stone-age tools

[veryoldrockhunter]

I got started in the hobby of hunting arrowheads with other hunters that only believe in finding PERFECT Flint-knapped arrowheads.

I have been made fun of many times for bringing home "rocks" that were NOTHING!

I happen to have a fairly high IQ--maybe nothing to brag about but enough to KNOW that what I have found IS truley stone-age tools.

Of course, I have some that are just "May Be Tools" and could be just rocks that through the forces of nature look like tools. However most of the ones that i call stone-age tools are just that.

are there any of you on this forum that specializes in the pre-knapped tools and that can recognize the real thing.

I have a few absolutely FABULOUS items that I would like to share them by showing them but I get tired of getting ridiculed by the PRISSY type hunters that accepts nothing as real that is not in perfect symetry with artistic value.

Also, I would like to know how is the best way to find out the geniune value of these tools as I am living on a fixed income--very low--and would like to sell some of them.

Billy Dean Ward

 

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[BosnMate]

I suppose most any rock, if it was small enough to be picked up by a stone age person, could be considered a tool. If he or she just needed to pound something, or perhaps drive a stake, then most any cobble at hand could or would be used. They didn't have to always carry a knife, they could bust a rock and use the sharp edge until they were done, and then pitch it. They were people just like us, and they weren't going to pack a big sack of rocks around. However, specialized tools were shaped, stones were made into bowls, or used as metates, stones that fit inside the bowl were used for grinding and pounding food. Special hammer stones of certain size and weight were used to break spalls off of either flint or obsidian for making knives or projectile points. So some stones were shaped on purpose, and others were used as is. It's the shaped and worked stone that people like to find and collect. For the most part, the stone tools are pretty much the same and easy to ID, but if you are finding rocks that might of or could of been used, well yeah, they could of, there are lots of rocks. Depending on the area you are looking, if you are along a stream where there are lots of cobbles, anyone of them could have been used, but that doesn't make them an artifact, and nature can make some rocks that look like artifacts, or resemble artifacts, but they aren't. The desert area ranch I worked on as a young man, didn't have a native stone large enough to kill a snake, so the larger artifact rocks had to have been packed in, and some were pretty good sized. But they were left where they camped, and several would be found in the same location. There were also what are called "bedrock mortars," where the women made hollows in large immovable rocks and ground their seeds. However there are certain rocks or stones that, if you are experienced, you know that they were in fact shaped by humans, and what they were used for. If you enjoy the hobby of looking for stone age stuff, listen to your friends that know what they are looking for. Have them show you so you can learn. If you think you found an arrow head, and they say "no," then ask them exactly why they say no. If you know what you are looking for, you don't have to see an entire point to realize what it is, it's the little flakes that have been chipped off that are the give away. Nature makes lots of pointy rocks that aren't points or knives, although one might have been, maybe doesn't count, and they aren't collectable. My back gives me fits if I do much bending over, so I use a stick, and if a rock looks promising and is mostly covered, I'll flip it out with a stick. Most of the ones I flip aren't points, but enough are that it keeps me going. I've been to a county fair, a couple of goat ropings, and three or four tourist traps, and those tourist stores seem to all have a little basket by the cash register with "authentic" Indian arrowheads for a buck or two each. They are NOT artifacts. To some people they must look good, and perhaps some Indian the day before yesterday made them, which makes them authentic, they are not artifacts. Spend a buck, get one of those and have your friends show you the difference between them and the real thing. I've run on too long, hope this helps.

 

[Stoneagetools]

Hi Billy Dean,

You might want to take a look at my website The Stone Age Tools Museum at
www.stoneagetools.co.uk

It tells you how to identify humanly struck flints (artefacts) and naturally occurring rocks (geofacts).

Kind regards
Richard Milton

 

[buzzgator]

Try the american indian artifact forum rite here on tnet. We have some of the best collectors/experts in the US rite here.

 

[veryoldrockhunter]

Richard,

I have been to your site a few times. And let me tell you, I love it! You did a great job there and I love the looks of it.

