This Is So Cool! The Conclusion.

[Gravelbar32]

For those interested, see my original post, "This Is so cool", about finding this NA site on my property. After finding the horde of knives last night, I just had to skip work and go back this morning. I burned leaves and picked up surface rocks below the bluff the final 5 feet up to the bluff where I found the first knife laying on a ledge in the open. It was a constant stream of large flake knives and burned stone apexing right up to the bluff of limestone. The central part of the fire was literally up against the stone bluff where I did see some reddening of the limestone in the bluff itself. At the apex of the debris field I found a dozen smaller knives and a few pieces of bone in the charcoal. Here is part of this mornings haul.
The bone is in the lower left.

Just crazy. So many knives and not a flake or chip as a sign of tool making. No pottery. No points. No scrapers. No drills. Nothing that would indicate everyday life. Absolutely nothing four feet up on top of the bluff where you could see for miles. Originally I thought it was an isolated camp in bad weather but too many knives and a big fire. Then I thought a butchering and drying site, still too many knives. Knife processing site? Maybe? I dunno. But I sure had fun picking thru it with more to go. I so wanted to find a point or celt or grooved axe, but no. Just giant flakes!

Bone
Bone

Most of the whole pieces. Not fancy, but fascinating. Most from an area the size of your utility room!

 

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[eyemustdigtreasure]

Nice site! Lucky, you own a tool reduction (and butchering?) location,
where tools were made and (used?)....
I can't tell by photos much, other than the stone seems to be favorable for producing
lithics, but these were deliberately made by man...!

 

[Gravelbar32]

Nice site! Lucky, you own a tool reduction (and butchering?) location,
where tools were made and (used?)....
I can't tell by photos much, other than the stone seems to be favorable for producing
lithics, but these were deliberately made by man...!

I am a horrible photographer but in my previous thread, the pics of yesterday's flakes are much better. Thanks for the comment!
This is not a native stone btw.

 

[Fat]

Real neat spot. Keep working it. Find another. It seems like your in a great area. I would say you have the hang of it.
It’s an easy permission to get, do you have to ask your wife? Or your mom? ( inside joke, from me to me)

 

[Gravelbar32]

Real neat spot. Keep working it. Find another. It seems like your in a great area. I would say you have the hang of it.
It’s an easy permission to get, do you have to ask your wife? Or your mom? ( inside joke, from me to me)

My wife who thinks she's my mom doesn't even know where this farm is. I've owned it for 20 years! Life is good.

 

[Tesorodeoro]

My wife who thinks she's my mom doesn't even know where this farm is. I've owned it for 20 years! Life is good.

Wow! That’s the stuff of movies!

Here is a tip...get a large backpack leaf blower.
Blow off all the duff. Be careful, because small flaked tools will blow away too and will be more difficult to find mixed in with leaves.

If you work it right, it will slowly blow away the lighter dirt, leaving maybe some artifacts exposed. You are basically mimicking accelerated natural wind erosion.

 

[Tesorodeoro]

The bluff isn’t tall enough, they could have driven game off it?

 

[Gravelbar32]

The bluff isn’t tall enough, they could have driven game off it?

Certainly tall enough. 100 foot to the bottom and very steep.

 

[Older The Better]

I’m just guessing but the osage have Missouri ties, it could be Burlington, and with the lack of flakes and such, I’m wondering if it was a cache. The osage were known to bury their goods when the went on their extended hunts out west

I agree the stone isn’t native, when I find it it’s usually small flakes, I haven’t found any flakes of that size in that material.

 

[Gravelbar32]

I’m just guessing but the osage have Missouri ties, it could be Burlington, and with the lack of flakes and such, I’m wondering if it was a cache. The osage were known to bury their goods when the went on their extended hunts out west

I agree the stone isn’t native, when I find it it’s usually small flakes, I haven’t found any flakes of that size in that material.

Thanks for the input OTB. Yes, I have read about the Osage's propensity to hide things while away. A cache is certainly a possibility. Years ago, an old guy in Pittsburg showed me a box of 50 thumb scrapers that he found in one spot on the high bank of Cow Creek in Crawford Co. I am still processing what I saw and a cache is sure possible.

 

[Tesorodeoro]

Certainly tall enough. 100 foot to the bottom and very steep.

