too bad i was too busy trying to get everything shot to waste even a couple minutes looking for any...
still a nice place to be- probably been picked clean anyways.
Did you have landowner permission to collect?
A lithic projectile point (generally the big ones are dart points or spears instead of arrowheads) is of little intellectual value by itself, but merely a curiosity on someone's shelf.?ÿ The important part is context information: this style made of that material was found in this location near what other artifacts such as fire-cracked rock, grinding stone, flaking debris, stone tools that don't look like arrowheads (scrapers, drills, axes, ...), charcoal, animal bones, etc. When surface collecting most of those is not found or is ignored and even the location is forgotton.
Taken in context an archaeologist can learn a lot from a site.?ÿ Given only the stone, they can say it was made from such and such a material and is probably xx thousand year old.
I have a decent collection of flint tools from all over the country. Most were picked up after a good bit of dirt was moved, pretty much eliminating scientific value.?ÿ
Having a niece who is an archaeologist, I've been assured if they were in a plowed field they have almost no archaeological value. I have about 8000 of them so of coarse that's the story I'm going with!!
Locally, it is a criminal offense to be caught looking and/or collecting artifacts on COE property and they have motion sensors and cameras to alert them that someone is in the areas.
There are families with private warehouses full artifacts from generations of collecting.
i didn't get, have, or try to get permission- the owners are in the process of leaving the country, and seemed like they couldn't care less about most of what's on the land.?ÿ just an area where plenty of worked stones have been found by plenty of surveyors over the years. but decades of horses pacing that ground probably destroyed or re-buried anything that has surfaced.
what was more compelling to me was how the boundary was gonna work- i first surveyed the tract for an old boss in 1999, using one of these:
wrapped everything up yesterday with the handy dandy leica gs16 network antenna and ts16 robotic total station.?ÿ biggest delta i got off our 1999 work was .15' over 932+', and the wambly corner is one i had to set inside a water meter box way back when, so no telling how many times it's been torqued on, beat on, pulled and reset by who knows who...?ÿ still not sure whether to feel lucky or proud of myself for that '99 work.
btw: today's "today's office" pictures aren't gonna look much like yesterday's.
I volunteered on a couple archaeological projects a few years ago.?ÿ First thing we did was to surface collect and bag in 10- meter squares.?ÿ Later they analyzed the count of each kind of item in each square to get some indication of how the site was used. We flagged each find location and the distribution of flags was used to choose excavation locations.
Excavation is done in careful layers with records of wha was found where.?ÿ Soil color and composition is recorded versus depth to help understand erosion and deposition or past disturbance.?ÿ Dirt is all run through a screen to collect small items in each layer.
This was a quick and dirty project by the more exacting standards used for more important sites.?ÿ When they are being careful, they use a total station to record 3-d coordinates on each item, and in the case of something with a long axis (bone or tool) coordinates of each end.?ÿ How a group of things lay can indicate whether an item is likely in its original spot or has been disturbed.
Plots of locations by type indicate the organization of a site.?ÿ Food prep here close to the fire, stone working over here, hide scraping here.?ÿ Knowing which activities were where helps with other analysis.?ÿ Soil analysis for seeds, nut shells, fish bones, etc. from the food prep area and garbage pit (if you are lucky enough to find it) may reveal what they ate. Comparatively, soil from another spot has random seeds, etc.
The deductions the experts can make from the data are impressive.?ÿ They may say something like this was a winter camp, because of the development ages of the deer bones, the abundance of nut shells, and the type and scarcity of fish bones.
This type of analysis helps date the use of farming and spread of other cultural practices.
Pottery is an extremely important part of the picture for sites in the last millennium or two.?ÿ Shapes, composition, and decoration of pottery provide vital clues to who was there for study of cultural trends and movement.
I volunteered on a couple archaeological projects a few years ago.?ÿ First thing we did was to surface collect and bag in 10- meter squares.?ÿ Later they analyzed the count of each kind of item in each square to get some indication of how the site was used. We flagged each find location and the distribution of flags was used to choose excavation locations.
Excavation is done in careful layers with records of wha was found where.?ÿ Soil color and composition is recorded versus depth to help understand erosion and deposition or past disturbance.?ÿ Dirt is all run through a screen to collect small items in each layer.
This was a quick and dirty project by the more exacting standards used for more important sites.?ÿ When they are being careful, they use a total station to record 3-d coordinates on each item, and in the case of something with a long axis (bone or tool) coordinates of each end.?ÿ How a group of things lay can indicate whether an item is likely in its original spot or has been disturbed.
Plots of locations by type indicate the organization of a site.?ÿ Food prep here close to the fire, stone working over here, hide scraping here.?ÿ Knowing which activities were where helps with other analysis.?ÿ Soil analysis for seeds, nut shells, fish bones, etc. from the food prep area and garbage pit (if you are lucky enough to find it) may reveal what they ate. Comparatively, soil from another spot has random seeds, etc.
The deductions the experts can make from the data are impressive.?ÿ They may say something like this was a winter camp, because of the development ages of the deer bones, the abundance of nut shells, and the type and scarcity of fish bones.
This type of analysis helps date the use of farming and spread of other cultural practices.
Pottery is an extremely important part of the picture for sites in the last millennium or two.?ÿ Shapes, composition, and decoration of pottery provide vital clues to who was there for study of cultural trends and movement.
So very cool.
Dig the Hill Country pictures. thanks
Indian artifacts are plentiful around here i have acquired a vast collection in my 25 years of surveying.