Maybe I did not make one thing clear that I should clear up. I am an arrowhead hunter. I know flintknapped tools and have owned lots of genuine arrowheads. I have had 3 different ones that are in the books at $5000.00, $11,500 and $22,500. I fell off or a tall bed and went into a coma for 4 days and was in the hospital or a convelesant home lacking 3 days being 2 years. They along with lots of $50 up to $250 points turned up missing. I know who took them but can't prove it, so I just took the loss and didn't accuse anyone or even tell anyone about it.

I have at least 3 of what we all call "Honey holes".

Of course I went through what I think everyone in this hobby goes through when they first get interested. Every time Jimmy or Kimberely would find a pointed stone it was an arrowhead and if I found one it was a "ROCK"--LOL!

I lost a bunch of points that were just your everyday types.

I have ALL of Lar Hothem's books and also the one--I think it is Overstreet that is the author--I may have the name wrong. I am in CA and it is in storage in AR.

Like I said, there are some that MAY be just "nature-struck" and look like they MIGHT be artifacts. But I have lots that are definitely the work of a human.

Like I said on another post, I am going to do a drawing in paint and post it and when I learn to use my camera and how to transfer the jpgs to the computer, I will post lots of pics.

Thanks for your time,



Billy Dean Ward

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[veryoldrockhunter]

This is about 3-1/2" long and as it says IS flint-knapped. It is white chert or flint. It is the nicest of the flint-knapped that I have. The drawing is representative of my collection of this particular type of artifact.

I have about 75 in the collection and some are pretty crude as compared to these drawn shapes but they ALL have the looks that they could have been a point but one side is going the wrong direction as though the top of the pointed part was broken out. Skinny and long, short and fat, or long and fat, they are "related". Some are hafted; some are not. Some have the ridge on the side and some don't.

A lot of them are flint but I have one about the size and shape as the one in the top left corner and I believe it is Jasper and it is quite smooth. One is as small as the smallest in the drawing and I think it is ebony. It is quite percision and looks just like a smaller replica of the one in the jpg.

I really believe that they are some sort of spokeshave. Thanks for looking at please tell me if you have seen these.

I also have two scrapers that are virtually identical that I have NEVER seen anything like them anywhere but one was found here near the Tehon Ranch 22 miles south of Bakersfield and the other, I picked up at Wolf Creek in the Arkadelphia AR area.

look like the plastic ice scrapers that you buy at Wal-Mart or at convenience stores in the winter but without the long handle.
Some have shafts--some don't. A very high percentage of them have the ridge going along the inward curve.

So does any of these look like anything that you are familiar with?

One more edit: They are mostly bi-faced--the backs are mostly--not flat but the ridge, if it has one is only on one side.



Billy Dean Ward

 

[veryoldrockhunter]

The two scrapers that I was talking about are much like these two drawings. The basic shape is absolutely with the two, the same--like I said, looks like an ice scraper for the windshield.

The black one is some kind of stone that looks like slate but is more like flint in hardness. It is kind of a "smeared" color combination of black, tan, and kind of gold.

The gray one is chert or flint and kind of "splochy gray" it looks like it has been knapped to some extent and then ground and even looks like it has been melted and formed but I think that would be impossile.

They are about 3 or 4 inches across the blade.

Has anyone here ever seen this shape in artifacts.



Billy Dean Ward

 

[veryoldrockhunter]

Hello!

I got a few pics that might look like the real thing here. I don't have much experience with photography lighting and also the flash on the camera got turned off--I guess I bumped something and I can't find out how to turn it back on so I'll read the book and try again tomorrow.

for now this first one is one that I found in Arkansas near Antione at Wolf Creek about 6 years ago. I thought it was a tomahawk head but found that the half-round is called a spoke-shave so I guess it is kind of a combination tool. at least I am certain that you guys will verify that it is not JUST A ROCK--LOL! It is about 5" long. Next time I take pics, I will lay a Quarter by the artifact for sizing.

