Mystery 6x6

[chris davison]

How do you date these with any certinty? what is BP? I dont know any thing about dating these artifacts but the big one could be the spear point since it has the notches to tie it to a shaft. The little one looks like an arrow head to me and I have seen flint knives with bone handles. so just from my ignorant view that is what they look like, just a guess. How do we know they were not lost by an indian in say 1780 AD? I have seen lots of obsidian in Calif in the Mono area and they say they traded it up to 600 miles away. Thats a long walk.

[Coop]

Artifacts can be dated by area found, shape of point, & material. Different cultures of Native American people made points and tools distinctive to their culture. For example, points that have a flute,(channel), on one, or both sides at the bottom of the point, and have laterial flaking across the point are from the Paleo period, which dates from 10000-14000 BP,(before present). The Paleo culture, (which is believed to have been the first people that migrated to North America from Asia by crossing the frozen Bering Strait ), is broken down into different sub groups, depending on location and age: Clovis, Folsom, Hardin, just to name a few. Archelogists can date the finds based on carbon dating of organic matter they find on dig sites along with the artifacts they find. People assume that all pointed artifacts are either spears or arrowheads. The bow and arrow didn't come into use in North America until around 1000-1500 years ago, so before that, small projectile points were actually dart points that were thrown with an atatal throwing stick. By the 1700's Native Americans were starting to use steel and other metals that had been introduced to them by the early settlers. Anything 1000 years ago to present is considered historic, older than that is considered prehistoric. The historic cultures in my area include the Iroquois, Senecas, Huron, Owasco, tribes. A little off topic, but thats ok, it's my thread....

Coop

[JoeMeg]

The historic cultures in my area include the Iroquois, Senecas, Huron, Owasco, tribes. A little off topic, but thats ok, it's my thread....

Coop[/QUOTE]


And,like the mystery 6x6,very interesting. Thanks for posting.

Joe

[chris davison]

Thats very intersting Coop thanks for the info. Wonder why the bow was developed so late, Egyptians were using it in 3000bc Iv'e read somewhere that we really have no accurate dating sys. They all depend on an assumption like asuming that carbon 14 decay rates have always been the same. How could we know for sure? I read that lava deposits in hawaii that were seen being deposited dated to 500,000 bc. What is your take on this?

[Coop]

I don't really have a take on the whole carbon dating thing, bigger minds than mine came up with that, I don't know enough about it to argue it. But it would seem that lava wouldn't be able to be dated, it isn't organic, don't know if it has carbon in it or not. I do know that dating isn't an exact science, when a date is arrived at at a dig site, there is a +/- factor, sometimes as much as 100-400 years. I guess we can't know with complete certainty, nobody was there to record the data. But I'm betting they have it pretty close.....

Coop

[lewis]

I find them in the banks of the river, especially after the ice carves out the banks in the spring, and after floods. The rivers are not in the same place and as wide as they were 3ooo-10000 years ago, the river changes course over the years, so the artifacts I find in the river could have been woodland thousands of years ago.

Coop

Very nice collection of arrowheads.

[lewis]

Machine looked pretty fast and very maneuverable in the water.