Spectacular Quartz Arrowhead Cache All Today 1/25/20

[Edgychris]

Please refer to today's finds for photos and details. Posted 1/25/20. Same subject. All today. Homed in on a quartz cache

 

[Edgychris]

Pics

 

[Edgychris]

In a bit the tides will be much better. I have been trudging through ice one day and mud the next. Have to love New England. I wish a sifter would work but the ground material is to dense. I have to wait for the tide to slowly erode this ground to get to, what I think is, a honey hole. I started by finding tons of quartz shards. Then happened on the firat birdpoint. Then I found the smaller of the two spear tips. At the same time loading my pocket wigh these shards. Then found the second larger quartz point. Found mutiple tips and finally the beauty large speartip. These are just being uncoveres by the tide. Many more to come.

 

[arrow86]

Nice finds , prob a site where they made
Points at that would explain all the waste flakes , the bigger one looks like a blank / preform that was in early stages of being worked maybe they wanted to knock some of the cortex off to make sure it was high quality quartz

 

[Edgychris]

Yes we found a large purple quartz " looking stone" in same area. Has white viens. Just texted my budy hes sending me a pic now.

 

[Edgychris]

Heres a pic of purple quartz with white viens

 

[MAMucker]

Hello Edgychris,
Welcome to the forum. Love the quartz salt water artifacts.

 

[Charl]

I like the large quartz biface. The two points are of the type known as Wading River, and span a long timeframe from Late Archaic into Late Woodland. Based on your photos and the size of the area you're describing, I agree with arrow86 that it more likely represents a quartz workshop area. Quartz is the most common lithic for Wading River, and that type, and a couple other named types from New England, were simply called "Small Stem" points in the days before formal type names were first used in our region. I still call them small stems, as do many old time collectors. Wading River is considered the stemmed form of Lamoka, a side notch that is also part of this Small Stem Tradition.


Weird fact: these types of points were seldom used as projectiles. Instead, analysis of the tips shows they were more often used for cutting, graving, boring, and scoring operations. I only learned this fairly recently, because the Jeff Boudreau typology guide for New England reproduced Jeff's essay, "Rethinking Small Stem Points", which can be read at this link:

https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1185&context=bmas

I had a surface site that produced several hundred small stem quartz points, maybe 30 acres, over a 30 year period.
I've been examining them for the kind of tip wear described and shown in Boudreau's essay. And here I thought they had been shooting a lot of rabbits over a lot of time, lol...

 

[Edgychris]

Love the post Charl. You are teaching me as I go. This information on history is hard to pinpoint relative to what I am finding. Updated a new thread today. Went again. I really appreciate the info. Thank you!