The next one is one that I found out here in CA by the Tehon Ranch about 22 miles South of Bakersfield CA in a field of natural rocks. It has the look of a very crude Spear or Lance Point made of Granite. It is about 4" long and could be a scraper with a handle built into it. It has a couple of different directions to it and is comfortable in my hand the way it would be used as a scraper.

I have added the other schick razor from AR. It desn't look as much like the other one becase of my lack of knowledge about the lighting. in the real world, I am positive that they are at least cousins--if not brother and sister--LOL!Of course this pic was taken before Richard offered his suggestions on that subject. The littlepooint has the evil look to it also. It is about the size of a walnut with a tail.

The Next one is definitely "related" to a 1950's Shick Razor. It doesn't show that in the picture as much as holding it in your hand. This is the one that I drew in the last post so I have another one found in AR our of flint. Both of them appear to have been kind of knapped and then ground on the scraper edge and like I mentioned, the flint version appears to also have been melted a little. Since I remember where I found it, I doubt that it ever got moltent though.

Next is what I believe would be a Crescent Knife. I found it here also in a pile of the same kind of things. It was dark when I picked it up with about 15 items that were in a pile--probably a Chache at one time that got unburied by heavy equipment. I am not familiar with this rock which blends from tan to gold to blackish brown.

The shick and the crescent and the last one were all in the pile together. This one is very impressive--so much more that I captured in the pic. It has a very evil look to me; something that you would see attached to a shaft like an axe handle and would have been used as a weapon. It is very thin. It is a little larger than my palm and very thin for that size--about 1,2 inch and worked all around the entire edge.

I was also wondering if it safe to keep Arkansas rocks with California rocks--I keep thinking that they might "inter-breed" and produce clarkensaw or arkafornia. If so they would never be accepted by the run- of -the-mill rock from either state. (Man, I sure hope Ya'll have a sense of humor!--LOL!)

The double picture at the bottom is for those that don't know what a spokeshave is. The one to the right is a stone tool with a wrap of hide for the handle.

Billy Dean Ward

 

[Stoneagetools]

Hi Billy Dean,

May I pass on a few tips I've found useful in photographing flint implements?

Focusing
It's very difficult to focus on any small object (coin, flint etc) with an autofcous camera. You get the best results if you use a camera that you can focus manually. Ideally you need a macro lens, so that you can fill the picture withe object (blowing it up makes it blurred). If you have to use autofocus you may have to take many pics unitl you get one that is in focus.

Lighting
You get the best results by not using flash. Use a low overall light level or complete darkness with something like a desk lamp held to one side and move it about until the facets are lit or shadowed right. You can buy "daylight" light bulbs which give you a more realistic colour.

Background.
It depends on the colour of the object, but I find a black felt cloth make the best background.

If you're really keen you can buy a complete kit on eBay for photographing small objects.
Hope this is useful.

Kind regards
Richard

 

[veryoldrockhunter]

Thank you Richard! I appreciate ANY help I can get and espcially from someone of your caliber. I'm sure that you have had plenty of experience with this.

Can zoom be use for focus?

Also, did these pics do well enough for you to verfiy that these are indeed artifacts?

Billy Dean Ward

P.S. I thought I had a pretty neat forum name but I just noticed that it could mean what I was thinking of that is that it is a very old rock that I am hunting but it could also mean that I am very old and hunt rocks--LOL!

 

[RGINN]

I like your post, but drop the high IQ thing. I actually do have a very high IQ, but has nothin to do with anything. You have some interesting items and yes they could be tools. It is my belief that there were times when quick throw away tools were knocked off in the field. Perhaps at a kill site, when you needed a quick blade for butchering. Wouldn't have to be perfect and symmetrical, just get the job done. We've found this sort of thing at sites in Oklahoma, however, identification goes to the archaeologicl context in which they are found. If you found a big rock, and 3 or 4 granite cobblestones in a field, it would really mean nothing. However, if you find mammoth bones next to these that appear to have been fractured to get at the marrow, good chance those rocks were tools. (Cooperton site, SW Oklahoma) I can find pointy rocks anywhere. And I have brought home several that are 'just rocks' because they caught my eye. I look for evidence of a camp, a kill site, or some evidence of human occupation in determining if they're true artifacts. That was kinda funny about the Arkansas and California rocks.