Just throwing that possibility out there. Are there any natural or man made features that might lend to funneling game towards the bluff? It would have to be near vertical because deer can scramble down a very steep slope without much difficulty. Any stone walls uphill of it?

 

[Gravelbar32]

Certainly steep enough but no natural funnel. It was all prairie 150 yrs ago. now mostly timber. There are a couple old game trails that scale the bluff but at an easy angled ascent. I suspect they date back to the bison as they are carved very deep and the deer still use them today. Hard to say if it could be used as a kill site. A fire funnel? Don't know.
BTW I stopped by there last night and sifted thru some of the debris I swept off of the center of the little camp and found some broken pieces that mated pieces I had already found. They had been broken long ago by big limestone tumbling over them I guess and have been separated long enough that they are now different colors than their mate. This just cements in my mind that these knives were not made there. Not deposited over a long period of time. They were brought there in one event and used or stashed there. Thanks for the input Teso!

 

[Tesorodeoro]

Certainly steep enough but no natural funnel. It was all prairie 150 yrs ago. now mostly timber. There are a couple old game trails that scale the bluff but at an easy angled ascent. I suspect they date back to the bison as they are carved very deep and the deer still use them today. Hard to say if it could be used as a kill site. A fire funnel? Don't know.
BTW I stopped by there last night and sifted thru some of the debris I swept off of the center of the little camp and found some broken pieces that mated pieces I had already found. They had been broken long ago by big limestone tumbling over them I guess and have been separated long enough that they are now different colors than their mate. This just cements in my mind that these knives were not made there. Not deposited over a long period of time. They were brought there in one event and used or stashed there. Thanks for the input Teso!

Prairie grass...fire funnel...100’ tall bluff....bone and butchering tools at the base.
Sounds like a plausible theory anyway. What better place to butcher and cook meat than right where you killed it?
Seems like a lot of flake tools for just a single kill.

I’m pretty sure NA’s had to be pretty resourceful when hunting in open prairie.

I’d be digging down a bit below where the flaked tools were found.

 

[Tesorodeoro]

OFF THE CLIFF

Working in partnership with the Blackfeet Tribe in northern Montana, researchers combined landscape archeology and geoarcheology to document changes in prairie fire activity in close spatial relationship to hunting features known as drivelines.

Drivelines consisted of a series of rock piles, spaced a few steps apart and arranged in a funnel-like shape up to five miles long, which were used to drive herds of bison off cliffs to be harvested en masse.

“We surveyed the uplands for stone features that delineate drivelines within which bison herds would be funneled toward a jump,” Zedeño says.

“By radiocarbon dating prairie fire charcoal deposits from the landscape near the drivelines, we were able to reconstruct periods of unusually high fire activity that are spatially associated with the drivelines,” Roos says.

The overlap between peak periods of driveline use, between about 900 and 1650 CE, and prairie fire activity, between 1100 and 1650 CE, suggests that fire was an important tool in the hunting strategy involving the drivelines.

The researchers suggest that hunters used fire to freshen up the prairie near the mouth of the drivelines to attract herds of bison, who prefer to graze recently burned areas. Episodes of high fire activity also correspond to wet climate episodes, when climate would have produced abundant grass fuel for prairie fires.

The absence of deposits indicating high prairie fire activity before or after the period of driveline use, even though comparable wet climate episodes occurred, suggests that burning by Native hunters amplified the climate signal in prairie fire patterns during the period of intensive bison hunting.

“We need to consider that humans and climate have more complicated and interacting influences on historical fire patterns,” Roos says. “Moreover, we need to acknowledge that hunter-gatherers can be active influences in their environments, particularly through their use of fire as a landscape tool.

“We expect that future studies of human/climate/fire interactions will further document the complexity of these relationships. Understanding that complexity may prove important as we try to navigate the complex wildfire problems we face today.”

Source: University of Arizona

 

[Tesorodeoro]

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/montana-burn-reveals-ancient-stone-effigies-cairns-rock-formations-020369

Interesting read.

 

[Tnmountains]

No secondary edge work on them? Looks like large reduction flakes which are very sharp and good for butchering and skinning. I saw someone mention using a leaf blower. We do that to clean them out and clear the snakes before we dig. Many times out front of the shelter there may also be a couple feet of of artifacts. Have fun at your site and hope you can put the puzzle together with more work.