Ancient tool found biking

[us56456712]

I just found this today riding my fat bike in the woods. I'm told that if the tools from this area that are made out of quartzite or silicized sandstone they are proto indian and are at least 5000 years old. This one is quartzite. I was riding my mountain bike today and this washed out of the bank along the trail into a small trickle. Lots of stuff comes to light in the spring when everything is washed away and there are no leaves on the trees. It looks like a hand axe but it has a fluted notch in the back so perhaps it was hafted to a shaft and used as a knife or for digging roots and leeks? Anyway I said "wow"! out loud when I saw it. I was riding alone. I wonder how many other riders rode over this and didn't notice it? I once found another large one fishing, and a broken knife and an arrow head when mountain biking where the bikes and groomers have dug up the ground. I guess I'll keep my eyes open next year to see if anything else washes down on the trail.

 

[metalchewy]

That is a pretty cool find. Old relics are great.

I remember a place in north western Utah that I camped at as a scout way back, that had wash beds where the shoshone would chip out heads from obsidian. We'd find discarded heads that had split in half, or once in awhile find a good one.

Could the one you found be for a fishing spear?


Building..... Riding.....

 

[xray]

If the thing in this pic is a fishing spear, it's a whaling harpoon.

It's awfully big and blunt to be something thrown or shot - I'd think it more likely a striking or pounding tool, but it does have a few notches where it might be a little sharp... maybe a scraping tool? But, I would think this would be smoother.

We used to have access to a farm field where we could find up to a dozen well worked pieces in a couple of hours. We might get two or three intact, perfect points, and 8 or 10 broken points. My brother-in-law who farmed it literally had 3 or 4 five gallon buckets full of worked pieces. He had several flat, drilled pieces that looked like stone jewelry, axes, and at least one very nice matched mortar and pestle he found in that field. It was simply amazing. We found little caches of round river stones away from the river - someone we knew said these were used for cooking... that the stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a leather bag with food and that this is how some foods were cooked, with the heat of the stones rather than over the fire.

With some small experience and second-hand hear-say knowledge in this, what I am seeing in this photo is not a well worked piece, it's kind of rough. It does not look to me like a 5000 year old piece, but I'm no expert. I do absolutely think it looks like a worked piece though. My guess is that it is what I call a "blank." I've never had this confirmed by any expert, but I found SO many partially worked pieces like this - and often found them in groups - that I developed the idea that the owners worked these pieces in sessions. I don't think they sat down and made one perfect piece at a time. I think they sat down and worked a bunch of pieces at one time, working them down to remove all the "waste" and to lighten them. I think they finished whatever pieces they needed right away, and then kept some partially worked pieces handy that they could finish quickly when the need arose.

Let me stress this point: I could be completely blowing smoke and telling a lie here. I do not really know anything of the sort. BUT - I did often find what seemed like stashes of partially worked pieces so that it appeared to me someone left them in a handy spot to finish later.

I do not mean to minimize what you have found. It is really exciting to find this kind of stuff, and even after finding many such pieces it gets addictive. This is all the more true when you find a site that produces lots of pieces with only a little work.

These people needed all kind of tools, not just arrow and spear points. They made stone bowls and grinding stones. They made very fine points for piercing leather. They made hammers and axes. They made jewelry and adornments out of stone. They developed great skill at working stone to create sharp edges and utilitarian shapes. This photo doesn't look like a finished piece to me, but again, I have to admit my experience is limited to pieces found in one particular spot near the Conowingo river in Maryland. But, these people used similar kind of stone - there was no local flint to make the kinds of amazing points that you find in other regions where flint was plentiful.

I found literally hundreds of pieces in this same field over a period of about five years, all of this kind of stone. One time and one time only, I did find a flint piece that was shaped very differently from the common local pieces. This was one of my most exciting finds, because it could not have come from that area, and made me think that it must have gotten there through some sort of trading network. You get a much finer and sharper edge with properly worked flint - and I have to think that if a local person had gotten a fine flint tool in a trade that it must have been a real prize to him. When you spend time finding stuff like this, you cannot help but really fantasizing about the lives of the people who left these tools behind. It really transports you.

So, let me end by saying congrats. It's very cool to find this stuff. We lost access to the farm field where we used to hunt, and it left a hole in our summers for years. Searching that field was one of our favorite weekend activities in the seasons when the fields were freshly plowed up and after a good had washed the loose dirt down.