 

[veryoldrockhunter]

I am aware of what you said about the "rocks" being found in some kind of context such as the mammoth ones.

I found a mound of dirt behind a shop that I had in Arkansas and on it was a rocky spot about the size of a dinner plate. I started probing the spot and picked up a piece of the rock and it was flint. Most all that was showing was of the same coloration. as I raked aroud in the rocks I found quite a few that were, no doubt, made by man.

By the time I had raked over a period days and scraped the area with a hoe--not digging--just shoving rocks around, the rock area was no longer the size of a dinner plate but instead about the size of my shop building whcih was 12' X 32'. ALMOST every rock was of the same type of flint, a brown ad tan coor and thousands of them were evidently touched by man.

I had dug a hole about 6 ft deep and 18" wide for my power pole and not one piece of flint came out of that hole. Following that, I dug a hole about 2 ' in diameter about 4 feet deep for my CB Radio antenna tower. Again-NO Flint!

While sittin on the front porch of the shop building I noticed a piece of a totally different coloration. It was an Army green to a forrest green in color and had lots of sharp edges that were indicative of being struck. I pryed it up and it was a scraper. I'm talking about a flint-knapped tool. After looking around and scratching into the ground with an iron rake, I found that there was a ridge about 2 ' wide by about 18 " deep and about 40 ' long that was almost ALL flint of the green color, the same kind of flint that was native to an area about 30 miles from my shop location. Very few pieces were Knapped but If my memory serves me right, I think that there was about 40 that were knapped out of probably 500 that I looked at. There were NO completed kapped pieces but a lot of points that were made before knapping began or by some people that didn't know how to knap. There was enough pieces that I was certain that it had been a tool manufacturing area. Over the next few months, I would go to the ridge ever so often and scratch it with a large pointed rock yusing it kind of like a hoe. ALL of the flint that I found in the ridge was of the same type and many pieces looked to be cores. By--looked to be--means they look like the ones that are in Lar Hothems books--in fact, two of the most unusual looked like they were the ones in the pictures of Lar's books--although I know they weren't/

The work crew that put in the fence next door using an auger for the post holes brought up NO FLINT from about 30 post holes. Then when the same business next door added a small building in the back, they dug a trench about 100 ' long and about 2 or 2-1/2 ' deep and brought up NO FLINT.

So the moral of the story is that there was flint in two different location on the property of two different colors and NOT MIXED so it was apparent to me that it was brought in from other locations and to me that Is evidence of mans intervention in the history of the rocks. There were many of the green ones that were evidently man-made with a lot of them definitely being chips that were made when the knapper was thinning and shaping whatever they were making. I guess the reason that I didn't find a lot of finished stuff was because they didn't leave behind the stuff that was completed and usuable--wasn't that inconsiderate of them to take all of the good stuff and leave behind the broken pieces--LOL!

Next door was a place that I went looking almost every day once I had gotten permission from the owners of the land. That is where I found the white chert piece that was in the same post as the drawings. I also found quite a few knapped pieces of white flint there.

These two properties were the only ones within a quarter of a mile or so that I found ANY flint.



Billy Dean Ward

 

[JOHUNT]

I'll start off in saying that my IQ is off the charts!! But, all joking aside, I can relate to that. I often find questionable artifacts. I usually have done a great deal of research/groundwork and if it's known to me that there's artifacts around, I will then decipher their origin/purpose in my own head. I personally don't care what other people think. My collection is personal. I'll never sell it and I'll never buy from someone elses collection. That's mostly because I know the authenticity of a piece first hand and know exactly where it was found.
I try to envision the times when the Iroquois flourished in my area. They might have ran out of stockpiled flint due to alot of snow on the ground and when the ground freezes solid it's not very easy to dig to find some. So when I find pieces that are not even flint, it doesn't mean that it wasn't used as a tool/weapon. When I find flint that I can tell has a worked edge I automatically save it. It might turn out to be a hafted scraper or maybe just a chunk of a projectile point.
Really what I'm trying to get at is, don't be discouraged or bothered by someone elses perception. Just have fun. It's a great hobby and one of my passions! Good luck

 

[veryoldrockhunter]

It's very difficult to focus on any small object (coin, flint etc) with an autofcous camera. You get the best results if you use a camera that you can focus manually. Ideally you need a macro lens, so that you can fill the picture withe object (blowing it up makes it blurred). If you have to use autofocus you may have to take many pics unitl you get one that is in focus

Is this camera that you suggest available in a digital camera with 10 or 15 m.p. or is it only in a film type camera?

