field gave up a split cobble containing a fossil fern impression. Extremely few rocks in the field. Which is unusual, our soils are pretty rocky. It could have been split open naturally, I find them like that on rocky beaches sometimes. But how did it get in this field? Dropped by the retreating ice sheet? Sure, why not? Glacial cobbles everywhere. Of course. But, this field has so few rocks, and lots of artifacts, multicomponent. Maybe a native collected this fossil and transported it to camp. A friend found a split shale pebble, fossil inside, and notched to form a pendent. So, I guess they noticed fossils. Well, of course they did.


So, I labeled that rock, and it's part of the assemblage from that field. I consider it a manuport. But, I do not ask for or expect certainty.


I cannot have certainty, and I am fine with that. I'm fine with "it might be a manuport". I see nothing wrong with uncertainty where manuports are concerned. The body of evidence can lean heavily toward transported by a human, but unless it shows extraction, or utilization, it's more likely then not that it will always carry some degree of uncertainty. What's wrong with that, anyway?

These kind of calls are best left to the person or persons who best know the site where found. The degree of certainty is theirs to decide I believe. I don't insist that anyone else agree my fossil fern is a manuport. I can't even be certain. And I have never even been to the site discussed in this thread. It's not an artifact, not altered that I can see, so the finder can make the call on manuport.

 

[uniface]

Considered in isolation, fine.

The only finds from my dirt vulture days I've kept are what must have been among the contents of a medicine bag. A little quartz crystal point, a broken crystal segment that looks like spodumene (from Lord knows where -- North Carolina maybe), a shell fossil of Houserville jasper (about 100 miles from the site) and another one of slate. All turned up within inches of each other when the edge of a field was ploughed (apparently for the first time). Heavy charcoal in the soil indicated that it came from the local population there that the invading Triangle people massacred. (Three huge sites within a mile of each other. Only one yielded Levanna/Madison points. The other two stop at that edge in time. The NAs remember this war well, and proof of it is in the ground from at least the Carolinas on north to at least Pennsylvania).

I forget now whether it was Early or Middle Woodland (I think Middle) that re-caps Paleo in a number of characteristics, including love of pretty, exotic material. In this context at least, exotics/fossils are presumably manuports, because that collecting/trading pattern repeats itself wherever those sites were.

FWIW

 

[bonedoctor]

Hey! I didn’t realize this thread was still going 😀 I’ve found some more info and items. First of all, there was a trading post here. It was established in the early 1860s. The first real survey here was 1868. It was inaccurate but there was already a trail established by the Indians (there were only 50 white people here by 1870). Anyway, this trail was labeled “trail to salt plains”. This was a place around Cherokee Oklahoma that the Indians in my area got salt and rocks for tools (there were none here). The trader was specifically and Indian trader and his father in law was the Potawatomi chief. He set up here because they lived here and travelled through here. It was also used as a place for civil war soldiers to camp. I have at least 2 journals that talk about them setting up camp at Greiffenstiens camp here, which explains the civil war stuff. I mowed out another area and though my I found a coin. It was metal slag, but it had a sound and appearance of silver. I have a pound of it now. I had it tested with X-ray and it is 15% silver, 5% gold, 20% cadmium, and also high in copper/iron. We are not sure if Indians were making something or criminals were melting plunder. I also found an 1834 dime this week, and a couple 1860s buckles. Cool to me! Also, there jewelry and scraps were tested at 99.6% silver.

 

[bonedoctor]

I found my third arrowhead this week. It was silver colored. Not iron. I had it X-ray tested and it is identical to the slag formula. This means that the trading post was the one melting down metals to make trade points. Pretty cool! I never knew they were also cast!

 

[Tnmountains]

It is pretty rare that in trade era items they would intentionally cast different metals and cast a point. They did not have the technology of metallurgy. So what ever that clump is that they were using had to have been melted down from something else. High heat requires a forge or at the least some billows. The more I look at that new point it appears to be cold forged and hammered together? Your site has a lot of history and am glad you are saving it all. The coins are something else. I think I saw a pipe you found as well. Do not clean the pipe anymore than you have it is perfect the way it is. Are the historic maps showing what was there in the past?

 

[IAMZIM]

I found my third arrowhead this week. It was silver colored. Not iron. I had it X-ray tested and it is identical to the slag formula. This means that the trading post was the one melting down metals to make trade points. Pretty cool! I never knew they were also cast!

View attachment 1803493

Those are really cool!

 

[bravowhiskey]

enjoy seeing all the finds you dug there. a time capsule you might say