 

[us56456712]

If the thing in this pic is a fishing spear, it's a whaling harpoon.

It's awfully big and blunt to be something thrown or shot - I'd think it more likely a striking or pounding tool, but it does have a few notches where it might be a little sharp... maybe a scraping tool? But, I would think this would be smoother.

We used to have access to a farm field where we could find up to a dozen well worked pieces in a couple of hours. We might get two or three intact, perfect points, and 8 or 10 broken points. My brother-in-law who farmed it literally had 3 or 4 five gallon buckets full of worked pieces. He had several flat, drilled pieces that looked like stone jewelry, axes, and at least one very nice matched mortar and pestle he found in that field. It was simply amazing. We found little caches of round river stones away from the river - someone we knew said these were used for cooking... that the stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a leather bag with food and that this is how some foods were cooked, with the heat of the stones rather than over the fire.

With some small experience and second-hand hear-say knowledge in this, what I am seeing in this photo is not a well worked piece, it's kind of rough. It does not look to me like a 5000 year old piece, but I'm no expert. I do absolutely think it looks like a worked piece though. My guess is that it is what I call a "blank." I've never had this confirmed by any expert, but I found SO many partially worked pieces like this - and often found them in groups - that I developed the idea that the owners worked these pieces in sessions. I don't think they sat down and made one perfect piece at a time. I think they sat down and worked a bunch of pieces at one time, working them down to remove all the "waste" and to lighten them. I think they finished whatever pieces they needed right away, and then kept some partially worked pieces handy that they could finish quickly when the need arose.

Let me stress this point: I could be completely blowing smoke and telling a lie here. I do not really know anything of the sort. BUT - I did often find what seemed like stashes of partially worked pieces so that it appeared to me someone left them in a handy spot to finish later.

I do not mean to minimize what you have found. It is really exciting to find this kind of stuff, and even after finding many such pieces it gets addictive. This is all the more true when you find a site that produces lots of pieces with only a little work.

These people needed all kind of tools, not just arrow and spear points. They made stone bowls and grinding stones. They made very fine points for piercing leather. They made hammers and axes. They made jewelry and adornments out of stone. They developed great skill at working stone to create sharp edges and utilitarian shapes. This photo doesn't look like a finished piece to me, but again, I have to admit my experience is limited to pieces found in one particular spot near the Conowingo river in Maryland. But, these people used similar kind of stone - there was no local flint to make the kinds of amazing points that you find in other regions where flint was plentiful.

I found literally hundreds of pieces in this same field over a period of about five years, all of this kind of stone. One time and one time only, I did find a flint piece that was shaped very differently from the common local pieces. This was one of my most exciting finds, because it could not have come from that area, and made me think that it must have gotten there through some sort of trading network. You get a much finer and sharper edge with properly worked flint - and I have to think that if a local person had gotten a fine flint tool in a trade that it must have been a real prize to him. When you spend time finding stuff like this, you cannot help but really fantasizing about the lives of the people who left these tools behind. It really transports you.

So, let me end by saying congrats. It's very cool to find this stuff. We lost access to the farm field where we used to hunt, and it left a hole in our summers for years. Searching that field was one of our favorite weekend activities in the seasons when the fields were freshly plowed up and after a good had washed the loose dirt down.

I don't know what it was used for but it is sharp. These tools on the mountain I was riding on were made there as there was a quarry nearby. They have been dated by fire pits at 5000 years old, which was a surprise to the archeologists because quartzite tools from this area have always been 10,000 to even 12,000 years old. They were hunting caribou right in the face of the retreating glacier. Most sites found in our area are very achient. The archeologists have taken samples of the local quartzite to nappers and they can't do anything with it. If you try to fire harden it it separates into thin sheets. This was the best, though marginal, stone for tools that was found locally. The tools are very crude because if you try and finness them they break. The really nice one are made out of hixton silicified sandstone from Wisconsin and they are generally 10 - 12,000 years old. Archeologists from other universities have done sample surveys and found nothing at a camp site because they are looking for the wrong stone. Locals have to show them what they missed. Tools here are very rare, usually found along streams or water and usually very crude. I think it was a hand tool. It would break if you used it for a point, it is that fragile.

 

[frameteam2003]

Cool, Schwinn tire tool!

 

[whitecoyote]

Finding it in the U.P., probably digging for copper.