do you find these pieces from the Dakotas very interesting?
and are these types of tools fairly common in your hunting grounds?
They're interesting, Lars. And they're certainly pretty to look at. But I lack a right connection with them.
People have different connections to artifacts. For some, it's the joy of finding them (back when we lived in an area with a number of sites, I was out hunting them every chance I got). For others, it's the joy of having them, whether they're found or bought. For yet others, maybe it's a sentimental thing because they came from grandpa's farm. Or they're a connection with the people who are gone now. It even changes over time.
On this end, the joy of artifacts is getting to know the Paleo and Pre-Paleo tools, going all the way back to maybe 60,000 years ago in Europe, and enough about the Early Archaic era's tools to recognise them (so I don't get what they made confused with what came before them). By confining myself to the area East of the Mississippi and West of the Appalachians, I've got half a chance at understanding these. But outside that area, people were doing too many different things at too many different times. They made some pretty pieces at times, but without knowing who made them, or when -- "kind of "knowing their story" -- they just aren't that interesting.
Are they common here in Pennsylvania ? Most places, Paleo tools are rare to non-existent. But further West (Ohio) they're a little more common (though still a lot scarcer than people imagine), and when you get down into Kentucky, Tennessee and Northern Alabama, for whatever reason, they're only just scarce. That's where, you could say, the stuff comes from that's closest to my heart. There's no end of interest in them -- what cherts they used, which ones they didn't use, what tools they made (and didn't), how far from their chert sources they travelled, using them to see where they lived (and didn't), little details in their workmanship that indicate their knapping procedures (I'm starting to notice that Paleo pressure flaking is different from Early Archaic pressure flaking), and just a million other aspects of them that add up to an overall picture. My favorite relics are ones most people would flip over and walk away from.
The real joy of having them is getting to know them -- learning the information they contain. Since you can't do that without having them to study, I get them. It's a thrill to score two or three nice ones in a handful of junk for dirt cheap that maybe two other people (sometimes nobody) goes after at all, the same as it was to find a nice one back when. But it feeds back into the studying and learning aspect of them. From Early Archaic through Mississippian, I knew my area's stuff. After a while, it wasn't a challenge any more. So I gave it all to a couple friends there who were interested when we moved. Which cleared the decks to focus on Paleo tools.
Make any sense ?