 

[Stoneagetools]

No, I'm referring to digital (not film) cameras. However, not many point-and-shoot cameras can be focussed manually. You really need a digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera to get manual control. I hunted on eBay and found a second-hand Nikon D70 in good condition that was going quite cheaply. I'm sure there are lots of other good used bargains on there.

 

[RGINN]

I'm with johunt. I don't hunt arrowheads for profit and wouldn't buy one from anybody. But there's a whole group out there that does that and that's fine for them. I got a couple of thousand invested in my current camera equipment, but you can find some fine little digital cameras for around a $100 that will do just as good a job. They have excellent close up features that work really well, and you can format the size of the pic on the camera to fit better in your post, or you can resize the pic later on your computer using Paint. They're auto-focus, but they work. Simple and easy to use, and you get some great pics. Look for one that has close-up features, and a night shot feature is cool, too.

 

[Neanderthal]

Let me preface this by saying that I rank high up there on the dumb-assery charts, not to be confused with that "menstral IQ society" thingy. I would puff my chest up with pride, but it gives me gas when I do that.

I can see nothing about your first (white) stone that would lead me to believe it's an artifact. I can see no signs of human modification on it from the image and I do know that similar stones are commonplace throughout the Ozarks.

On to your second ground of stone-photos. The top item does appear to indeedly be a legitimate artifact, the material being either Fayetteville shale or Argillite. It is a stone "figure-8" or "bowtie" axe. They are often associated with the Fourche Maline, but were used well into historic times. The Ozarks is full of them and they have a counterpart with the Guilford axes of the Carolina Piedmonts. Many people believe they were used for woodworking, but I don't believe so. We find them far more commonly on butchering or processing sites. Most likely they were used for bone disarticulation or even marrow extraction. The following images all appear to be knapping waste-flakes or debitage.

 

[veryoldrockhunter]

I can see nothing about your first (white) stone that would lead me to believe it's an artifact. I can see no signs of human modification on it from the image and I do know that similar stones are commonplace throughout the Ozarks

Thanks for your reply; I am sure of one thing now--I have to do a lot better on my photography! The white piece is by far the one stone that NOBODY has questioned. When I show these to seasoned hunters, they will invariabley reach over and pick that one up and say something along these lines, "Well, no doubt about this one, It's definitely some kind of point and they most often say that they think it is Willmington Chert."

I just called a guy from Arkansas that has been hunting for 42 years in the same area that this was found in. I had him look on here at my pictures without telling him about what you said and said the same thing that you did. I asked him if he remembered the white artifact that I showed him last spring that he liked so much and wanted to buy and I wouldn't sell it at that time. He did remember it and then he looked at the picture again and realized that this was one and the same.

I was so proud of that one that I carried it around in my pocket for about 6 months and referred to it as my lucky artifact--LOL!

I will attempt to take a better picture of it today and post it.

 

[Neanderthal]

To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as a "Willmington" chert in Arkansas. Some of the more prevalent white or lighter colored cherts that do occur in AR are: Keokuk, Peoria, Burlingtons, various dolomites (namely Cotter), and so forth. Look forward to more pics, and good luck!

 

[veryoldrockhunter]

To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as a "Willmington" chert in Arkansas.Some of the more prevalent white or lighter colored cherts that do occur in AR are: Keokuk, Peoria, Burlingtons, various dolomites (namely Cotter), and so forth.Look forward to more pics, and good luck!

I Think it was maybe Burlington--Willmington is, I think, a town in Western TN--LOL!