Hambone wrote:Awesome, Tica Tica! I really enjoy your rock hunting posts. It is so cool to make the connections to those who were here thousands of years ago. Answer a question for me: do your fields ever get exhausted to the point that they don't produce points and other artifacts like they used to?
I'm sure over time and many surface hunting trips is bound to exhaust all the artifacts a site might hold but I have yet to run into one that has stopped producing at least a few every now and then. Most sites are "multi-cultural" meaning they have components of several differnet groups of people(s) over time. Some might have been shorter occupations than others but the artifacts show that several cultures wanted the same site. They made these artifacts for thousands of years. It was their work and how they stayed alive so imagine how many they must have made.
Just like today, everybody wants that nice house on the hill. Long ago, and I preach it prolly to yall are sick of hearing it, but everybody wants to live on high ground and near a consistant source of fresh, clean water. In that last video, I found a broken Benton point near where I found that broken Clovis point. Those two point types spand thousands of years of site occupation based on the archeological data.
I agree, it is way cool to pick up an artifact that was made by a man (or a woman) thousands of years ago. I think those neat scrapper tools I showed in the video where made by the ladies. I think the men brought the game home and the women finished cleaning the game so the srappers, flake knives and other tools must have been used and produced by the woman. I get a kick out of it everytime I spot an artifact. Did this artifact kill a mammoth or mastodon? Was it used to kill his enemy? How many deer did it kill and skin? What did it do on its last flight to land here or did he drop it? Would that same man laugh his booty off at me wandering around in this field looking for his artifacts?
Here is something Johnny Cash wrote in a song called
'The Flint Arrowhead'
"While traveling this land from border to border and from sea to sea
There have a few occasions to leave the beaten path and to find the place
And quiet that's good for thought and just walking through a trackless forest
Or exploring ruins of the earliest settlers or walking along a creekbed
Hoping to find a relic such as a tomahawk an axe
Or even an arrowhead left by a race of long since vanished Indians
There's a great thrill and it's a wonderful feeling to find a flint arrowhead
Over fields of new turned sod and in communion with my God I walked alone
In a furrow bed I found an arrowhead chiseled from stone
I don't know how long ago some redman drew his bow on its last fight
Or did he drop it here afraid white men were near to attack at night
I do know this one thing beyond all questioning it was made to kill
And proof of a master trade is in this arrowhead he made fashioned with skill
That I inherited this ground is denied by this stone I've found but when and by who
Come join me in my tracks then let's stop and look back to the vale and through
In love and peace we'll see the shadows and the trees and voices too
But quietly slowly tread this home of the forgotten dead whose bones are dust
I'm proud that their craftsmen's skill survives the ages still left in my trust"
Only the rock remains. Stone tools are forever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnbBnJWOtYA