How many tries did a rookie make before he/she managed to flake out a usable arrow head? These things must have been highly prized and every hunter must have wanted the arrow head back almost as much as recovering the wounded buffalo that it was stuck in.
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Stone axes
- Thread starter mete
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I've wondered about that but going in the opposite direction. If you were raised with it your whole life would it be the difficult task we modern humans find it to be or would it be as mundane as typing on a keyboard is to us?
Sort of like roughing out and finishing and fitting an axe handle from a fresh log for sure you get considerably better and faster at it the more often you do it but no matter what it's still a time-consuming endeavour. I suspect that every tribe, band or group had a few dedicated makers of arrow heads because intricate work is a real art and not everyone's forte nor even within their ability. How many break for every one that actually turns out? Those numbers have got to be fairly high. Old aboriginal canoe route campsites along the St Lawrence at the 1000 Islands were carpeted with stone shards and flakes when I was working at the national park there 40+ years ago.
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I had to wear a tie last year for my daughters wedding. So, I had these bolo ties made up. Not sure what the white one is made from or where the source material is. The brown one is Bruneau jasper and was found on dads ranch about forty miles from the source.
Moonw, note the high center lines on these American made arrow heads.
My grandfather was a bolo tie man.
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So much individual craftsmanship has been lost to the sands of time. Skills and institutional knowledge that make skilled trade are no longer being passed farther to sin. It's the double edged sword of modern educating.
Every child is put into a cupcake mold till 18 which gives us a bunch of 18 year old cupcakes. In past times (going back hundreds of years) a carpenter's son would turn 18 as have more knowledge of woodwork than a modern journeyman. So while standardised education lifts up it also knocks down.
I think it would be grandfathers (too old to hunt) teaching grandsons
mewolf1
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Looks like the Hoe's and Spades found at Cahokia.
Seeing it in a man's hand puts it in perspective. This could be wielded in hand.
Square_peg
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Agreed. I think they're shovels. I've written the university for more info.
Square_peg
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Found in a muddy lake bottom they could have been used to dig for freshwater clams. The lake bed was known to have a
had dry periods in its geologic history. So surely the location of the lakeshore was dynamic.
had dry periods in its geologic history. So surely the location of the lakeshore was dynamic.
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I'm not too far from Cahokia. 'Round here, the hoes were made of flint (chert, or whatever the proper term is), and celts were usually dark blue granite/basalt.
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I found this granite 3/4 Grooved Axe from the Woodland Period on the bank of the Soque River in Habersham County, Georgia about 6 or 7 years ago.
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Cool celt, Charles.
Here's a similar one of my dad's. It's over a foot long & weighs 18 pounds!
Here's a similar one of my dad's. It's over a foot long & weighs 18 pounds!
I would imagine it would be a heck of a clam digger. Fresh water mussels can't live with out fish so that tells you something about what the lake was like if it is dry now.
There isn't a flat spot around here on any river or tributary that doesn't have mussel shells eroding from the bank. It must have been a very important food source.
Part of the arid region to the south of me is cut by deep river canyons. It can be quite a hike between water holes. Altogether possible to die of thirst in sight of water. Just no way to get to it.
Some miles down river from where this picture was taken is a dry lake bed. Now this dry lake sets right on the canyon rim. It has never been able to support a fish population. But it has mussel shells eroding from the soil just above these small rock alignments.
It seems that these rock circles held the fresh water mussels so that a meal was available when ever they passed through. Its possible to reach the river at this spot but it would be very risky. Apparently when they did go down to the river they brought up all they could and stored them.
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Cool celt, Charles.
Here's a similar one of my dad's. It's over a foot long & weighs 18 pounds!
Man, that's an awesome find. All the good stuff seems to come from Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, Texas, and Florida. Here in NE GA all I ever seemed to find was quartz and busted up pottery. South Georgia has better stuff. I worked at a sod farm up here in my youth that was less than 1000 yards away from a burial mound on rich, river bottom land with like 9 feet of topsoil that had been deposited from the river (where I found the axe) that we pumped our irrigation water out of. Prime picking at that place. The sod cutter would scrape off a few inches at a time - like shaving the earth - and expose so many points you got tired of picking them all up. I used to have an entire shoe box full of quartz points and scrapes (and a few flint) plus that axe, but I traded it all away to my attorney to knock off a substantial amount that I owed him for working my divorce. Yeah.... That sucked.....
Are you talking about the vertical marks on the ridges on the sides?